The Bird Way summary

Fire plays a vital role in the life cycle of savannas and prairies around the world. As one growth season ends, the grasses begin to die, creating a tangle of tinder-dry fuel. In these conditions, a single spark is all it takes to start a blaze. But as fires rip across these flat landscapes, they burn off old plant matter and reinvigorate the soil, which kick-starts a new growth season. 

Fire isn’t just good news for vegetation, though. For birds of prey, like raptors, hawks and kites, they can be a means to an abundance of food. Researchers in Oklahoma recently counted over 500 raptors at 25 prairie fires. That’s seven times the number you’d typically see over the same period of time, outside fire season.

Costa Rica’s rainforests are full of predators. Some, like the bushmaster, which is a venomous pit viper that can kill a human with a single bite, are a threat to large animals. Smaller creatures face smaller predators, but these, too, are deadly foes. 

Take Eciton burchellii, more commonly known as army ants. These pincer-jawed killing machines roam the forest in bivouacs – mobile nests constructed out of the interlocking limbs of live worker ants. The egg-laying queen and up to 120,000 larvae dwell inside these uncanny structures. The remaining soldier ants have a single task: to feed the colony. 

Southern Sweden, which is accented by rolling wheatfields, is raven country. It’s also just about as good a place as any to study these misunderstood birds. 

If you watch them long enough, though, you’ll notice subtle and intriguing quirks. Well, these aren’t signs of disease or paralysis – they’re forms of play. 

From slugs to bugs, mites to lice, gardeners face a formidable array of pests. Green-thumbed Australians have it harder than most, though, because along with the usual threats to their vegetables and flowers, they have to contend with a much bigger – and stranger – nuisance. 

A stocky bird with a dusty black coat, the brush turkey has a bright scarlet face and yellow fleshy lobes known as wattle hanging from its neck. It’s Australia’s largest megapode – the Latin word for “large foot.” It’s these feet that wreck gardens. 

The two main threats to young birds are the weather and predators. Many birds choose their nesting sites with these dangers in mind. 

A great example is the East African superb starling. It’s a brown-chested bird with vivid green-blue wings and a jet-black head, and like the ant followers of Costa Rica, it uses insects to its advantage. It builds its nests in thorny acacia trees, which are favored by the region’s most aggressive ant species. Their activity at the base of these trees helps deter predators on the prowl for eggs. 

Eclectus parrots, which are native to the Southwest Pacific, are extremely picky about nesting sites. For this species of short-feathered parrots, only one place will do – tree hollows in the 100 foot-high rainforest canopy. 

These hollows, however, are in short supply. Few are large enough to accommodate a family of parrots, and those that can are often prone to flooding, which puts chicks at risk of drowning. This scarcity shapes the female parrot’s behavior. If she finds a suitable hollow, she’ll remain there for eleven months of the year, guarding it with her life against predators and rivals. If, however, she has to make do with a flood-prone hollow closer to the ground, she’ll kill her male offspring and divert resources to faster-growing female chicks, who have a better chance of survival.