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Jennifer Ackerman is the author of The Bird Way.

Nature & the Environment

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The Bird Way summary

Name: The Bird Way
Rating: 4.3 (43 reviews)
Author: Jennifer Ackerman

Jennifer Ackerman

A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

4.3 (43 ratings)

22 mins

Brief summary

The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman is a fascinating exploration of bird behavior and intelligence. It reveals how birds solve problems, communicate, and navigate their environments in remarkable ways, and offers insights into the evolution of avian cognition.

Topics

Animals

Table of Contents

The Bird Way
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? A globe-spanning exploration of birdlife.

What makes a bird a bird? Well, one scientist defines it like this: “There’s a mammal way and there’s a bird way.” Birds, in other words, are different.

But how are birds different? Well, it isn’t a matter of intelligence – as we’ll soon discover, birds can be breathtakingly clever. It’s not about manipulating the environment, either, because birds, like apes and humans, do that too. So, that leaves us with just one area of difference: reproduction. Unlike mammals, birds lay eggs, which means their young develop outside their bodies.

Beyond this one universal trait, though, bird species are wildly diverse. Some hunt with fire; others use ants. Some kill their weakest chicks; others raise the young of different species. And so, as the great biologist E. O. Wilson once put it, when you’ve seen one bird, you certainly haven’t seen them all.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why magpies attack mail carriers and cyclists;
how ravens play and crows catch grubs; and
why birds of prey start fires.

Birds use tools to get at precious food resources.

Let’s start our journey into the world of birds by looking at food from their perspective.

Whether you live in a forest, a desert, or a city, the things you can eat are small and unevenly spread across a vast territory. What’s worse, most of these things don’t want to be eaten. Fish hide below the water’s surface, while nuts, seeds, and fruits come packaged in tough, resistant shells.

Alright, now look at this problem through human eyes. How would you pull those fish out of the water or open those hard-to-crack nuts? You’d use a tool, of course. And that’s just what birds do too.

The key message in this blink is: Birds use tools to get at precious food resources.

Don’t let the word “bird-brained” fool you. Birds can be surprisingly clever, especially when it comes to using tools. Herons, for example, use leaves and dead insects to lure aquatic prey to the surface. Other birds, like gulls and ravens, use gravity in an ingenious way: they open clams and nuts by simply pelting them against rocks.

But that’s just scratching the surface. Birds use a remarkable variety of tools. Take the small Australian songbird called the Sittella. Sittellas find their food by probing holes in gum trees with twigs specially selected for their grub-extracting qualities.

Some birds, like the woodpecker finch in the Galápagos Islands, go a step further by making their own tools. This resourceful creature seeks out cacti spikes of varying lengths, which it modifies with its beak. It then carries the improvised spear from one tree to the next, looking for insects to impale.

But the most famous avian toolmakers are perhaps the crows of New Caledonia. Using durable, barb-lined pandanus leaves, these crafty birds make sticks with hooked ends, which allows them to pull grubs out of small holes and cracks.

Making these tools is a complicated business, requiring multiple precision cuts and tears. The fact that these crows are capable of creating them in the first place means they must have an image of what they are building in their minds before they begin constructing it.

In captivity, one crow combined four separate sticks to build a multipart, or “compound,” tool! This phenomenal ability is unparalleled in the non-mammalian animal world, and even rivals the capabilities of humans under the age of five.

Fire helps birds of prey find food, with some raptors even starting their own fires.

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.

Ant followers freeload off ant raids to get their daily meal.

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.

Ravens are highly playful birds.

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.

All birds lay eggs, but no two species’ eggs or nests are alike.

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.

Birds use many different strategies to defend their nests and eggs.

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.

Birds adopt a huge variety of parenting models.

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.

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What is The Bird Way about?

The Bird Way (2020) is a study of birds that harnesses both the expertise of the scientist and the joy of the birdwatcher. A celebration of the mind-boggling diversity of birds and their behavior, it explores the globe in pursuit of the inner workings of the avian mind. From Costa Rica’s teeming rainforests to the magpie-menaced suburbs of Australian cities, it explores how birds as different as ant followers, parrots, raptors, and ravens play, parent, and hunt.

The Bird Way Review

The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman (2020) takes us on a fascinating journey into the diverse and intriguing world of bird behavior. Here's why this book is definitely worth reading:

With a meticulous exploration of extraordinary avian behaviors, Ackerman reveals the surprisingly complex lives of birds, challenging our preconceived notions.
This book offers a thorough examination of various bird species' ingenious strategies for survival and reproduction, providing a fresh perspective on their intelligence and adaptability.
Ackerman's skillful storytelling and vivid descriptions paint a vivid picture of the wondrous ways in which birds navigate their world, making every chapter engaging and enlightening.

Best quote from The Bird Way

If kites and falcons have learned to manipulate fire to flush out prey, this would be the first known use of fire as a tool by any nonhuman animal.

—Jennifer Ackerman

Who should read The Bird Way?

Birdwatchers
Scientists
Nature lovers

About the Author

Jennifer Ackerman is an American science writer and the author of several critically acclaimed best sellers. Her most recent books include Ah-Choo, a study of the common cold, and Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream, an exploration of a day in the life of the human body. Ackerman is a regular contributor to Scientific American, National Geographic, and the New York Times. Her work has been awarded multiple grants and endowments, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Nonfiction.

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