The Bird

How are birds so good at flying and navigating Why are birds so like mammals and yet so very different Did birds descend from dinosaurs, and if so, does that mean birds are dinosaurs How do they court each other and fend off rivals What s being communicated in birdsong Can we ever know how birds think In this fascinating exploration of the avian class, Colin Tudge considers the creatures of the air From their evolutionary roots to their flying, feeding, fighting, mating, nesting, and communicating, Tudge provocatively ponders what birds actually do as well as why they do it and how With the same curiosity, passion, and insight he brought to redwoods, pines, and palm trees in his widely acclaimed book The Tree, Tudge here studies sparrows, parrots, and even the Monkey eating Eagle to better understand their world and our own.There is far to a bird s existence than gliding gracefully on air currents or chirping sweetly from fence posts the stakes are life and death By observing and explaining the complex strategy that comes into play with everything from migration to social interaction to the timing of giving birth to young, Tudge reveals how birds are uniquely equipped biologically to succeed and survive And he offers an impassioned plea for humans to learn to coexist with birds without continuing to endanger their survival.Complete with an annotated cast list of all the known birds in the world plus gorgeous illustrations The Bird is a comprehensive and delightfully accessible guide for everyone from dedicated birders to casual birdwatchers that celebrates and illuminates the remarkable lives of birds. Free Download [ The Bird ] By [ Colin Tudge ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr I didn t finish this book The author gets points for being exhaustive, but he loses points for being exhaustive A lot of the book is just lists of things some birds do And since birds are so diverse, those lists get LONG And not necessar...This is a book that took me longer to read than any other book of 2016 And I stuck to the read diligently But I think it is only going to be appreciated by those with scientific classification onus and supreme interest and patient love of BIRDS There are many species and this is no short cut to their placements, shapes, locales, and habits Far, farthan most people would want to know, IMHO And posed in bird study language prose, at that MANY terms to learn if you are a novice More th This is a book that took me longer to read than any other book of 2016 And I stuck to the read diligently But I think it is only going to be appreciated by those with scientific classification onus and supreme interest and patient love of BIRDS There are many species and this is no short cut to their placements, shapes, locales, and habits Far, farthan most people would want to know, IMHO And posed in bird study language prose, at that MANY terms to learn if you are a novice More than in any Biology course or Aves genu...The writer tries to do much in 400 plus pages besides just covering the natural history of birds Tudge has chapters on the mind of the birds, bird conservation and the history of extinct species, and even a chapter on prehistoric birds and bird classification I got lost in the detail in some of this book, but I have studied birds enough that I found much of his esoteric details on species I know fascinating Because Tudge is British, many birds of the UK are covered, and although he uses met The writer tries to do much in 400 pl...Wow, it took me ages to finish this book 18 months or so The first half was a long trudge through a survey of every bird family Exhaustive but lots of interesting things in there to keep me going The second half was a fascinating look at how different birds feed, breed, think, and behave.This book is packed with fun facts like the 100 minute copulation of Vasa Parrots and the 25,000 mile annual migration of the Arctic Tern, but all of those facts without a central purpose weigh down the text I am an avid birdwatcher, but this book was too much of a good thing The narrative often rambles, so it isn t at all clear why the author wrote this book The rambling and the long, long lists of factoids made it feel like I was trudging through Tudge s book I skipped 96 page chapter four This book is packed with fun facts like the 100 minute copulation of Vasa Parrots and the 25,000 mile annual migration of the Arctic Tern, but all of those facts without a central purpose weigh down the text I am an avid birdwatcher, but this book was too much of a good thing The narrative often rambles, so it isn t at all clear why the author wrote this book The ra...Great book The first eight chapters I loved, his style is easy and conversational and yet he still provides a wealth of hard hitting science The 9th chapter about the mind of birds asks some interesting questions but...This is a rather wonderful summation of current knowledge regarding birds, beautifully written, with some rather lovely line drawings for those of you expecting some nice colour photos bve warned there are none and covering just about anything a lay person might want to know about the current state of knowledge regarding those amazing creatures we know as birds.Admittedly, there is the occasional feeling that the book is providing one with too much information, but it appears to me that th This is a rather wonderful summation of current knowledge regarding birds, beautifully written, with some rather lovely line drawings for those of you expecting some nice colour photos bve warned there are none and covering just about anything a lay person might want to know about the current state of knowledge regarding those amazing creatures we know as birds.Admittedly, there is the occasional feeling that the book is providing one with too much information, but it appears to me that the biological definitions cannot be dealt with otherwise The science is provided as it is understood to be at the beginning fo the 21st century yet t...A tour of what we know and what we are learning about birds There is one chapter that surveys all of the birds of the world It s a bit encylopedic and I skipped it But the rest is engaging and packed full of detail, historical and otherwise.One good example of these marvelous details, of the many that stuck with me, is his example of a cline a population, generally spread out geographically, that varies continuously from one end to the other with individuals successfully mating only with t A tour of what we know and what we are learning about birds There is one chapter that surveys all of the birds of the world It s a bit encylopedic and I skipped it But the rest is engaging and packed full of detail, historical and otherwise.One good example of these marvelous details, of the many that stuck with me, is his example of a cline a population, generally spread out geographically, that varies continuously from one end to the other with individuals successfully mating only with those that are neighbors to each other One group of gulls forms a cline that runs right around the ARctic Circle, and their color varies continously from a silvery gray to dark slaty gray All along the cline the gulls in any one place breed perfectly happily with their neighbors on either side But the gulls at the two extreme ends of the cline are so different that they cannot, or at least do not, breed with each other In fact, both ends of the ciruclar cline meet around Britain and are regarded as sepa...Not a guide to birds, but an introduction and discussion of what birds are, including extensive glances back into the fossil record as well as assessments of current often grim bird habitats, populations, and prognoses.Since the book deals with the fossil record, it also of necessity discusses the entire evolutionary development of bird phylogeny as currently understood Tudge fearlessly leaps into the world of DNA phylogeny and highlights major portions of the current structure that likely wi Not a guide to birds, but an introduction and discussion of what birds are, including extensive glances back into the fossil record as well as assessments of current often grim bird habitats, populations, and prognoses.Since the book deals with the fossil record, it also of necessity discusses the entire evolutionary development of bird phylogeny as currently understood Tudge fearlessly lea...THE BIRD is really packed with information, quite a bitthan you d find in some of the Sibley books, but with the humor and commentary that you don t find in a standard ornithology textbook I especially enjoyed the sections on bird evolution it s so clearly explained Also, the author doesn t hesitate to show what ornithologists don t know about birds, which is actually q...

• English
• 24 April 2017
Colin Tudge
• Hardcover
• 462 pages
• 0307342042
• Colin Tudge
• The Bird