Presents engaging vignettes about the private lives of birds, from family life to coping with today's environments, all explained in an evolutionary context.

A fascinating look at what birds do and why they do it Both casual and serious birdwatchers can take their skills to the next level with this detailed consideration of bird behavior. This book makes it possible to move beyond identifying birds to understanding some of the underpinning and meaning to what birds do, how they do it, and why they do it. Written in an easy-to-understand style, with an abundance of photos illustrating the behaviors, the book shows how flight, molt, migration, feeding, predation, social behavior, courtship, and nesting shape birds' behaviors. Birds are everywhere, and easy to observe; this introduction to elements of bird behavior will connect readers more intimately with these remarkable and beguilingly perceptive animals.

The way birds behave is one of the vital keys to accurate identification and this book provides the experienced instruction needed to understand and get the most out of watching birds. The guide covers all the fundamental types of bird behaviour, including movement, feeding, breeding, migration, navigation, distribution, range, life and death, all of which are illustrated with beautiful photographs. There is a whole section dedicated to the behaviour of different species groups, from divers and grebes through to sparrows, buntings and finches.

A stunningly illustrated look at the mating and parenting lives of the world's birds Bird Love looks at the extraordinary range of mating systems in the avian world, exploring all the stages from courtship and nest-building to protecting eggs and raising chicks. It delves into the reasons why some species, such as the wattled jacana, rely on males to do all the childcare, while others, such as cuckoos and honeyguides, dump their eggs in the nests of others to raise. For some birds, reciprocal promiscuity pays off: both male and female dunnocks will rear the most chicks by mating with as many partners as possible. For others, long-term monogamy is the only way to ensure their offspring survive. The book explores the wide variety of ways birds make sure they find a mate in the first place, including how many male birds employ elaborate tactics to show how sexy they are. Gathering in leks to display to females, they dance, pose, or parade to sell their suitability as a mate. Other birds attract a partner with their building skills: female bowerbirds rate brains above beauty, so males construct elaborate bowers with twig avenues and cleared courtyards to impress them. Looking at the differing levels of parenting skills across species around the world, we see why a tenth of bird species, including the fairy-wrens of Australia, have helpers at the nest who forgo their own reproduction to assist the breeding pair; how brood parasites and their hosts have engaged in evolutionary arms races; and how monogamous pairs share—or relinquish—their responsibilities. Illustrated throughout with beautiful photographs, Bird Love is a celebration of the global diversity of avian reproductive strategies.

How understanding bird language and behavior can help us to see more wildlife.

This book presents the facet theoretical framework as a tool for facilitating the conception of complex animal behaviour research and the design of research procedures through employing mapping sentences. Using the facet theoretical framework, this book takes a holistic view of bird behaviour. Components of bird behavior are identified and then reassembled to facilitate an understanding of the behaviour in the context of its natural occurrence. This provides new insight on both the parts of the behaviour and how these interact as a whole. The multi-faceted approach to designing, evaluating and understanding bird behavior presented offers a template that is adaptable for investigating a wide variety of avian species and different forms of behaviour. Behavioural biologists, animal and comparative psychologists, other natural and behavioural scientists, as well as students of these disciplines will find this book to be an interesting and enlightening read.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds -- how they live and how they think. “There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.” But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries –– What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own: deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, infanticide, but also ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play. Some of these extraordinary behaviors are biological conundrums that seem to push the edges of, well, birdness: a mother bird that kills her own infant sons, and another that selflessly tends to the young of other birds as if they were her own; a bird that collaborates in an extraordinary way with one species—ours—but parasitizes another in gruesome fashion; birds that give gifts and birds that steal; birds that dance or drum, that paint their creations or paint themselves; birds that build walls of sound to keep out intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call—and may hold the secret to our own penchant for playfulness and the evolution of laughter. Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan, to the rolling hills of lower Austria and the islands of Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, Jennifer Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect, in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behavior, birds vary. It is what we love about them. As E.O Wilson once said, when you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all.