The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars | 1,627 ratings

Price: 17.72

Last update: 02-25-2025


About this item

From the New York Times best-selling 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.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Kath
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting and well written book
    Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2021
    This book gets a “two thumbs up” from my father the lifelong amateur naturalist. I gave it to him as a Christmas present. I chose the hardback edition both because of the drawings and because he enjoys hardback books when the book is meant for “continuous browsing” meaning both for reading and for revisiting as a resource. He knows quite a bit about birds and absolutely loves this book. He told me that it’s very well written, engaging, absorbing, interesting, and the drawings are lovely. When I asked him if a “beginning bird enthusiast” would also enjoy the book he said, “Absolutely! It’s very accessible and they’ll learn so much about birds.”

    If you like/love birds or know someone who does and you want to add a book to yours or their collection that’s more than the standard bird identification book, this is definitely the book to get or give as a present.
  • Peter M. Beck
    5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Nature Writing
    Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2020
    This is nature writing at its very best. Journalist Jennifer Ackerman has emerged as one of the leading voices for our avian friends. She travels the world to introduce us to some amazing birds and the painstaking research being done to better understand them. I lost count of the number of times I wrote “wow” in my marginalia.

    North American birds are on the whole somewhat boring, but in Australia, New Zealand and the tropics, their behavior is even more distinctive than their often colorful plumage. From laughing and tool making to cooperative parenting, birds have more going on upstairs than I ever imagined. I also thought I had learned about the birds and the bees long ago, but I don’t remember studying their “cloaca” (a three-in-one orifice).

    Perhaps I will develop the patience to go bird watching when I am in my 70s, but in the meantime, I have put out feeders and birdbaths. Two of our most frequent flyers are acorn woodpeckers, which have “one of the most complex communal nesting systems of any vertebrate” (p. 319) and Anna’s hummingbirds, which Ackerman wonderfully describes as “a ton of truculence packed into a feathered fraction of an ounce” (p. 13). While reading outside they can hover inches from my face. Males have dazzling ruby red throats when light is reflected at certain angles. Feeding frenzies are punctuated by dogfights and dive bombings. Just as I was reading Ackerman’s description, a female hummer crashed into the sliding glass door of my study. I scooped her up and marveled at how tiny she was. Before I could offer her some sugar water, she had flown off into our nearby redbud tree.

    “The Bird Way” is a welcome respite from a world turned upside down by Trump’s kakocracy (rule by the worst people). Corvids (crows) over Covid-19! My next bird books will be the lighter “The Birds of Pandemonium: Life Among the Exotic and the Endangered” and the more academic “Parrots of the Wild: A Natural History of the World’s Most Captivating Birds.” Ackerman has a brilliant chapter on New Zealand’s stupendous kea parrot, but I need to better understand the yellow-naped Amazon I grew up with. Poncho could outlive me...
  • Rock
    4.0 out of 5 stars interesting book
    Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2023
    this is a good book if you are a bird lover.
  • AJP
    5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written, informative book.
    Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2020
    Ever wonder how, with their relatively tiny brains, birds can learn, communicate and function at a much higher level than one would predict. Turns out, their brains are organized differently - and clearly much more efficiently. From this book, you'll learn about the amazing ways birds avoid nest parasitism (e.g., a cuckoo dumping its own egg into a nest, and when its offspring hatches, it pushes the rightful occupants out of the next to die). Some birds teach their unhatched "children" a code song, learned while still in the egg, without which they won't be fed. Others memorize the speckled pattern of their own eggs and will discard any with unrecognized patterns. Still others keep careful count of how many eggs were laid and will abandon the nest if an "extra" appears. Perceptual and learning abilities rival and often surpass those of primates whose brains weigh more than the whole bird. African grey parrots have the cognitive and emotional facilities of preschoolers. A worthy and fascinating read.
  • Nancee 123
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Whole New Perspective on Our Bird Neighbors
    Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2023
    Ms Ackerman’s book is like an encyclopedia filled to the brim with impressive and startling facts! It is an easy read and I found it hard to put down.

    If you are a bird fancier, or someone who just wants to know more about animals that you see and live around every day, this is the book for you. I came away more informed than I ever imagined and anxious to watch my bird neighbors with a new found perspective!
  • Pam Hoffman
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great coffee table book
    Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2024
    I have gifted this book. Beautiful paintings and information.

    • Best Sellers in

     
     

    American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI

    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,126
    15.75
     
     

    Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,951
    17.72
     
     

    Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 4,226
    17.72
     
     

    The Control of Nature

    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 666
    13.99
     
     

    Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's

    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 12
    10.47
     
     

    Mind-Body Medicine: The New Science of Optimal Health

    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 8
    21.88
     
     

    The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,029
    22.5
     
     

    Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change

    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 415
    33.26