Birds and Us
A 12,000 Year History, from Cave Art to Conservation
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on an epic and dazzling journey through this mutual history with birds.
Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art and philosophy, from the ibises mummified by Ancient Egyptians and Renaissance experiments on the woodpecker to the Victorian obsessions with egg collecting and our present fight to save endangered species.
Weaving in stories from his own life as a scientist, this rich and fascinating book is the culmination of a lifetime's research and unforgettably shows how birds shaped us, and how we have shaped them.
'Thought-provoking at every turn, this inspiring, shocking, wonder-filled exploration of our relationship with birds' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
'A fascinating book about the close and often surprising relationship between birds and people' Stephen Moss
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ornithologist Birkhead (Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird) delivers a master class in this fascinating look at humans' evolving relationship with birds, tracking over the course of 12 millennia as birds went from being the objects of art and veneration to sources of food and sport, and the current subject of study and conservation. In ancient Egypt, for example, four million Sacred Ibises were mummified, then found in the early 1800s: "bird mummies served four different purposes: preserving the birds as food, as pets for deceased humans, as gods to be revered and as votive offerings." Other sections delve into the medieval obsession with falconry, the study of birds' biology during a natural history boom in the Victorian era, and contemporary bird-dependent societies on the Faroe Islands. Portraits of key players in ornithology enrich the narrative, among them Edmund Selous, who near the end of the 19th century led the shift from killing birds for study to bird-watching as a serious intellectual pursuit, an activity that garnered empathy for the creatures. Birkhead clearly knows his terrain, and his writing is vivid and occasionally funny: "There's also the ammonia-rich aroma of sea-bird shit (which I love, by the way)." This is a must-read for nature lovers.
