-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £3.60
Trade in Bird Sense: What it's Like to be a Bird for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £3.60, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'An absolutely absorbing book. On almost every page there is an astonishing observation or revelation. *****' ----Daily Telegraph
'An eye-opening guide to all matters ornithological ... His tour of the frontiers of our understanding of birds is stuffed with mind-boggling facts and insights. Thoroughly engaging, it also gives us a thrilling sense of the vast, unmapped territories that lie beyond, waiting to be discovered' ----Sunday Times
'There are plenty of writers who have an understanding of natural science, and there are plenty of scientists who try to write. But there are precious few with the combined abilities of Professor Tim Birkhead. His instinct for the stories within ornithology and his gift for making technical matters accessible and simple are rare talents indeed' ----Mark Cocker, naturalist and co-author of Birds Britannica on The Wisdom of Birds
'Wonderful ... [Birkhead] has a historian's grasp of our intellectual past, a storyteller's gift for fine, clear and deceptively simple prose and an instinctive sense of the tales that are worth recounting' ----Guardian on The Wisdom of Birds
'One of the most entertaining, informative and enthusiastic accounts of the history of ornithology; and of the many different ways in which we have observed, studied and wondered about birds' ----Daily Telegraph on The Wisdom of Birds
'An eye-opening guide to all matters ornithological ... His tour of the frontiers of our understanding of birds is stuffed with mind-boggling facts and insights. Thoroughly engaging, it also gives us a thrilling sense of the vast, unmapped territories that lie beyond, waiting to be discovered' ----Sunday Times
'There are plenty of writers who have an understanding of natural science, and there are plenty of scientists who try to write. But there are precious few with the combined abilities of Professor Tim Birkhead. His instinct for the stories within ornithology and his gift for making technical matters accessible and simple are rare talents indeed' ----Mark Cocker, naturalist and co-author of Birds Britannica on The Wisdom of Birds
'Wonderful ... [Birkhead] has a historian's grasp of our intellectual past, a storyteller's gift for fine, clear and deceptively simple prose and an instinctive sense of the tales that are worth recounting' ----Guardian on The Wisdom of Birds
'One of the most entertaining, informative and enthusiastic accounts of the history of ornithology; and of the many different ways in which we have observed, studied and wondered about birds' ----Daily Telegraph on The Wisdom of Birds
Review
An absolutely absorbing book. On almost every page there is an astonishing observation or revelation. ***** Daily Telegraph An eye-opening guide to all matters ornithological ... His tour of the frontiers of our understanding of birds is stuffed with mind-boggling facts and insights. Thoroughly engaging, it also gives us a thrilling sense of the vast, unmapped territories that lie beyond, waiting to be discovered Sunday Times PRAISE FOR 'THE WISDOM OF BIRDS' 'There are plenty of writers who have an understanding of natural science, and there are plenty of scientists who try to write. But there are precious few with the combined abilities of Professor Tim Birkhead. His instinct for the stories within ornithology and his gift for making technical matters accessible and simple are rare talents indeed' Mark Cocker, naturalist and co-author of Birds Britannica 'Wonderful ... [Birkhead] has a historian's grasp of our intellectual past, a storyteller's gift for fine, clear and deceptively simple prose and an instinctive sense of the tales that are worth recounting' Guardian 'One of the most entertaining, informative and enthusiastic accounts of the history of ornithology; and of the many different ways in which we have observed, studied and wondered about birds' Daily Telegraph
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
After 'The Wisdom of Birds' I thought that it would be very difficult for anyone to write anything quite so good about birds for a long time. I am pleased to say that I was totally wrong - its been done again, and by the same author! For anyone who has watched birds for any length of time it is not long before they start asking questions such as 'how do they do that?' or 'how can they sense that whereas I can't?'. Tim Birkhead deals with all these questions related to the senses, including magnetic sense and emotions. There is something on almost every page that even the most experienced amateur birdwatcher will not know or about which they will gain a greater understanding. It is so interesting that it is difficult to put down - a great page turner! The great strength of this book is that Tim explains things simply and clearly; he has made scientific knowledge available to all - a great gift! DaveK
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Tim Birkhead's previous book `The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology', I was excited to see he had written a new book and it has finally been delivered by Amazon! A journey through all of the senses birds have, some we humans have also, but others unique to birds, `Bird Sense' offers an amazing view of the life of birds. In describing the senses of birds, Tim Birkhead also provides a fantastic insight into how scientists actually go about their work. He not only discusses what we know, but also many things we are as yet unsure of about birds. Other authors tend to skip over such unknowns, but here the author is happy to discuss them. In telling us about such wonders as Flamingos being able to know it has rained hundreds of miles away without seeing or hearing it, we really get a sense of how much of the world remains unknown to us. All in all, `Bird Sense' is an intriguing and enjoyable read, and with some wonderful illustrations, suitable not just for bird enthusiasts but for anyone with a general interest in wildlife.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Bird Sense is a crash course in bird biology and behavior. The text is only a little over 200 pages, but avian biologist Tim Birkhead wastes no time or space. The subtitle is What It's Like to Be a Bird and while there's no way for us to experience being birds, we get a lot closer to knowing what's going on underneath all those feathers.
Birkhead approaches the bird from each of the five traditional senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell) and adds magnetic sense and emotion for good measure. Magnetic sense is a bird's sense of direction, based on the earth's magnetic field. Birds can determine where they are and where their destination is from it. Humans don't have this sense, so it is especially hard for us to understand exactly how birds experience it.
On the other hand, humans experience emotion in abundance and it's difficult for us to imagine that birds don't suffer pain or feel joy as we do. Science has no definitive answer yet. But it underscores what is a problem for scientists - that as human beings, we are unavoidably biased when studying the biology of other animals. It's difficult, if not impossible to exclude our own experience of hearing, etc. when exploring the experiences of others.
Another of the themes of Bird Sense is that the amount we don't yet know about birds is overwhelmingly larger than what we do know. Birkhead refers to the growing and changing accumulation of knowledge as the "truth-for-now" nature of science.
In fact, Bird Sense is as much about the nature and the history of science as it is about birds specifically. We learn what naturalists thought about bird vision, etc. through history and how we've come to think what we do now. It's just as interesting finding out about the process of learning as it is to learn what the current thinking is.
Birkhead's style is to write simply, without excess jargon, explaining scientific facts along the way to an intelligent, but non-science-oriented reader. As a reader with an embarrassingly limited scientific background, I found Bird Sense an engaging and informative book. Add to this book the excellent David Attenborough TV series The Life of Birds (and skip the hopelessly uninformative PBS Nature episode A Murder of Crows).
Birkhead approaches the bird from each of the five traditional senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell) and adds magnetic sense and emotion for good measure. Magnetic sense is a bird's sense of direction, based on the earth's magnetic field. Birds can determine where they are and where their destination is from it. Humans don't have this sense, so it is especially hard for us to understand exactly how birds experience it.
On the other hand, humans experience emotion in abundance and it's difficult for us to imagine that birds don't suffer pain or feel joy as we do. Science has no definitive answer yet. But it underscores what is a problem for scientists - that as human beings, we are unavoidably biased when studying the biology of other animals. It's difficult, if not impossible to exclude our own experience of hearing, etc. when exploring the experiences of others.
Another of the themes of Bird Sense is that the amount we don't yet know about birds is overwhelmingly larger than what we do know. Birkhead refers to the growing and changing accumulation of knowledge as the "truth-for-now" nature of science.
In fact, Bird Sense is as much about the nature and the history of science as it is about birds specifically. We learn what naturalists thought about bird vision, etc. through history and how we've come to think what we do now. It's just as interesting finding out about the process of learning as it is to learn what the current thinking is.
Birkhead's style is to write simply, without excess jargon, explaining scientific facts along the way to an intelligent, but non-science-oriented reader. As a reader with an embarrassingly limited scientific background, I found Bird Sense an engaging and informative book. Add to this book the excellent David Attenborough TV series The Life of Birds (and skip the hopelessly uninformative PBS Nature episode A Murder of Crows).
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Something for everybody
Rather smaller than Birkhead's The Wisdom Of Words, Bird Sense complements the earlier work by taking a look at some of the things we do and don't know about how birds experience... Read more
Published 7 days ago by Steve Keen
Enlightening
I bought this book after BBC Wildlife magazine recommended it as their 'book of the month', and it certainly lived up to expectations! Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sarah H
Great present for anyone with a passing interest in birds
I have no idea whether this book would tell the ornithologist or twitcher anything new but for those who have merely a passing avian enthusiasm it is fascinating and informative... Read more
Published 1 month ago by tipperary
excellent book
This book is another feather in the cap for Tim Birkhead. He is one of a crop of a few writers who can write in this way. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mark Stone
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
