The Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgway and the Modern Study of Birds

Despite its ‘fluffy’ sounding title, this book is an absorbing biography of one of America’s most important natural scientists. Ridgway was the first curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institute at a time when the development of modern thinking about birds, ecology and evolution was in its infancy. This backdrop sets a lively stage on which the very way we study birds was being chiselled out of the haphazard and ego-driven bird studies that had preceded Ridgway. A fascinating read.