The Magic & Mystery of Birds

This is one of those books that I might have glanced over without picking up. It is the sort of book where the title – and in this case also the subtitle ‘The surprising lives of birds and what they reveal about being human’ – might suggest that it is best left on the book shop shelf. In this instance, however, not judging the book by its cover delivers something that is actually not bad at all; in fact, some bits are really rather good.

Noah Strycker, who will be better known to a North American audience, delivers an engaging and accessible narrative in which he explores a whole gamut of bird behaviours, broadly linked together under 13 chapters and across 260 plus pages. At times Strycker does stray from each chapter’s core theme, his personal narrative delivering perhaps one too many anecdotes and, as he himself admits within the book, he sometimes tries to pack too much in. While he doesn’t quite have the scientific clarity of, say, Tim Birkhead (whose book Bird Sense very much set the benchmark for this type of book), I found a lot to enjoy within the text and much new information. Whether it was the sad end to Hawaii’s first Snowy Owl or the chicken’s well defined colour vision, there was plenty in here to be of interest, and even the notes and sources section delivered some fine material.

If you stumble across this book on a book shop shelf, don’t be put off by the title, though it is worth noting that if you’ve already read ‘The thing with feathers’ by Stryker, then this is the same book under a different name.

Book reviewed by Mike Toms