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bookpossum's review against another edition
4.0
This is a solid work of scholarship but also contains much personal experience and observation. The author is a renowned expert on bird behaviour and is also expert in nursing and rehabilitating injured wild birds. I knew birds were a great deal smarter than they are credited to be, but I learned a lot about just how clever many of them are from this book.
I shall watch them with even more fascination from now on.
I shall watch them with even more fascination from now on.
archytas's review against another edition
5.0
When I finished this ebook, I went straight and bought the physical book. Not because there is anything wrong with the ebook, which is well done, but because this book is just that good. In particular, Kaplan includes a wonderful summary organised by type of bird at the end, making this highly sciency account also really useful for refreshing your memory while birdwatching.
Australian birds are pretty amazing, and Kaplan takes us through why and how they are so amazing with methodical, referenced thoroughness. She moves through the various traits we tend to lump together under intelligence: communication & collaboration; tool use; problem solving etc. and discusses various species along the way.
Kaplan's love for Australian birds - especially her beloved maggies - comes through loud and clear, making this is a nice book to read surrounded by birdsong. A magpie flew down to tease my cat while I was curled up on the outside couch reading this, and was wonderful to read how typical such behaviour is.
As Kaplan points, in a tone that does not lack grumpiness, Australian birds are not well understood in comparison to the European cousins. This is unfortunate because it appears most likely birds substantially evolved in the land mass that evolved into Australia, and we host many more, and diverse, species than the North. Kaplan goes on to demonstrate the creativity and flexibility of local species problem solving, raising real implications for understanding how cognition works. For most of the last few hundred years, it was considered ok to study a few species in depth and generalise from there to similar species, but as Kaplan indicates, this means we think we know far more than we, in reality, do know. This book could be controversial, but the strong references, including to local research and recordings, protect some of Kaplan's bolder claims. The result is well-presented, justified and explained science. It can be dry at times, and her phrasing can be awkward, requiring a few reads at a sentence to be sure what is meant. This are minor complaints, however.
Part of the wonder of this and several other books I've been reading lately, is realising how much more there is to the world just in front of us, if only we were willing to look at what is in front of us. In Australia, we are blessed with rich ecosystems, mostly balanced delicately for a climate which races to extremes. We have such a legacy of scientific method and understanding, but for all that, very little research beyond the same paths trod in the same parts of the world. With the development of research assisted by computer power, DNA testing, brain mapping, and simply collaboration by researchers able to search millions of articles, means this might be changing and some of our fundamental assumptions along with it.
Australian birds are pretty amazing, and Kaplan takes us through why and how they are so amazing with methodical, referenced thoroughness. She moves through the various traits we tend to lump together under intelligence: communication & collaboration; tool use; problem solving etc. and discusses various species along the way.
Kaplan's love for Australian birds - especially her beloved maggies - comes through loud and clear, making this is a nice book to read surrounded by birdsong. A magpie flew down to tease my cat while I was curled up on the outside couch reading this, and was wonderful to read how typical such behaviour is.
As Kaplan points, in a tone that does not lack grumpiness, Australian birds are not well understood in comparison to the European cousins. This is unfortunate because it appears most likely birds substantially evolved in the land mass that evolved into Australia, and we host many more, and diverse, species than the North. Kaplan goes on to demonstrate the creativity and flexibility of local species problem solving, raising real implications for understanding how cognition works. For most of the last few hundred years, it was considered ok to study a few species in depth and generalise from there to similar species, but as Kaplan indicates, this means we think we know far more than we, in reality, do know. This book could be controversial, but the strong references, including to local research and recordings, protect some of Kaplan's bolder claims. The result is well-presented, justified and explained science. It can be dry at times, and her phrasing can be awkward, requiring a few reads at a sentence to be sure what is meant. This are minor complaints, however.
Part of the wonder of this and several other books I've been reading lately, is realising how much more there is to the world just in front of us, if only we were willing to look at what is in front of us. In Australia, we are blessed with rich ecosystems, mostly balanced delicately for a climate which races to extremes. We have such a legacy of scientific method and understanding, but for all that, very little research beyond the same paths trod in the same parts of the world. With the development of research assisted by computer power, DNA testing, brain mapping, and simply collaboration by researchers able to search millions of articles, means this might be changing and some of our fundamental assumptions along with it.