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What The Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal The Secrets Of The Natural World (2012)

by Jon Young(Favorite Author)

4.06 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0547451253 (ISBN13: 9780547451251)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: My favorite nature book discovery of 2013. Since I am a naturalist by both vocation and avocation I read and even write books about nature. This past year is no except and the book that left the biggest impression, actually forcing me to look at the birdlife around me in an entirely new way is Jon Young's What the Robin Knows (2012). Before this recent work, like many or most birders, I'd look past the ordinary cardinals, wrens, jays, robins, chickadees, towhees hoping to find something more exotic like a kinglet or warbler flitting about the treetops. Since this book, not only do I watch birds, but I WATCH birds. And just because they live in our neighborhoods doesn't mean they are uninteresting. Their day-to-day lives are ruled by two motivators: 1. Find food, 2. Not be ... moreeaten. And all of their daily behavior, vocalizations and interactions with their mates and other species are governed by those two imperatives. No movement is purposeless. Awareness is survival. On top of that, they have to produce clutches of crying helpless vulnerable nestlings in a world full of predators that eat crying helpless vulnerable nestlings. Even high above the ground, Cooper's hawks are any parents nightmare. Now, if I hear an American robin call "tuk, tuk, tuk," I look around to see what's got it on edge. For the birds in your backyard, every day is a life and death struggle to live another day. Who needs TV with all this drama just outside their window.
review 2: As valuable to me as Tom Brown's "The Tracker" and my Peterson bird guide. The great thing about this book is that it takes a lot of the emphasis off of identification and focuses on understanding bird behavior in general. It also asks readers to listen holistically, to broaden the range of what we're hearing when we're listening to birdsong. The final chapters grind on about technicalities, though they may be of use to someone more invested in active listening. The appendixes and accompanying webpage (with audio) are nice bonuses. less

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