The Life of Birds (1998; Princeton University Press; 320 pp; $29.95) by David Attenborough is a companion text to the 10-part public television series of the same name. But while much of the media focus has probably been on the television program, the book stands alone very well, in large part due to Attenborough’s creativity and skill as a writer. It is Attenborough’s unique synthesis of current information that makes this book great reading, despite a few minor deficiencies.
The Life of Birds begins, as many general books on ornithology, with discussions on the origins of birds and flight, two well-known yet still hotly debated topics. When necessary, with brief discussions, Attenborough gently approaches topics such as anatomy and evolutionary relationships between birds and reptiles. After the first chapter, he then quickly leaves the past behind to focus the rest of the book on living birds and how they interact with other living organisms and their environment. A special emphasis is placed on how birds have adapted to the constraints of being flying creatures (e.g., the necessity of light weight). His writing style truly shines when he describes a living scene with action word-pictures, as in the chapter entitled “The Mastery of Flight”: “In the night, on a small offshore island in Japan, birds wait in line to clamber up a tree trunk. They are streaked shearwaters, sea-birds the size of pigeons…Nose to tail, they inch up, pushing with their legs, scrabbling with the elbows of their closed wings…One by one they open their long wings, lean forward into space and launch themselves into the air.”
Throughout The Life of Birds, Attenborough mostly avoids technical jargon. And he does not cite references “in order to not clog the text.” This makes the reading easier, but at times, makes the text appear somewhat light; I tended to get the impression of only getting a tiny morsel of information from a much bigger, heavier pie. But to be fair, in a medium-sized book that attempts to cover the entire subject of birds from evolutionary origins to conservation issues, topics must perforce be covered quickly. At the same time, about half of the book is filled with fine color photographs (most of which were not actually taken by the author), so there are at best about160 pages of actual text—room for only a few details on any one topic. The discussion on bird navigation during migration, for example, is covered in one paragraph. So in this way, Attenborough eventually covers many of the topics normally found in a standard ornithology textbook and more. At appropriate times, he uses birds to illustrate many of the topics one would find in a standard ecology text. Topics include symbiotic and predator-prey relationships, resource partitioning, structure of food webs, and competition among species. Attenborough presents topics from an evolutionary as well as ecological perspective. After completing this book, the reader will have been expose to principles of general biology as well as becoming more knowledgeable about birds. Overall, though, Attenborough focuses on bird behavior more than on any other topic, as the name of the book implies.
A characteristic of The Life of Birds which I noticed in some of Attenborough’s other books (e.g., The Private Life of Plants) is his use of unusual or extreme cases of a phenomenon to illustrate a general concept. For example, he chose to use the sungrebe of Guatemala, which he refers to as using the “most extraordinary of any method,” to show how some birds can transport young from place to place. Later he describes the behavior of young megapodes to show how some newly hatched birds are independent after hatching; in this example, he states that “of all ground-nesting birds, [they are] the most swiftly independent.” In the chapter “The Limits of Endurance,” he describes birds living under some of the hottest and driest habitable conditions on earth (sand grouse in the African desert), the coldest (emperor penguins in the Antarctic), and the saltiest (the extremely specialized flamingos of Kenya). Without doubt, Attenborough eloquently makes his points, though I wonder if it is always a good idea to use an extreme example to illustrate a general concept. Part of this tendency is probably related to enhancing the entertainment value of the book. Yet, they are still good examples; and, after all, before reading this book, I had never heard of a sungrebe.
In choosing bird examples, Attenborough appears to have taken great effort to not favor one part of the globe over another. In the space of a few pages, he is likely to draw examples from several widely-spaced continents. On one hand, this emphasizes the diversity of birds and the habitats they occupy; but on the other hand, it reminded me of how quickly each topic is covered and of how much more information may be available than what is presented.
Given Attenborough’s global perspective, it is surprising that he mostly does not discuss the global biodiversity crisis until the last chapter of the book. Even with topics such as birds under stress from introduced species, overhunting, and habitat destruction, I was surprised by the hard-hitting last paragraph of the book. In direct contrast to the positive mood established throughout the rest of the book, where the reader is almost encouraged to marvel without fear of embarrassment at the wonders of nature, Attenborough states that “the greatest destruction we have wrought has been inadvertent—a consequence of the wholesale changes we have made to the face of the earth.” Just when I was feeling good about the fate of birds in this world, I could not have been more violently jerked in the other direction than if he had referred to humans as a cancer on the planet. I wondered whether this message was left to the very end to make a lasting impression on the reader or whether it was tacked on as an attempt to cover yet another topic, however briefly. To conclude the book, Attenborough asserts that we, “as the new masters of this planet,” must find the will to use the knowledge and tools we possess to ensure that not one more bird becomes extinct as a result of human activities. I am not sure about the “master” concept, but I agree with the rest of his sentiments.
Even with its few minor limitations, I enjoyed The Life of Birds very much. Part of the reason is that I simply like Attenborough’s writing style; another part is that I enjoy looking at quality color photographs of birds. If this book had three or four times as much text, diagrams and maps as well as photographs, a section of selected references, and more thoughtful commentary on birds and the biodiversity crisis, I would have been much more than merely satisfied.
Review by Thomas V. Lerczak
[This review was originally published in Illinois Audubon magazine, Fall 1999 Number270, pages 14-15.]
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