Bird Sense by Tim Birkhead, Published by Walker and Company, New York, April 2012, ISBN-13: 978-0802779663 ISBN-10: 0802779662.
Having hung around the Avian Photography forum and Critique Galleries for seven years now, I’ve seen many photographers, including myself, puzzling over some aspect of bird behavior. Tim Birkhead has provided answers to many of those puzzles in this incredibly interesting and informative book.
While no book of this kind can be encyclopedic as to species, since the research cannot possibly cover the entire range of bird life, some areas of birds’ senses, notably vision and hearing have been explored in considerable depth. Thus we are confirmed in our belief that many birds have incredibly acute distance vision, but also learn that many, if not most, birds are right eyed and that they tend to use that eye to scan for predators and the left eye for more close up tasks. The lack of ability to move the eye in its socket (a weight saving development) coupled with the difference in visual tasks turns out to be the reason we see birds constantly turning and tilting their heads.
Other areas of the senses, such as touch, taste and smell, have been less studied, but have revealed some tantalizing nuggets of information. We learn that the sense of smell in birds was controversial for many years and “disproved in the Turkey Vulture” by no less than Audubon. As late as 1947 a review of bird senses concluded that birds did not have a significant olfactory capability. It wasn’t accepted in the Ornithological community until the 1960’s when Betsy Bang, a medical illustrator and amateur ornithologist was doing illustrations of the internal structure of birds beaks for her husband and couldn’t believe that the complex nasal structures she was illustrating had no purpose. Outside the ornithological community, it turns out that Union Oil in California had confirmation of it in the 1930’s because they noticed that Turkey Vultures were attracted to the Ethyl Mercaptan in the natural gas and flocked to leaks in the pipeline.
For me there was as much interest in the history of the research and the clever techniques developed to conduct research into the senses as there was in the senses themselves.
Before buying this book I read a review that said there was something new and interesting on every page. I’d have to second that observation, particularly for bird photographers.
Discussion
1 repliesHaving hung around the Avian Photography forum and Critique Galleries for seven years now, I’ve seen many photographers, including myself, puzzling over some aspect of bird behavior. Tim Birkhead has provided answers to many of those puzzles in this incredibly interesting and informative book.
While no book of this kind can be encyclopedic as to species, since the research cannot possibly cover the entire range of bird life, some areas of birds’ senses, notably vision and hearing have been explored in considerable depth. Thus we are confirmed in our belief that many birds have incredibly acute distance vision, but also learn that many, if not most, birds are right eyed and that they tend to use that eye to scan for predators and the left eye for more close up tasks. The lack of ability to move the eye in its socket (a weight saving development) coupled with the difference in visual tasks turns out to be the reason we see birds constantly turning and tilting their heads.
Other areas of the senses, such as touch, taste and smell, have been less studied, but have revealed some tantalizing nuggets of information. We learn that the sense of smell in birds was controversial for many years and “disproved in the Turkey Vulture” by no less than Audubon. As late as 1947 a review of bird senses concluded that birds did not have a significant olfactory capability. It wasn’t accepted in the Ornithological community until the 1960’s when Betsy Bang, a medical illustrator and amateur ornithologist was doing illustrations of the internal structure of birds beaks for her husband and couldn’t believe that the complex nasal structures she was illustrating had no purpose. Outside the ornithological community, it turns out that Union Oil in California had confirmation of it in the 1930’s because they noticed that Turkey Vultures were attracted to the Ethyl Mercaptan in the natural gas and flocked to leaks in the pipeline.
For me there was as much interest in the history of the research and the clever techniques developed to conduct research into the senses as there was in the senses themselves.
Before buying this book I read a review that said there was something new and interesting on every page. I’d have to second that observation, particularly for bird photographers.