The Barnes & Noble Review The Life of Birds , David Attenborough presents the beauty of these creatures in full color.
Attenborough brings his wealth of knowledge about the natural world to The Life of Birds , the book examines every aspect of a bird's life, from flight — and why birds such as the ostrich and the kiwi returned to the ground — to the wondrous plumage that birds such as the peacock and the toucan use to announce their presence to the world. His insights provide a new way of looking at these creatures, placing them in a habitat and context instead of regarding them as objects to admire as they soar over our heads.
The bird is a wonderfully adaptable creature, surviving every climate from the rainforests of Brazil to the tundras of the Arctic. The Life of Birds , delves into this adaptability while also looking at the ways that humans — those ground-locked admirers of the feathered species — threaten these creatures' existence.
The Life of Birds , is a thrilling look at a species whose beauty has long been taken for granted by humans.
The pictures are great and there is a tendency to discuss the bizarre rather than the mainstream. I have no doubt that this book will also be popular in the United States. I would suggest giving this book to anyone you know that might be thinking of becoming involved with birds, particularly some young impressionable teenager. -- Condor
This is not a long book. But it is an extraordinarily rich one.
The indefatigable Attenborough (The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man , 1987, etc.), the driving force behind many nature documentaries, has written a book to accompany his forthcoming 10-part PBS series on the varied, complex, and fascinating world of birds, which will air in the spring of 1999. Attenborough is a lively writer, and his facile style is perfectly suited to presenting, with a minimum of complexity, a maximum of information. Ranging around the globe for his examples, Attenborough succinctly describes bird evolution, the mechanics of flight, patterns of adaptation to varied environments, courtship and nest-building behavior, and the rearing of young, among other topics. Whatever element of bird life he is describing, Attenborough's emphasis throughout is on behavior, and it's clear that he admires the abilities of birds to adapt to even the harshest climates. Experienced amateur ornithologists are unlikely to find anything new here, but the volume does offer a useful (and superbly illustrated) introduction to bird life for those with little background in the field. .
"Each chapter is an entertaining and chatty essay that rambles amiably through a series of observations from the ornithological literature. Nearly every page is graced with stunning photographs of wild birds in the most beautiful plumages or performing unusual postures or behaviors. The book is an easy read that covers an enormous amount of information on the biology of birds."
The Quarterly Review of Biology
