Lost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year

Lost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big YearLost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year
by Neil Hayward
Rating: ★★★½
Publication Date: July 26, 2016
Pages: 416
Genre: Memoir, Natural Science, Non-fiction
Publisher: Audible for Bloomsbury

Early in 2013 Neil Hayward was at a crossroads. He didn't want to open a bakery or whatever else executives do when they quit a lucrative but unfulfilling job. He didn't want to think about his failed relationship with "the one" or his potential for ruining a new relationship with "the next one." And he almost certainly didn't want to think about turning forty. And so instead he went birding.

Birding was a lifelong passion. It was only among the birds that Neil found a calm that had eluded him in the confusing world of humans. But this time he also found competition. His growing list of species reluctantly catapulted him into a Big Year--a race to find the most birds in one year. His peregrinations across twenty-eight states and six provinces in search of exotic species took him to a hoarfrost-covered forest in Massachusetts to find a Fieldfare; to Lake Havasu, Arizona, to see a rare Nutting's Flycatcher; and to Vancouver for the Red-flanked Bluetail. Neil's Big Year was as unplanned as it was accidental: It was the perfect distraction to life.

Neil shocked the birding world by finding 749 species of bird and breaking the long-standing Big Year record. He also surprised himself: During his time among the hummingbirds, tanagers, and boobies, he found a renewed sense of confidence and hope about the world and his place in it.


Now that I’ve been emancipated from crutches and taxis, and I can drive again, I’m back to being able to enjoy audiobooks, and after a small audio spree, I have quite a backlog to choose from.  I started with this one; even if I’m not quite up to bush walking while looking through a camera lens yet, I’m definitely ready to hear about someone else’s adventures.

Unfortunately, this was only a little more than half of what I’d hoped it would be.  Neil Hayward’s ‘accidental’ big year was a lot of fun to listen to/read about, and his last minute travel itineraries boggled the mind.  I loved every birding minute of this book.  But this book is also as much about the angst he suffered in his personal life, at least some of which was due to clinical depression, and not a little also due to an extraordinary pessimism he blamed on his British upbringing.  I avoid gross generalisations about people on a nation-wide basis, but Hayward did resemble an old boyfriend of mine, who lived in England, more than a little bit.  Regardless, I was in a mood to read about wild and uncommon adventures in birding, not girlfriend/career/mental illness angst, so I found these parts of the narrative tedious.  A few times at the start I considered DNF’ing because there was so. much. angst.  But once he embraced the goal to see as many birds as possible in one year (limited to US/Canada -Hawaii), the book held my interest more often than not, and ultimately left me satisfied.

The narrator did a very creditable job.

Birdland

BirdlandBirdland
by Leila Jeffreys
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780733631061
Publication Date: November 5, 2015
Pages: 188
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Hachette Books

Fine art photographer Leila Jeffreys captures the beauty and diversity of some of our most colourful and elegant feathered friends.

In BIRDLAND, Australian fine-art photographer Leila Jeffreys presents us with a bird-watching experience like no other, drawing birds out from their leafy shadows and airy territories and presenting them to us with the skill and intricate detail of a portrait painter. The result is a stunning encounter with some of the world's most beautiful birds.

On display are fine feathers of all types-eagles in burnished battle armor, fairy floss pink cockatoos, owls in spangled evening wear, and the finches and parrots who couldn't settle for just one or two colours, so chose the whole palette instead.

Captured in a moment of stillness, Jeffreys's feathered sitters reveal qualities and features that invite human projection. Meet the sociable gang-gang cockatoos Commander and Mrs. Skyring, always up for a soiree; the dignified and kingly black kite Fenrick; and the adorably gamine Pepper, a southern boobook owl with impossibly huge eyes and irresistibly cute skinny legs.

Sydney-based Jeffreys works with animal rescue and conservation groups to create her portraits. Her love and compassion for her subjects is evident throughout, and every bird has a story, which Jeffreys shares in a profile of nearly every species in the back of the book.

There are working birds, like Soren, the wedge-tailed eagle, who patrols areas to prevent cockatoos from damaging buildings and lorikeets from overindulging on sugar on hotel balconies; Blue, the orange-bellied parrot who is part of a breeding program to increase the population of this critically endangered species; and Sirocco, New Zealand's kakapo conversation superstar.

BIRDLAND invites us to rediscover birds, to gaze unhindered, and to marvel at their many-splendored glory.


A gorgeous book that I’d eyed about a year ago and dismissed as too decadent; coffee-table art books generally don’t make it into my book budget.  Luckily, I received it as a birthday gift last week, so I could wallow in the beautiful bird portraits guilt-free.

Then, at the end, I saw the List of Works, in which Jeffreys included general information about the species, and almost always, a small anecdote about her experience photographing the individual bird.  They were, apologies to Jeffreys and her obvious talent, the best part of the book, because while her photos are stunning, those little anecdotes brought them, and the bird, to life.  So much so that at some points, I found myself a little misty-eyed and a lot jealous.

A beautiful book for those that enjoy birds and photography.

Finding Australian Birds

Finding Australian Birds: A Field Guide to Birding LocationsFinding Australian Birds: A Field Guide to Birding Locations
by Rohan Clarke, Tim Dolby
Rating: ★★★★★
Publication Date: May 15, 2014
Pages: 602
Genre: Natural Science, Reference
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing

 

In the category of “books likely to only appeal to the .01%”, I give you this solid gold publication.  As I live in Australia for now, and I enjoy stalking its amazing birds with my camera (purely amateur hour and likely even more entertaining for the birds than it is for me), and I’m rapidly running out of ‘new-to-me’ birds in my area, I grabbed this on a whim when I saw it at my local bookstore.

It exceeded my expectations, to say the least.  Broken down by state, then by region, complete with common birds, not-so-common birds, descriptions, maps and suggested road trips to bird hotspots!  I fell in love with this feature, as it includes day trips, weekend trips and dedicated bird-stalking 10 day trips.  It then capped itself with a cherry on top by highlighting areas that also included interesting non-birding things to do, for those unfortunate spouses such as mine, who like birds well enough, but don’t find the need to stalk them, yet still find themselves dragged along for the ride.

I wish I could say this was part of a larger, international publication series, so I could urge my other bird loving friends to find their locals edition, but it’s published by CSIRO, which stands for The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation; it’s an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research, so unlikely to part of a greater publishing series.  But if anyone reading this is ever in Australia and intends to add some birds to their lists, you can’t go wrong picking this book up beforehand.

Reality TV lockdown style

I stumbled across an article about a pair of Peregrine Falcons nesting in downtown Melbourne today, and it included a link to a live cam feed of their nesting box.  I can’t stop watching it.

https://www.367collinsfalcons.com.au

I think it’s the camera quality that’s keeping me glued to the feed.  That and somebody is actively controlling it, so occasionally it zooms in and it’s just too cool.

Screen Shot 2020-08-23 at 11.34.57

 

The Bird Way

The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and ThinkThe Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
by Jennifer Ackerman
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 1925713768
Publication Date: May 5, 2020
Pages: 355
Genre: Science
Publisher: Scribe Publishers

'There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.' This is one scientist's pithy distinction between mammal brains and bird brains- two ways to make a highly intelligent mind. But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and, lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviours. What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, and survive. They're also revealing not only the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, and disturbing abilities we once considered uniquely our own - deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, and infanticide - but also ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play.

Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan, to the rolling hills of lower Austria and the islands of Alaska's Kachemak Bay, Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect - in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behaviour - birds vary. It's what we love about them. As E.O. Wilson once said, when you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all.


I loved this book so much, I started putting together a post for it and realised I was going to end up writing something half as long as the book itself, with pictures most of my friends have already seen.  Thankfully I realised just how much work that would be, and frankly, Jennifer Ackerman’s done a better job that I’d ever be able to do.

The Bird Way is sort of a follow-up to The Genius of Birds, which I also highly recommend.  Both bring birds to life in a way that highlights just how unique, how smart, and how under-appreciated they are as a species by the general population.  The Bird Way focuses on some of the even more unique outliers of the species; the ones that defy expectations either by their intelligence, their capacity for play, their weird mating rituals, communications, or parenting styles (or the lack thereof).

After reading this, one comes to terms with the idea that there is truly nothing new under the sun.  There are birds that commit chicknapping, and birds that leave their eggs in everybody else’s nests..  There are birds that murder other birds, rape their females and commit acts of necrophilia.  It’s all very sordid, but their are also birds that go out of their way to feed another species’ fledglings, warn other species about predators, and practice cooperative, communal parenting.  Birds that sing so beautifully that symphonies have been written around their song, and birds that create literal walls of sound that chase out every competitor in their vicinity.

Obviously, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It’s easy, accessible reading, but Ackerman has done her research and includes a comprehensive Further Reading at the back of the book, broken down by chapters, that serves as a list of citations.  I’ll admit, part of why I enjoyed the book as much as I did was that while her focus was international, a lot of the birds discussed were Australian and ones I’ve been privileged enough to see myself.  It’s probably this first hand experience that pushed the book solidly into 5 star territory for me; perhaps without it I might have rated it 4.5 stars.  Either way, it’s a book I’d happily recommend to anyone interested in not just birds, but it how we are discovering just how wrong we’ve been about what makes humanity “special”.   And if the section about Keas doesn’t make you smile, and perhaps chuckle out loud, you must be having a really bad day.