Birds and Us

A 12,000-Year History from Cave Art to Conservation

Tim Birkhead

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780691239934
  9780691239927
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691239941
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Zoology
• Index: Biological Sciences

From award-winning author and ornithologist Tim Birkhead, a sweeping history of the long and close relationship between birds and humans

Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect them. In Birds and Us, award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on a dazzling epic journey through our mutual history with birds, from the ibises mummified and deified by Ancient Egyptians to the Renaissance fascination with woodpecker anatomy—and from the Victorian obsession with egg collecting to today's fight to save endangered species and restore their habitats.

Spanning continents and millennia, Birds and Us chronicles the beginnings of a written history of birds in ancient Greece and Rome, the obsession with falconry in the Middle Ages, and the development of ornithological science. Moving to the twentieth century, the book tells the story of the emergence of birdwatching and the field study of birds, and how they triggered an extraordinary flowering of knowledge and empathy for birds, eventually leading to today's massive worldwide interest in birds—and the realization of the urgent need to save them.

Weaving in stories from Birkhead's life as scientist, including far-flung expeditions to wondrous Neolithic caves in Spain and the bustling guillemot colonies of the Faroe Islands, this rich and fascinating book is an unforgettable account of how birds have shaped us, and how we have shaped them.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Plates
• Preface
• 1. Of Peculiar Interest: Neolithic Birds
• 2. Inside the Catacombs: The Birds of Ancient Egypt
• 3. Talking Birds: The Beginnings of Science in Greece and Rome
• 4. Manly Pursuits: Hunting and Conspicuous Consumption
• 5. Renaissance Thinking: The Parts of Birds
• 6. The New World of Science: Francis Willughby and John Ray Discover Birds
• 7. Depending on Birds: Inconspicuous Consumption
• 8. The End of God in Birds: Darwin and Ornithology
• 9. A Dangerous Type of Bigamy: Killing Time
• 10. Watching Birds: And Seeing the Light
• 11. A Boom in Bird Studies: Behaviour, Evolution and Ecology
• 12. Ghost of the Great Auk: Third Mass Extinction
• Epilogue
• List of Birds Mentioned in the Text
• Color Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index