The Genius of Birds

In The Genius of Birds acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. Consider as Ackerman does the Clark's nutcracker a bird that can hide as many as 30000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds and thrashers species that can store 200 to 2000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; the well-known pigeon which knows where it's going even thousands of miles from familiar territory; and the New Caledonian crow an impressive bird that makes its own tools. This elegant scientific investigation and travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science.