Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a luxurious, colorful, 700-page survey of bird biology. It is a textbook—not a handbook—meant for college students or others interested in ornithology. Its 15 chapters by 18 authors discuss avian evolution, taxonomy, anatomy, physiology, plumage, flight, behavior, movement, ecology, and conservation. Don't judge this book by its glossy cover. The book suffers from poor editorial oversight. The chapters vary in quality, from very high to very low. The book feels like a collection of articles that were written independently of each other and dropped into their slots by editors who did not require consistently high quality. Some chapters are very good. The chapter on plumage describes, among many feathery topics, the intricate structures of feathers, and tells how they grow. The chapter about mating and social behavior gives examples of amazing mating constructs, like the bowers of bowerbirds, and interprets them in terms of ecological genetics. Breeding biology—territories, nests, eggs, young, parental care—gets lively treatment in another nice chapter. Some other chapters are sorely inadequate. The chapter on flight, at 20 pages, is the shortest chapter in the book (next shortest chapter, 38 pages). It fails to explain lift, ignores effects of altitude and temperature, says nothing about the energetics of long migration flights. The writing is disorganized and verbose; figures have incomprehensible labels. The chapter on taxonomy is spotty, uneven, and poorly organized. The chapter fails to define the taxon “Bird.” It says that cladistics gave phylogenetics “a sound and logical theoretical footing,” but it doesn't says what that footing was. A 16-page table lists bird orders and families, but it does not explain how these taxa are defined or how they relate to each other.