The Nature of Things

Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology Since Darwin by Tim Birkhead My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is really not a book for the casual reader. It is a big, dense, heavy book and would be useful as a textbook. It would also be useful for those who want to build up their arm muscles through weightlifting. But for those who are seriously interested in the science of ornithology, how it developed, and the contributions it has made in the areas of evolution, ecology, conservation, and the classification of birds, this is a valuable work, one that is certainly worth all that heavy lifting - both physical and mental. The authors, as the subtitle of the book suggests, explore the history of ornithology since Charles Darwin. While humans have a centuries-long history of fascination with the world of birds, it was really only after Darwin's unifying theory of evolution in the mid-nineteenth century that the scientific study of birds - ornithology - began. The book organizes its historical overview i...