The Life of Birds

The Life of Birds
© 1998 Sir David Attenborough
320 pages

As I drove home from the library last week, I watched a beautiful white bird soar above the highway for several minutes. As it passed close by overhead, I thought to myself that the swan looked fatigued and wondered why it did not stop to rest along side the road.  A few days later, I read in this that swans are such large and ungainly birds that they cannot easily land: if they attempt to taper off their speed, they lose momentum completely and plummet awkwardly to the earth. Their most effective recourse is to crash-land  into water.

 I’ve been enjoying David Attenborough’s series of books based on his nature documentaries, and The Life of Birds continues that pattern. Life of Birds has more substance than the previous works in this series, but retains the same essential approach. After a chapter on the evolution of birds and flight, Attenborough dedicates separate chapters to feeding, communication, mating, nesting, parenting, and adaptation. The last chapter focuses on how birds have adjusted to living inside human cities. Pictures are abundant, if not as ubiquitous as in previous works, and are impressively beautiful and grotesque.

As always, if you are fascinated by the natural world you'll enjoy this book, for it abounds in interesting and often awe-inducing information.

The Quetzal bird, giving new meaning to the significance of Quetzalcoatl. 

Some birds swallow snakes whole, then return to their nest and try to throw them up -- whole. Usually the head or tail of the snake will emerge first, and the chicks will grab hold of it...and tug it out of their parent's stomach. 

And speaking of chicks: this is a cuckoo hatchling, demonstrating why if there is a sentient being that designed the laws of nature, it's a sadistic SOB. Cuckoo females plant their eggs in the nest of other birds. The cuckoo egg hatches first, then casually throws the other eggs out of the nest. The nest-mother, not knowing this chick isn't her own, dedicates her time and energy to feeding the intruder.

The Trials of Life

The Trials of Life: a Natural History of Animal Behavior
© 1990 Sir David Attenborough
320 pages

Following up on last week's The Private Life of Plants, I enjoyed another of Attenborough's books documenting the extraordinary natural world: this with a focus on the lives of animals, with chapters devoted to various elements of animals' lives. After two initial chapters on birth and childhood, the book covers navigation, courtship, feeding, hunting, and home-making among others, not to mention separate chapters exploring the way animals interact with one enough. All sorts of beasts have their time in this book, from the smallest ants to mighty elephants. I learned that there is a caterpillar that appears to be a viper, why termite skyscrapers are neatly oriented along with the poles, that they are often home to a host of other animals besides termites, and that antlers are only temporary. Like The Private Life of Plants,  Trials of Life is replete with astonishing pictures. This is an easy recommendation.

This is a caterpillar with a tank-like shell invading the tree nest of ants. The ants can't get under the shell, and the caterpillar uses that advantage to navigate to the ant nursery, where he lifts the shell up a bit and uses it to capture eggs. Then it feeds on the eggs while pupating.

These are honeypot ants: the little black specks are their limbs. This species uses some of its individuals to store food for hard times later on: these individuals gorge themselves on honey and swell up, spending their time hanging from the ceiling. When food is scarce, other ants will force the gorged individuals to burp up little droplets of honey.

This is a caterpillar. 

The Private Life of Plants

The Private Life of Plants
© 1995 David Attenborough
320 pages

I spend a little time every week contemplating my home library's eviscerated science section, hoping against hope to find some interesting volume amid the remains. Last week, picking through the rubble led me to Sir David Attenborough's excellent The Private Life of Plants, a book in the same style as his numerous nature documentaries (The Lives of Mammals, Planet Earth, and others).  Separate chapters discuss transportation, feeding and growth, flowering, the social struggle, the relationships plants have with one another and various animals, and surviving. In each section, Attenborough  documents the extraordinary details of plant's every-day lives. The narrative is replete with pictures -- no page is without one, and some pages are dominated by full-page   or even centerfold spreads.  The content is ever fascinating and sometimes bizarre. I learned, for instance, that there is a species of jellyfish that house algae inside their transparent bodies: they spend the day near the surface of the ocean allowing the algae to grow, and then partially digest the growth without destroying the algae. In effect, they have garden inside their bodies. If you find this book, by all means take a look at it. It's bound to be one of the more interesting books on the natural world you've yet seen.


This is part of a series of books by Attenborough, which you can expect I'll be visiting further.They appear to have been converted from film documentaries.

One of the book's many fascinating pictures. That husk houses a seed.