| The Sounds, Colors and Movements of Birds, and Our Tools for Watching Them | Michael Hurben | Pelagic Publishing | 2025 | Paperback | 246 pages, b/w illustrations | ISBN: 9781784273071
The Publisher’s View:
- No previous popular science book has covered both birds and the tools of birding, each of which come with many fascinating questions and answers.
- Offers a physicist’s unique perspective, which sees all of nature – including mathematics and the subatomic realm – as part of the same rich tapestry.
- Just as any excursion will be improved when we appreciate the entire landscape and ecosystem behind the birds, this book adds value by pointing to sublime aspects of nature that are overlooked or little known.
Birding has become one of the world’s most popular pastimes for good reason. The vibrant colours, aerial finesse, and vocal talents of birds draw us to nature, stimulate our admiration and pique our curiosity. We cannot help but have questions as we encounter these elegant creatures. How do iridescent feathers seemingly glow? What must a hummingbird do to hover? How does a tiny animal produce all that music? By what means do some birds sense Earth’s magnetic field and use it for navigation? Why is it that peering through a few pieces of glass can make a distant bird seem so close? Such enquiry brings us to the realm of physics.
The Physics of Birds and Birding sets out to blaze the best possible trail through this landscape. It steers clear complex technical specialization while avoiding overused paths that lead to unsatisfying, facile explanations. It is a guide not just to the fascinating science of birds and birding, but to the deeper connections that tie all of nature together. Birders and naturalists from all backgrounds will find much of interest here – both in terms of mysteries they’ve long wondered about, as well as some surprising linkages among what is seemingly unrelated. This unique and remarkable book is an invitation to appreciate what you might not have been seeing all along.
The Author: Michael Hurben is uniquely qualified to guide the curious through the exotic habitat where physics and birding intersect. He earned his PhD in physics from Colorado State University (1996) and has accumulated a life list exceeding 5,000 bird species – despite being legally blind. His career has included award-winning teaching at the college level and decades of cutting-edge, nanoscale engineering in the high-tech magnetic recording industry. He and his wife Claire live in Minnesota.
Fatbirder View: I once took part in a ‘Zoom’ symposium (on disability access for nature lovers) so can claim to have met the author, albeit virtually. He is a remarkable chap who has never let physical strictures limit him. Having talked, over the years, to quite a number of birders who, by necessity, watch with their ears, his insights are unique. There may be other physicists with restricted vision, but few so deeply interested in birds. Combining his day job with his passion he writes with great authority.
The other combination is of equal worth to birders, not just the physics of birds flight or colour, but also the physics of the optics we need to observe them. Noone is better placed to consider optics, without which we sighted birders would still struggle.
I’m not going to repeat what the publishers say, except that I agree with their claims, and congratulated them on publishing this addition of birding lore…
They say that Inuit peoples have dozens of words for snow… subtleties missed by those of us whose lives are not so interwoven with a frozen habitat… and this author embodies insights no less subtle.
Fatbirder