The Wisdom of Birds: an illustrated history of ornithology

By Tim Birkhead - Reviewed by Mark Cocker

Every autumn, tiny swallows fly 11,000 km from Britain to South Africa and return the following spring. For our ancestors, some facts about birds seemed so fantastic that they found them incredible. Rather than the miracle of swallow migration, it was strongly believed in the 16th century that in winter swallows simply went to sleep in mud on the sea bed. This may have seemed perfectly rational when compared with the contending thesis that they head for the moon each autumn. Monumental untruths such as these lived on as pieces of reasonable conjecture among European naturalists for almost three centuries.

Tim Birkhead’s wonderful book The Wisdom of Birds explores themes such as migration and almost every other facet of avian science. However, rather than simply telling us what we now know about birds, the author prefers to explore the route by which we have reached that position. The difference may seem minor, but the implications are massive. As the story of the swallow makes plain, the intellectual journey to our present understanding has been almost as exotic and eventful as the bird’s own transcontinental odyssey.

One fundamental problem, which still impacts strongly on science, is of precedent and authority. Over the whole of the natural sciences, for centuries, spread the all-embracing but deadening shadow of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, arguably the world’s first ornithologist. Such was his reputation as the father of knowledge that most medieval scholars thought natural science involved little more than repeating or plagiarising his voluminous writings. Unfortunately, Aristotle got it spectacularly wrong almost as often as he was uncannily correct.

A major change was set in motion in 1676, with the publication of John Ray’s book Ornithology, an attempt to summarise all that was known about birds. With its antiquated English style and hopelessly crude illustrations, it is easy to overlook its significance. Ray named 500 birds and posited that there might be another 170 species left to discover worldwide; in fact, he was out by a margin of 9,330. Yet Ray asked most of the important questions that have subsequently engaged scientists. He also actually went on to discover the facts with his own eyes and ears. Often controversy raged over key questions simply because naturalists were too lazy or arrogant to investigate for themselves.

The problem of unquestioning self-faith continued into the next century. The naturalist Daines Barrington was convinced that swallows passed the winter cocooned in subaquatic mud, despite never having witnessed it himself. His science consisted of arguing from a priori assumptions and rubbishing the ideas of those who produced hard empirical evidence. In response to reports of swallows landing in large numbers on ships in mid-ocean, Barrington dismissed the observations and argued that, far from supporting the idea of migration, they proved that the birds were incapable of flying across the sea.

Birkhead demonstrates the importance of birds, not only to our understanding of natural science, but also more widely in helping us to orient ourselves to the whole of life. Birds help shape the way we see the world and even ourselves. No matter how we misinterpret or skew the facts, birds will continue to fly through our imaginations, leading us towards a kind of wisdom as they go.