Ten Birds That Changed the World, by Stephen Moss, Guardian Faber, 2023.
I am not sure that I should even call this a book review, since I have only read two and a half chapters, which makes it unfair, but I am past the age of feeling that I absolutely have to finish every book that I begin, although that was my modus operandum for years.
I have no wish to do a hatchet job on it (generally my aim with these reviews is to share and recommend books which I have adored). I loved the author’s Mrs Moreau’s Warbler very much and this has been highly praised by others. I am not sure what is making it just not work for me. Perhaps it is simply that it is not aimed at me, but then I am not sure at whom it is aimed.
The birds are, unsurprisingly, the Raven, Pigeon, Wild Turkey, Dodo, Darwin’s Finches, Guanay Cormorant, Snowy Egret, Bald Eagle, Tree Sparrow and Emperor Penguin. Each is explored ornithologically with accounts of literary, historical and political importance.
Moss makes the excellent point in the first footnote that we tend to go astray when we attempt to impose human characteristics on wild creatures, citing the American author Polly Redford in Raccoons & Eagles: Two Views of American Wildlife, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1965: “A bird is not noble any more than a dog is faithful, a pig greedy, a donkey stubborn, or a fox sly.” He adds his own examples, showy peacocks, funny penguins, ruthless birds of prey, devious crows and loathsome vultures. But I am not sure how useful potted histories of the United States, or the Second World War really are here. Perhaps I have just read most of it elsewhere before, but, for me, the balance between diving too deeply or not deeply enough is not achieved.
I enjoyed the story of the woman whose life was thought to have been saved from a cougar by a Raven’s calls, with the twist that the bird may in fact have been luring the cougar towards the woman in hope of an easy meal.
The chapter about pigeons is a sad tale of use and abuse by humans. I was appalled to learn that during the aforementioned war the Secretary of State for Air issued the Destruction of Peregrine Falcons Order. But then there is an odd aside about a test carried out in 2009 to assess the speed of homing pigeons against the internet. A pigeon carried a memory stick 100km between Howick and Durban in South Africa and beat the broadband link. But then Moss writes: “Now that broadband speeds have improved exponentially, if the race were repeated today, that result would most likely change…” Well no, it definitely would. I genuinely wish I liked this book more.
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