The life, death and afterlife of one of the true icons of extinction, the Great AukThe great auk was a flightless, goose-sized bird superbly adapted for life at sea. Fat, flush with feathers and easy to capture, the birds were in trouble whenever sailors visited their once-remote breeding colonies. Places like Funk Island, off north-east Newfoundland, became scenes of unimaginable slaughter, with birds killed in their millions. By 1800 the auks of Funk Island were ...

'Birkhead has combined ingenuity and perseverance to produce an evocative portrait of a great pioneer in the scientific study of birds' Literary ReviewFrancis Willughby lived and thrived in the midst of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Along with his Cambridge tutor John Ray, Willughby was determined to overhaul the whole of natural history and impose order on its complexity. It was exhilarating, exacting and exhausting work. Yet befor...

From award-winning author and ornithologist Tim Birkhead, a sweeping history of the long and close relationship between birds and humansSince the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect the...

What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise?Bird Sense addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them to interpret their environment and to interact with each other. Our affinity for birds i...

A bird's egg is a nearly perfect survival capsule--an external womb--and one of natural selection's most wonderful creations.Shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2016.One of Forbes' Best Books About Birds and Birding in 2016.Renowned ornithologist Tim Birkhead opens this gripping story as a female guillemot chick hatches, already carrying her full quota of tiny eggs within her undeveloped ovary. As she grows into adulthood,...

Winner of the Consul Cremer Prize, The Red Canary follows the compelling quest to turn the green canary red.The creation of Dolly the sheep in the 1990s was for many people the start of a new era: the age of genetically modified animals. However, the idea was not new, for in the 1920s an amateur scientist, Hans Duncker, decided to genetically engineer a red canary.Favored originally for their voice, by the middle of the nineteenth century canaries ...

This audiobook narrated by acclaimed ornithologist Tim Birkhead traces the history of the long and close relationship between birds and humansSince the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protec...

Bloomsbury presents The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife by Tim Birkhead, read by John SackvilleThe life, death and afterlife of one of the true icons of extinction, the Great AukThe great auk was a flightless, goose-sized bird superbly adapted for life at sea. This ‘penguin of the north’ once ranged across the North Atlantic, diving deep to exploit vast shoals of herring and mackerel. The s...

Bloomsbury presents Bird Sense by Tim Birkhead, read by John SackvilleWhat is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise?Bird Sense addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them t...

Bloomsbury presents The Most Perfect Thing by Tim Birkhead, read by Gareth Armstrong'I think that, if required on pain of death to name instantly the most perfect thing in the universe, I should risk my fate on a bird's egg'Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862How are eggs of different shapes made, and why are they the shape they are? When does the shell of an egg harden? Why do some eggs contain two yolks? How are the colours and patterns of an eggshell created,...

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK.The fascinating story of how we have gone out to eat, from the ancient Romans in Pompeii to the luxurious Michelin-starred restaurants of today.Tracing its earliest incarnations in the city of Pompeii, where Sitwell is stunned by the sophistication of the dining scene, this is a romp through history as we meet the characters and discover the events that shape the way we eat today. Sitwell, restaurant c...

A captivating drama from the frontlines of the race to save birds set against the devastating loss of one third of the avian population.Three years ago, headlines delivered shocking news: nearly three billion birds in North America have vanished over the past fifty years. No species has been spared, from the most delicate jeweled hummingbirds to scrappy black crows, from a rainbow of warblers to common birds such as owls and sparrows.In a desperate race aga...