How Birds Live Together: Colonies and Communities in the Avian World
by Marianne Taylor
From Princeton University Press:
Featuring dramatic and delightful wild bird colonies and communities, How Birds Live Together offers a broad overview of social living in the avian world. From long-established seabird colonies that use the same cliffs for generations to the fast-shifting dynamics of flock formation, leading wildlife writer Marianne Taylor explores the different ways birds choose to dwell together.
Through fascinating text, color photos, maps, and other graphics, Taylor examines the advantages of avian sociality and social breeding. Chapters provide detailed information on diverse types of bird colonies, including those species that construct single-family nests close together in trees; those that share large, communal nests housing multiple families; those that nest in tunnels dug into the earth; those that form exposed colonies on open ground and defend them collectively, relying on ferocious aggression; those that live communally on human-made structures in towns and cities; and more. Taylor discusses the challenges, benefits, hazards, and social dynamics of each style of living, and features a wealth of species as examples.
Showcasing colonies from the edge of Scotland and the tropical delta of the Everglades to the Namib Desert in Africa, How Birds Live Together gives bird enthusiasts a vivid understanding of avian social communities.
The latest in a line of books from Princeton on specific aspects of bird behavior and ecology, this well-illustrated book explores “bird colonies and gatherings in all their forms”. This topic doesn’t seem to get the same level of attention as other aspects of birds’ lives – hopefully this book will correct that!
How Birds Live Together: Colonies and Communities in the Avian World
by Marianne Taylor
Hardcover; 224 pages
Princeton University Press; May 10, 2022
ISBN: 9780691231907
$29.95
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Posted by Grant McCreary on May 5th, 2022.
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