Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 504 pages
- Published by: Academic Press; Har/Com edition November 3, 2004
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0124730701
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0124730700
-
Book Dimensions:
9.8 x 7.7 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 3 pounds
Product Review
"An enormous amount of care and hard work has resulted in a lavishly produced and illustrated volume"
- Clive K. Catchpole, School of Biological
Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
"a unique itemthe comprehensive text and enjoyable CDs make this item a valuable addition to relevant collections."
- Beth Thomsett-Scott, University of North Texas Science and Technology Library, in E-STREAMS
"The volume is a landmark for birdsong researchThis book delivers."
-Jack Dumbacher for CALIFORNIA WILD (2005)
"a remarkable book in many waysThe quality of figures is excellentthis book is a labor of love."
- Fernando Nottebohm, Field Research Center, Rockefeller University in NATURE MAGAZINE (2005)
Book Description
The voices of birds have always been a source of fascination.
Natures Music brings together some of the worlds experts on birdsong, to review the advances that have taken place in our understanding of how and why birds sing, what their songs and calls mean, and how they have evolved. All contributors have strived to speak, not only to fellow experts, but also to the general reader. The result is a book of readable science, richly illustrated with recordings and pictures of the sounds of birds.
Bird song is much more than just one behaviour of a single, particular group of organisms. It is a model for the study of a wide variety of animal behaviour systems, ecological, evolutionary and neurobiological. Bird song sits at the intersection of breeding, social and cognitive behaviour and ecology. As such interest in this book will extend far beyond the purely ornithological - to behavioural ecologists psychologists and neurobiologists of all kinds.
* The scoop on local dialects in birdsong
* How birdsongs are used for fighting and flirting
* The writers are all international authorities on their subject
Reader Reviews
This volume brings together the findings of the dramatic bird song research in the last 50 years. The research was launched by W. H. Thorpe in the 1950s, but it was his student Peter Marler who turned the agenda into an explosion of work and exciting findings. Marler and his students have energized not only biology, but psychology, linguistics, and evolutionary biology. Key results are summarized in this huge volume, dedicated to the memory of the late Luis Baptista, one of Marler's early students. Some particularly dramatic findings of the last 50 years include the widespread existence of learned song-dialects; the importance of learning in general; the ability of many birds to sing two notes at once; the many purposes to which song is put; and the degree to which birds are conscious of meanings and structures. Before the Marler revolution, biologists usually thought of birds as "birdbrains," driven solely by instinct or primitive stimulus-response learning. Now we know birds learn very complicated songs, often from other species, and plan ahead to accomplish their goals by varied communication strategies. They aren't as smart as humans or apes, but they are far smarter than we used to think we were. They continue to surprise us. Bird song and bird society can be useful simple models for us; they show how relatively complex systems can evolve, and provide ideas for how human (proto-)language and society might have evolved a million, or a few million, years ago. This book does not get much into that realm of speculation, but some of the authors here (notably W. T. Fitch) have worked with linguists on these questions. We need more work on this. Moreover, humans and songbirds share true music; apes don't seem to have it. To understand how humans evolved musical competence, we have to look at avian models. Two cautionary notes. First, this is a book for professionals; it won't be easily accessible to the general reader. Fortunately, one of the authors, Don Kroodsma, has filled the gap with his new book THE SINGING LIFE OF BIRDS. The second is that the recording quality of the CD's is uneven; the nightingales sure don't sound as good as they do in the woods of south France! One chapter treats conservation issues; I wish it were longer and more comprehensive. Since Rachel Carson's classic book SILENT SPRING, Carson's worst fears have come to pass in much of the world. Just in the last five years, spring has become almost totally silent (in regard to bird song) at my house. Not only the pesticides she feared, but urbanization, global warming (fires, droughts...), and now West Nile virus are killing off the songbirds. The cover of the present book portrays a meadowlark. This formerly abundant bird has been reduced in numbers by about 99% in fast-urbanizing southern California since my youth, and is now a genuinely rare bird over almost all its range. The younger authors of this book may live to see their subject matter go extinct. My younger children have grown up in a song-deprived world; my grandchildren hear almost no bird songs at all, except on the wildlife programs they love to watch on TV. Thus, I would very, very, very strongly urge all students of bird song to get out there and document wild birds and their songs, while there is time. Much of this book deals with experiments on domesticated birds. Such work is very valuable, but we desperately need to get the wild songs documented while yet we can.
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