Beaks, Bones and Bird Songs: How the Struggle for Survival Has Shaped Birds and Their Behavior

"Reveals the strange and wondrous adaptations birds rely on to get by." -National Audubon Society When we see a bird flying from branch to branch happily chirping, it is easy to imagine they lead a simple life of freedom, flight, and feathers. What we don't see is the arduous, life-threatening challenges they face at every moment. Beaks, Bones, and Bird Songs guides the reader through the myriad, and often almost miraculous, things that birds do every day to merely stay alive. Like the goldfinch, which manages extreme weather changes by doubling the density of its plumage in winter. Or urban birds, which navigate traffic through a keen understanding of posted speed limits. In engaging and accessible prose, Roger Lederer shares how and why birds use their sensory abilities to see ultraviolet, find food without seeing it, fly thousands of miles without stopping, change their songs in noisy cities, navigate by smell, and much more. Beaks, Bones & Bird Songs guides the reader through the myriad, and often almost miraculous, things that birds do every day to merely stay alive. Lederer shares how and why birds use their sensory abilities to see ultraviolet, find food without seeing it, fly thousands of miles without stopping, change their songs in noisy cities, navigate by smell, and much more. Dr. Roger Lederer is a professor of biological sciences at California State University, Chico. He has published papers and books on ecology, science education, and ornithology. Dr. Lederer has served as a consultant to governments, schools, and organizations like BBC, National Geographic, National Public Radio, National Canadian Television, the Guinness Book of World Records, and many others through his popular website, Introduction It's Tough To Be a Bird Look outside your window, take a walk, go fishing, watch a video, or do anything else that allows you to see birds in the wild. You may get the impression that birds are blithely going about their business, happily chirping, singing, and scratching among the leaves, flitting from branch to branch, clambering up a tree trunk, or soaring through the sky barely moving a feather. Looks like an easy life. Cultural symbols like the dove representing peace, the bluebird signifying happiness, and the robin as the harbinger of spring reinforce the idea that birds have not a care in the world. But we don't often see the arduous challenges a bird faces every moment of every day. Of the many hours I have spent in the field, watching birds flying, feeding, resting, and nesting, I was most affected by those moments when I saw birds searching for food in blowing snow, sitting on the surface of an ocean fighting threatening waves, and flying in serious winds. I wondered: how do birds make it from hatching to adulthood and from year to year after that? Birds have to be on task all the time. They have to use their senses to find food, migrate, withstand the weather, avoid predators, compete with each other and alien species, and face a myriad of other trials. This book is about the abilities, adaptations, and behaviors birds possess and employ to survive from one day to the next. It is only the most physiologically, anatomically, and behaviorally well-tuned birds who successfully meet these challenges and go on to the most important goal in their life, reproduction. Accurate figures for mortality and longevity of wild birds are nearly impossible to determine, but there are trends. Only about 50 percent of White-eyed Vireos in the southeastern United States return to their breeding grounds from their winter quarters, and merely 36 percent of Downy Woodpeckers, resident all year throughout much of North America, survive from one year to the next. Songbird adults have a 40-60 percent survival rate from year to year. Of their young, perhaps only 10 percent make