Tudge - The secret life of birds: who they are and what they do

I was first launched on the road to bird-dom by my cousin Peter Selwood, who lived by the sea and is a few years older than I am, and first made me aware that not all birds are the sparrows, pigeons, and park pond ducks of my native South London. There are pipits and hobbies and terns and goodness knows what out there (not least in South London, had I but realized). I was prompted to start writing this book by my old university friend Barrie Lees when I was half-way through writing my book on trees. Trees are all very well, he said, but birds do more. I want to know about birds and I thought, Why not?

In general I am indebted to everyone who ever taught me biology although for the particular purposes of this book I am especially grateful to the following, who gave me advice and in some cases read the various chapters. Roughly in the order in which I talked to them: Luis Chiappe and Joel Cracraft at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, with whom I had long and absorbing conversations on bird evolution and phylogeny. Carl Jones of the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation taught me a great deal about bird conservation his own work in saving the Mauritius Kestrel is a conservation classic. Roger Wilkinson, director of science at Chester Zoo (now the leading zoo in mainland Britain), was curator of birds when I first did some work for Chester in the 1990s and he very kindly read the longest chapter for me. When I was attached to the Darwin Centre at the London School of Economics I learned a great deal about the evolution of animal minds from Helena Cronin, Nick Humphrey, Oliver Curry, and Jennifer Scott (whose work on gorillas is quite brilliant). At Oxford, I have received generous help from Andrew Lack of Brookes University and from Alex Kacelnik from the Department of Zoology at Oxford University. David Mcfarland, previously at Cambridge, also greatly improved my appreciation of animal psychology, and the philosophy thereof. From Warwick Fox at the University of Central Lancashire I have learned much of what I know about theory of mind. Neal Smith, a wonderfully original thinker at the Smithsonian Institution in Panama, has alerted me to quite new lines of thought over the past few years and again read passages of this book. I am very grateful to Richard Holdaway of the University of Canterbury for discussions on bird migration (and look forward to the publication of his present research, which promises to put a new slant on the whole subject). Many thanks too to Professor Tom Kemp, of Oxford University, who read and advised on matters of evolution. My neighbour Ian Lees, an accomplished birder and bird photographer, read bits of the text for me and made some cogent comments. The best birding I have ever done was in the company of John Butler in Spain, but when I sought to remind myself of his address on his website I was shocked to learn that he died in September 2007 a very sad loss indeed, for all kinds of reasons. (Brian Davies and Yolanda Davies-Papen are to continue his work. Their website Donana Bird Tours should surely be checked out.)

After all of the above had given me their input, the draft was greatly improved by Helen Conford of Penguin Books, who got me to do a lot of restructuring; and the finished text was enormously enhanced by the brilliant illustrations of Jane Milloy.

Finally, I am absolutely indebted to my wife, Ruth West, off whom I bounce all ideas and without whose encouragement and organizational skills I would surely have lapsed into total inertia years ago.

Colin Tudge, Wolvercote, February 2009