Review: The Wonderful Mr Willughby

Tim Birkhead is an English ornithologist and author, about whose books on bird biology and behavior I’ve written enthusiastically in the past. Now he’s back with something a little different – a biography of an underappreciated genius, Francis Willughby, whose contributions to bird study at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution helped to create a more reliable and empirical framework for studying and understanding birds than anything that had existed up to that time.

In The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The First True Ornithologist, Birkhead makes the case for reevaluating Willughby’s role within the history of natural history. Because he died at such an early age, 36, before he was able to publish his own findings his legacy was left in the hands of his friend and collaborator, John Ray, who typically receives the lion’s share of credit for the groundbreaking work, Ornithology, written after Willughby’s death. But much, if not most, of the new ground broken in Ornithology came from Willughby’s insights.

Because Willughby’s journals have been lost over the centuries, there’s less firsthand information available than one would hope. But Birkhead does a really excellent job of setting the scene: what was the state of knowledge during the middle of the 17th Century? How was science developing mere decades after Francis Bacon formulated his vision for experimental method? How did the English Civil War impact the universities and leading scholars? We’re also introduced to key figures in and around the orbit of the Royal Society, including a series of brief biographies included in an appendix.

Not to say that some additional context wouldn’t have been helpful. When Willughby and Ray embarked on a three-year collecting expedition through Europe, they were joined by Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon’s brief biography states simply that he was a Virginia colonist. In fact, he was the ringleader behind Bacon’s Rebellion, one of the most important events in colonial American history. But mostly, Birkhead connects the dots in really exciting ways. Like when he singles out certain items from Willughby’s cabinet of curiosities (including a collection of glass eyes), and traces where in his travels he was likely to have picked them up.

Even more impressive is that Birkhead was apparently able to work out what species Willughby and Ray were writing about, despite the local, now largely archaic, names they picked up along their journey. It’s a problem not dissimilar to what Willughby and Ray faced themselves when pouring over the manuscripts and artwork they collected over the course of their joint project, trying to match their own observations with those of earlier scholars.

Despite the title, Willughby wasn’t single-mindedly consumed by birds; he had energetic and wide-ranging interests and made significant contributions in a number of areas, including to the study of fish, insects, mathematics, and even games. He’s a fascinating figure, and this book is a window into a time when one person, albeit an exceptional person, could generalize across many different subjects and realistically claim expertise in all of them. Throughout The Wonderful Mr Willughby, it’s clear that his death at an early age was a huge loss for science as a whole, and for ornithology in particular.

Review: Far From Land

Some of the most indelible and exciting moments in our ten years of birding involve seeing groups of seabirds for the first time, particularly our first alcids and our first albatrosses. They’re so unlike anything found between the coasts, and they’re often away at sea, just out of reach unless you take the effort (and anti-nausea meds) needed to find them. Even in Oregon, where massive colonies render certain murres, guillemots, and puffins reliable for at least part of the year their lives at sea are shrouded in mystery. And that’s precisely the sort mystery that Michael Brooke wants to elucidate in Far From Land.


Far From Land is about how seabirds make their living when they’re not ashore, and crucially, how we know what we know. Brooke, who has spent his career studying seabirds, is fascinated by the technologies that have opened up all sorts of new research areas over the past 20 years. As such, this book is as much about the suite of devices that researchers use to interrogate every aspect of a seabird’s life at sea as it is about the birds themselves.

And some of those devices are very cool. Many birders will be at least passingly familiar with the geolocators, GPS, etc. used to track birds’ journeys. But you might not be aware of the devices that measure how deeply a bird dives; the temperature inside a bird’s stomach; whether the bird is in contact with water; or how widely a bird opens its beak. Each new device has helped researchers gain insight into the unique ways seabirds navigate, detect food, or catch prey.

In many ways, this book will help bring readers up to speed on the current state of research into seabirds’ lives at sea. However, this shouldn’t be mistaken for a general overview. This isn’t where you’re going to learn much about seabird physiology, courtship, nesting, or rearing young. Frustratingly, even seemingly relevant information is omitted if it happens not to be cutting-edge. For instance, here Brooke poses a problem and then chooses not to explain the solution:

“And who has not wondered how a tern copes with the flickering reflections bouncing off a sparkling sea as it plunged into the water to emerge from a spray of drips with a small sand eel? However, this variety of feeding techniques has been known from well before the advent of modern technology.” (p. 165)

This assumes a great deal of prior knowledge on the part of the reader. Far from being a popular treatment of seabirds’ lives, it’s more of a survey of the latest research within a particular range of topics. Typically this reads as a litany of findings from individual studies, rather than as a cohesive narrative.

But what you will learn is often astounding. Take Wandering Albatrosses, for example. By fitting them with magnetometers, researchers have discovered that they frequently spin in tight circles at night. It’s thought that they use their feet to stir up bioluminescent plankton, thereby attracting squid close enough to pluck out and eat. Because “seabird” is defined broadly, readers will learn about a diverse cast of birds, and it’s interesting to compare and contrast the strategies used by such divergent species as albatrosses, cormorants, and penguins.

Far From Land isn’t for everybody. Readers will want to have some prior familiarity with how seabirds live their lives before tackling it. But for anyone prepared for an in-depth treatment of how technology has transformed seabird study over the past 20 years, there is a wealth of information here to advance your understanding, and often, to prompt new questions about how a mysterious group of birds make their living at sea.

Review: Lost Among the Birds

In 2013, Neil Hayward did the improbable and broke Sandy Komito's longstanding Big Year record, tallying 749 bird species in the ABA area. It was a year of dramatic and memorable sightings, like the Rufous-necked Wood-rail at Bosque del Apache, which Hayward made even more dramatic and memorable when it became clear his "accidental" Big Year attempt might actually pay off.

Given the vast distances, astronomical expenses, and huge stretches of time involved, you might expect that anyone hoping to make history along these lines would start planning well in advance of January 1. Part of what makes Hayward's story unique and compelling is that he hadn't begun 2013 with a Big Year in mind; in fact, several months had already passed before he would even admit to himself that he was pursuing any goal at all. In his new memoir, Lost Among the Birds, readers can follow along as the idea slowly takes shape, and the idea becomes reality.

As much as this is the story of Neil Hayward's Big Year, it's also the story of his trying to find himself. By 2013 he had quit his job, was reeling from past relationship woes, and about to turn 40. While I was expecting and hoping for a real-life adventure story revolving around birds, the birds are interspersed with riffs about how his commitment fears weigh on his present relationship, how his depression colors his worldview before and after medication, and the need to get his life in order, generally. Personally, I found these bits, particularly about his relationship worries, tiresome. As Hayward himself admits, he hates "pretending to be interested" in the minutiae of other people's lives; I won't pretend these parts were any more enjoyable for me to get through.

But the birding tales are are very good -- exactly the kind you want from a book like this. Certain difficult, highly localized species like Colima Warbler, or Five-striped Sparrow, are birds that most American birders dream about, but are unlikely to see themselves. Hayward traveled everywhere, recounting how he traveled there, what steps he took to locate the bird, and the experience of being in the bird's presence. No less enjoyable is seeing the camaraderie between Hayward and the other birders who play a big part in his Big Year, as they share in their pursuit of each new rarity, often in inaccessible locales, with primitive conditions. Following along with him on these adventures is vicarious birding at its best.

If you've read other Big Year accounts, like Kenn Kauffman's Kingbird Highway, or Mark Obmascik's The Big Year, you already have an idea of how extreme an undertaking this was. Hayward repeatedly criss-crosses the country, often hopping on a return flight soon after landing (you can see his itinerary here). It's hardly a sensible thing to do, what with the ecological footprint (which can't be overstated), constant exhaustion, discomfort, and expense. It's a grueling endeavor, however you look at it, but not without it's joys. Hayward is honest about it all, and by the end, still manages to see birds as more than just a tick in a checkbox. Most of us will never attempt a Big Year; Lost Among the Birds will make you glad that Neil Hayward did.

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