Pluck (How the New Science of Female Birds Is Upending the Avian World)

From the New York Times bestselling author of What an Owl Knows, The Genius of Birds, and The Bird Way, a groundbreaking investigation into female birds

Recent studies on female birds are overturning much of what we thought we knew about birds. In the past, research focused almost exclusively on the male half of the class. But now that females are getting their time in the sun, they’re toppling all sorts of ideas about why birds are the way they are—why they look and sound and act the way they do, how they pick their mates and raise their young, how they move from place to place, and how they’re adapting to a changing world. Some female birds sing more than their male counterparts and outshine them in dazzling plumage. Others boast bodies twice as large as their mates and outdo them in aggression. Still others have entirely different migratory patterns from their male counterparts and are quicker to adapt to climate change.

Jennifer Ackerman has been writing about birds for more than twenty years, but she grew up with the conventional wisdom found in field guides and bird books that females were drab and passive. As scientists are now finding, nothing could be further from the truth. From ice-filled New Hampshire lakes to the deep recesses of the Amazonian jungles, female birds are capable of typical male behaviors like aggression, competition, complex song, and sexual assertiveness. They also have radically different ways of living and surviving than males, and wildly different skills, opportunities, and risks. The consequences of this are profound. It’s changing the way we think about birds, and how we plan for their protection.

This remarkable new view of female birds will change how we see and experience all birds.