Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

I have yet to finish reading this book, but I've dipped into it in enough places to keep an active interest in what it contains. As an observer of parrots from babyhood learning to get their lift and learn to land before they learn to really fly, I can understand the thinking behind 'ground-upper' and "tree-downers," for how the first flying creature developed. And that is not even yet discussing the title of this book, FEATHERS. I am a lover of avian creatures, and welcomed the information about the unique clothing that birds evolved for many purposes....from comfort to safety to propulsion.This book is not a guide to feather identification. For that, check out S. David Scott and Casey McFarland's A Guide to North American Species: Bird Feathers, which I also purchased from Amazon around the same time I bought FEATHERS. In this book, you get black and white images or drawings, not real photos, no color. But the cover itself is a work of art, with lots of texture, raised letters of FEATHERS going down the spine, and a sort of abused looking black feather as the only cover art on the textured matte white background paper...just almost an art paper.The author is very much evident in every page, and I would enjoy sitting around his back yard drinking some homemade lemonade watching his chickens patrol the property for invading insects. If it has feathers, I like it, from the chicken to the buzzard or vulture to the parrot or cormorant. There is a feather for every purpose.When my African grey was a wee chick learning to eat on his own, I placed a pallet on the floor and sat there with him. Full of himself, with flight feathers sprouting but not fully grown in, he'd flap vigorously enough that he got a wee bit of lift off the pallet. The problem as I saw it was he had to learn to LAND, so starting LOW was the best way to let him learn. From the first lift off, he seemed to get the desire to go further, and then to go higher. Pretty soon, he made it to the top of the bed, then the window sill, then the wooden chest, then the top of his tall cage. He could also go back down and he did, sometimes crashing on the bed, but never harming himself. At some point, he learned to back-stroke and take all weight off his feet and legs as he came down to the floor. I was so proud of him for learning to fly AND LAND. From here, he learned to navigate, and extended his range to flying multiple rings around the very large clear space of the living room. Of course, he is a true flying creature, but I can understand how two legged prehistoric creatures with forearms could discover their ability to fly, whether they went from the ground or the trees.This book is imminently readable for a non-scientist, yet it has a very extensive bibliography included for further exploration of the topic. If youlike birds at all, you will enjoy this book. I won't be giving this one away. On a wall of books, it stands out, cannot be ignored.

That is exactly what the reader discovers in Thor Hanson's latest book, "Feathers - The Evolution of a Natural Miracle." Mr. Hanson is a Conservation Biologist, and a birder who, like the rest of us, sometimes forgets the name of a familiar bird! (TAA - Temporary Avian Amnesia)His writing style is so relaxed and engaging that one forgets that it is an accurate scientific study. With the exception of the section, Evolution, which get a little heavy with names of dinosaurs, the rest of the volume is really story-telling, sometimes suspenseful, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but always loaded with fascinating, well documented, readily understood information.After Evolution which compares and evaluates various theories of avian development and adaptation, and includes some of the latest news concerning fossil discoveries, the work is divided into four main chapters:Fluff - Keeping warm, staying cool. How do feathers prevent a bird from freezing in the arctic and from succumbing to heat stroke in the tropics?Flight - Ground-up or Tree-down? How did flight begin? The amazing airfoil that aeronautical engineers are continually studying. Fancy - Display - the dynamics of color in plumage.Function - Waterproofing, lack of plumage, flightless birds. Quill pens.Among interesting tidbits, we find Mr. Hanson has gone sky-diving with a Peregrine Falcon, has studied goose feather-dying with the creator of the Vegas show-girl costumes, has picked up a lost Common Murre on a county road and returned it to the sea, and has interviewed a ornithologist who discovered that the Club-winged Manakin plays a violin!The book includes an illustrated guide to types of feathers - flight, contour, semiplume and down, and an illustrated description of how feathers grow and molt.This is an extraordinary book about the extraordinary place of feathers in animal and human history.This morning when I picked up a molted dove feather in my backyard, I looked at it with renewed wonder and admiration. It is some kind of miracle.

Among paleontologist the evolution of the bird has always been a controversial subject and that of the feathers no less so. Thor Hanson has brought it all together in this fine book. He addresses many important questions. Where did birds come from? Was it from the trees down or the ground up? Are feathers for display, insulation or just flight? Written for the non-specialist the book is, at times , kind of technical but not overly so. Hanson's writing is clear, entertaining and, at all times, informative. The book may not be for everyone but if your at all interested in paleontology and evolution than it may be just the ticket. I especially liked the chapter on the Yixan (China) diggs, a treasure trove of highly detailed of fossils on not only birds but early mammals and feathered dinosaurs as well. Of course there's more to the book than fossils and evolution. Hanson also explores the history of ornithology and our changing view of bird evolution. He also gets into our history of exploiting birds and their feathers for commercial profit when the demands of fashion out weighed our common sense, surely not our proudest endeavor. Historically, there have been many people that have influenced our thinking about birds: Charles Darwin, Alfred R Wallace and Audubon are some of the ones touched on in this book. We share our world with a multitude of living things, birds among them. The more we know about our biological neighbors the better we are able to make decisions on their, and our, future. In the end I was very happy with this purchase. I had no technical problems with this Kindle edition.LastRanger

Well written and informative. We humans take too much for granted. Excellent read.

Ótimo livro, objetivo, o conteúdo é muito interessante e tem uma abordagem clara sobre os temas que são sempre muito interessantes.

A well researched book.

Buy this book. If you have an interest in birds, or just an interest in the natural world this book is for you. The author is a professional biologist but has written this book for the general reader and as such it is beautifully paced, detailed to satisfy one's curiosity without battering the brain with scientific minutiae and very well written. I have learned so much about feathers and birds from this book that I keep relaying snippets to my ornithologist friends who are always eager for more. it must be a contender for a science-writing prize.Clive Cotton

A great example of the genre - where a single topic is examined from the perspective of science, history, culture, etc. This was filled with nuggets of information on the evolutionary origins (and debate thereon), physiology of growth, behavioural ecology, and history of human uses of feathers, tied together with a loose personal narrative. This book will instil a lot of respect for a seemingly humble biological structure, which turns out to be very complex, subtle, and interesting indeed.