Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds (Hardcover)

by Miyoko Chu (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Each spring, millions of orioles, tanagers, thrushes, warblers and other songbirds travel thousands of miles from the tropics to their summer breeding grounds as far north as the boreal forests of Canada and in the fall return to their southern wintering grounds. Navigating by the stars, magnetic fields and polarized light patterns invisible to humans, the birds make their amazing journeys at night, flying in huge flocks that most of us never see. In this captivating debut, Chu, an ornithologist at Cornell, conveys the wonder of these migrations, following the birds through all four seasons and chronicling the efforts of scientists to track them with technology and their own ingenuity—trekking to distant locales, some even following, in cars and airplanes, individual birds outfitted with transmitters. Their heroic efforts are important, Chu points out, for only by understanding where the birds go can we learn how to preserve their habitats. To engage the general public in these efforts, she includes information on the best places to observe migrating birds and provides lists of citizen-science projects and resources for amateurs birders who want to contribute to the growing base of knowledge about bird migration. 8 pages of color illus. not seen by PW. (Mar.)
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From The Washington Post
One of the reasons we continue to destroy the natural world is that most of us still take its creatures and their habitats largely for granted. Birds, for instance, just somehow reappear each spring, cheerful and full of song as always. Except they don't, at least not always. Half a century ago, Rachel Carson foresaw a future with silent springs, and every year more research attests to our seemingly implacable march toward that ominous prospect.

Of course we all know this, at least in the abstract. What we mostly don't know is the incredible journey that brings our diminishing contingent of songbirds back to settle into their accustomed backyard haunts. What those pilgrimages entail -- where our familiar avian neighbors go for six months of the year -- is the subject of Miyoko Chu's Songbird Journeys.

Simply yet crisply written, Chu's work summarizes much of what has recently been learned about the multiple lives of songbirds. As they move from continent to continent with the seasons, the annual flight of tens of millions of these small, determined pilgrims may be the most gripping spectacle in all of nature, though few humans have seen it. Even those of us who have managed to join this aerial crusade (I once followed peregrine falcons to the Arctic and the American Tropics in a small Cessna) get only a glimpse of the saga.

Like John McPhee in his travels with geologists, Chu turns to the ornithological detectives to piece together the story. And while Songbird Journeys suffers from the fact that these observations are secondhand, Chu's researchers have truly great tales to tell. Dartmouth biologists Dick Holmes and Peter Marra, for example, describe how American redstarts -- whose flamed wings we see fluttering in our summertime shrubbery -- are present here often solely as the victors of a war waged against their own kind. Holmes and Marra found that dominant redstarts immediately nail down the richer food supply of humid mangrove stands in faraway spots like Jamaica -- which, by the following spring, gives them the strength to make the nearly 2,000-mile trip north early enough to claim the best breeding territories. Less forceful redstarts are pushed into dry scrub habitats that often fail to provide them with enough nutrition to fuel the long flight back north, much less to raise their young successfully once they get there.

This sort of research into their vanishing wintering areas is crucial if we want songbirds to survive, and Chu's fine stories leave one anxious for more. But too soon she flits off to pedestrian descriptions of the Cornell laboratory of ornithology, various citizen-science projects and lists of migration hotspots, complete with phone numbers and Web sites. By also sandwiching in lovely illustrations by painter Evan Barbour, an extensive index and a 14-page bibliography, Chu has created an intriguing, though perhaps overly ambitious, three-way hybrid of an Audubon Field Guide, a Peter Matthiessen ramble and a Fodor travel manual.

Club George goes to the opposite extreme. Like Thoreau at Walden Pond, Bob Levy examines in minute detail the lives of a small flock of New Yorkers -- feathered residents of Central Park and the equally colorful human observers who make these birds' lives the focus of their own.

Levy began recording his visits to Central Park during an unexpected period of unemployment. In excerpts from his diary, we follow his conversion from someone merely concerned about the environment to a man happily obsessed with birds. Over the course of a summer's worth of daily visits to Central Park, we meet the pivotal figure in Levy's transformation: a red-winged blackbird named George.

George, we are charmed to find, is famous. His flamboyant song-and-dance routine is so successful at cadging food from humans that he has constituents -- members of a floating group of admirers who refer to themselves simply as "Club George." The red-wing becomes his mentor because "after meeting George all succeeding birds looked to me like works of art." In this bold bird, Levy sees the innate resourcefulness of all his avian kind, plus something more: the way their indefatigable spirit generates a sort of loose family among the park's (sometimes clandestine) bird-feeding regulars.

With an articulate, introspective sensibility, Levy patiently observes the interactions between birds and humans. But he sometimes slips into glibness, employing gimmicks such as breaking his narrative with highlighted notices like this one: "WARNING: Look out. Here comes one more story of graphic violence." That is just way too clever. Unfortunately, it also evokes the preciousness of one of the bird-watchers, who dissolves into twitters upon seeing the everyday predation that sustains the natural world that the group reveres. Yet, like Songbird Journeys, Club George manages to evoke the existential optimism that birds inject into the life of anyone willing to open his or her soul to their dauntless, essential lightness of being.

Reviewed by Alan Tennant
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (March 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714684
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714688
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #643,046 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Songbird Journeys, March 28, 2006

By	K. Freeman (Apple Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A description of research on bird migration, some of the hazards that migrating birds face, and ways that people can see them and become involved in civilian research projects.

Not as well-written as Weidensaul's LIVING ON THE WIND, which this book strangely does not cite, this is still an informative and readable work. I wish it, and so many other bird books, was not so focused on the eastern United States -- not only does it give me serious fallout envy but I'd like more information on California migrant birds. However, I found the information on specific reserves and websites very useful and practical, although probably the URLs will tend to become invalid as the book ages.

I was annoyed by the lack of decent color photographs. A book on some of the most beautiful creatures in the world should be able to do better than a few drawings apparently scanned from a Peterson guide, and an old one at that.

Recommended, though alongside LIVING ON THE WIND and other books rather than as a replacement for them.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Terrific book!, July 18, 2006

By	Murphy's Mom (Central NC) - See all my reviews

I'll keep this brief. This is a terrific book! It is very readable (on layman's level), and chock full of interesting facts, tidbits and research results. I found myself reading parts of it aloud to my partner. I am involved in songbird rehab, and was amazed to learn that "Woods", a brown thrasher and our latest release, would ultimately develop a song list numbering close to 2,000! (We "talked" in "Robin", since Woods was raised alongside a baby robin).
I am recommending "Songbird Journeys" to all my friends who love wild birds and Nature in general.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating account of migration!, April 10, 2006

By	Casey Tucker "tuckercj" (Columbus, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Miyoko Chu's "Songbird Journeys" is one of the most fascinating accounts of how researchers and birders have been and are studying bird migration. She deftly blends story-telling and science to present snapshots of different species and what we are learning about them. She has the amazing ability of making you feel like you're there, standing shoulder to shoulder with these researchers, as they radio-track thrushes from an old beat up car or a small airplane in rough weather, or standing on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf as thousands upon thousands of warblers drop, exhausted, on the deck of the rig, or fly by within feet of you only to be blown back out to sea.

The stories and information that she presents is not only informative, but useful as well. She includes tips on how anyone can get involved in monitoring birds regardless of whether it's in their own backyard or local natural area.

The only drawback to Ms. Chu's book is that there is no explanation of how migration has evolved in birds, but I'm sure there are other texts out there that address this issue.

I highly recommend this book, especially for teachers who need a good discussion book for high school or college-aged biology and ornithology students.

I don't think you'll be disappointed.