Associate editor of Birding and author of Among Penguins (2011) and more recently The Thing with Feathers (2014), Noah Strycker has hiked the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. He joins us to talk about parallels between bird behavior and that of humans. “Birds aren’t people,” Strycker writes, “but just how different are they from us?” Approaching bird behavior from new and surprising angles, Strycker explores the navigation of pigeons, the speed of hummingbirds, the smelling power of vultures, particle physics of starling flocks, and other mysteries — revealing why birds do what they do, and how we can relate to them. Like humans but unlike most other birds and mammals, magpies can recognize their reflection in a mirror, indicating a sense of self-awareness and even suggesting that they may feel humanlike emotions of sympathy and sadness. Albatrosses, like humans, occasionally live to be 100, and mate for life. Their “divorce rate” is about 0.1% — which puts the US adult population, with a divorce rate of 40%, to shame. Do albatrosses experience something similar to romantic love? Nutcrackers have extraordinary memories, recalling as many as 5,000 caches of pine seeds — a mental achievement that seems to rely on a complex spatial memory. With a mix of humor and cutting-edge science, anecdotes from the field and examples from pop culture, Strycker will renew your interest in the close connections between people and birds.
