A great survey of some important migration research, enlivened by the authors first hand accounts of bear and bird and human encounters along the way. Couldn’t quite wrap my mind around how quantum entanglement works in bird migration ( )

I didn't get very far into this before I gave up. It was too much "what I did on my summer vacation" and not enough "here are some cool facts about birds."

In writing about science (or any expert topic) for a popular audience, it's really hard to get the right balance of science and narrative to keep the information interesting, and different readers are going to have different preferences for how much personal narrative they want in their books about science. I generally just don't like a lot of personal narrative, so this book didn't work for me.

Weidensaul's prose is elegant and easy to read, and his passion, love, and indeed, as he himself notes in the book, reverence, for his subject shines through throughout.

There is a good balance between narrative anecdotes and info dumping, for lack of a better term. The pacing between the two is likewise well handled, keeping either from becoming monotonous or overwhelming.

I will say that there are long chunks of text without page breaks, though there are paragraph breaks. The large chunks between natural stopping points mean that it is not well suited for reading in two to five minute chunks of time clawed out of a busy day. This book demands reading time that is set aside to get the most from it.

The theme of global anthropogenic climate change runs throughout the book. It can be a bit depressing, not to mention frightening, seeing the damage laid out the way that it is in this book. But Weidensaul takes pains to emphasize at every turn that there is hope, and that we still have time and chance to repair the damage. That, and the fact that climate change is a theme but not the main focus, keeps the book from being too depressing or upsetting to read.

Weidensaul is open about his agenda with the book, emphasizing the ways that what is good for birds is also good for humans, and vice versa, and as using all of his rhetorical powers to instill in his readers the same love and thus desire to protect birds as he feels himself. He wants to save the birds, and he wants his readers to want that, too.

That being said, it never feels like an Issue Book, lecture, or Morality Lesson. The agenda is there, and not hidden, but Weidensaul never lets it get in the way of writing a good book.

I really enjoyed A World on the Wing. I don't think it's for everyone - people without at least some interest in birds may find it boring. People who require their nonfiction to be narrative in format will likely have trouble with this as well. But I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in birds. It's a solid four star book, and I'm glad I picked it up off the shelf. ( )

Travelling thousands of miles in difficult conditions, bird migration is a long-distance test of endurance. Tracking birds in all stages of their life cycle is essential if we want to help protect essential habitat.

https://ecofriendlywest.ca/a-test-of-endurance-bird-migration/ ( )

Excellent book that meshes the new information that scientists are discovering about the mysteries of bird migration with the environmental issues that are harming them. In the past 20 years, the study of bird migration has taken off, as technology has enabled scientists to fit birds with extremely light weight geo-locators. Even with the advances in technology there are still so many questions about bird migration. But, there is also a lot of fascinating information coming out that will hopefully make humans care about how they are affecting the world these birds inhabit with us.

As I look through my kindle notes, I could write pages about all the things I learned. I was particularly fascinated by the way birds navigate, the way they prepare for migrations that are thousands of miles long, and the various routes they take. Weidensaul makes you really care about each bird he focuses on (probably about a dozen throughout the book). It helped me to also look up some pictures of the birds as I read about them.

And then he starts talking about all the ways the world is changing and making things more difficult for the birds such as the fragmentation of forests, changing weather patterns, farming practices, light pollution, and hunting practices. The good news is that solid information about bird migration, including global hot spots that many different species of birds all rely on, is helping conservationists convince people and governments to make changes to help birds. Of course, this is not always an easy road and is met with resistance in many places, but at least there is now the beginning of the information we need to even know what change needs to happen.

Some of my favorite birds that I learned about in this book were the spoon-billed sandpiper, the red knot, the godwit, frigatebirds, kirtland’s warblers, and swainson’s hawks. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in birds, nature, conservation, and/or environmental issues.

Original publication date: 2021
Author’s nationality: American
Original language: English
Length: 400 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Format/where I acquired the book: purchased for kindle
Why I read this: off the shelf ( )