Welcome to Litsy!

I'll admit that I'm not really into birds, but I love a good science/nature read. Meiburg has done a wonderful job with this book and I found myself thoroughly enjoying all the fantastic information that was presented about a bird I knew very little about, caracaras.

I think I spent as much time looking up photos online of these marvelous creatures as I did reading the book. 😀

Well researched, well written, and just a delight to read.

3/5 Non-fiction book club pick.
From reading this book, Jonathan Meiburg's passion and interest for birds are clear. It's a very informative book, but I'm perplexed about the organization of the book. Sometimes, it felt like the book was too dispersed, stirring away from the striated caracaras, affecting the rhythm and flow of the book.

Before listening to this audiobook, I knew nothing about caracaras, which are falcons found in South America. They are remarkable creatures, as the title claims: highly intelligent, sociable and inquisitive. The author does a deep dive into everything about them and the entire book is riveting! #ScienceNerd

Social wasps share a skill that exceeds the ability of nearly every mammal on earth: they‘re master builders. Most social wasps fashion their homes from a papier-mâché of chewed-up wood fibres mixed with their own saliva, and each species builds in their own style.

Peregrines have the fastest visual processing speed measured in any animal and their eyes are so sharp that they could read the headline of a newspaper from a mile away. A human with eyes in the same proportion to its skull as a peregrine would have eyes that measure three inches across and weigh four pounds each.

The trouble with the past is that it keeps changing. The asteroid‘s effects on the history of life were so sudden and pervasive that it‘s easy to forget we didn‘t even know about it until very recently.
(Internet image)

No audiowalking today, but I got plenty of exercise audioshovelling snow.

So many interesting facts about birds in this book, including the world‘s smallest raptor, the black-thighed falconet, which is about the size of a sparrow.
(Internet photo)

#CurrentlyReading 🤓

You get way more than just a book about caracaras, a curious, intelligent, & social bird of prey. It‘s a rambly type of book in scope, but Meiburg fills it with all kinds of interesting observations about nature and even people. I won‘t soon forget the dinner plate size spider on the face & in the beard of a fellow scientist. 😅