Birds get a bad rap: why we should look up to our feathered friends

The Return of the Oystercatcher: Saving Birds to Save the Planet Scott Weidensaul W. W. Norton (2026) A Bird’s IQ: Innovation, Intelligence, and Problem Solving in the Avian World Louis Lefebvre, transl. Pablo Strauss Greystone (2026) How did birds evolve? The answer is wilder than anyone thought Birds are in trouble. In the United States alone, one-third of bird species are rated as of high or moderate conservation concern. North American forests have lost more than one billion birds in the past half-century. A 2019 study found that grassland bird populations have declined by 53%, and 90% of those losses come from just 12 of the most common avian families, including sparrows, blackbirds and finches ( K. V. Rosenberg et al. Science 366 , 120–124; 2019 ). Naturalist Scott Weidensaul, the author of more than 30 books about birds and nature, calls this trend “a gut punch”. Weidensaul wrote about the wonders of bird migration and the challenges facing migrating birds at a time of rapidly changing climate and massive habitat loss in his 2021 book A World on the Wing . After a colleague suggested that he might write another book about what is going right for birds, Weidensaul responded with his latest work, The Return of the Oystercatcher . Weidensaul begins the book with the bad news, by taking the reader through a history of escalating threats to birds. …