Explores the variety, secret history and hidden importance of birds around the world. Revealing everything from why birds sing to how they fly, think, bond and survive, from how they evolved (and whether it is from dinosaurs) to why, in so many ways, they are very much like us, this book makes you love and admire the birds that are all around you.

When Colin Tudge was a small boy, he could recognize only five kinds of birds. Following a childhood spent at London Zoo and in conversation with a bird-watching cousin, he began to perceive that 'ordinary birds' included pipits and wagtails, terns and kestrels, and a miscellany of crows, not all of which were black. So began a lifelong interest in birds and how they live. After studying zoology at Cambridge, Colin wrote for the New Scientist and was a documentary maker for BBC radio. Now a full-time writer, he appears regularly as a public speaker. A Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, he was a visiting Research Fellow at the Centre of Philosophy at the London School of Economics for ten years.