Book Nook - FLIGHT PATHS: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration

 

From esteemed science writer Rebecca Heisman comes the captivating, little-known story of an extraordinary, innovative group of scientists and the methods and technology they developed to uncover the secrets of avian migration: 
FLIGHT PATHS: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration (March 14, 2023).

 

For the past century, scientists and naturalists have been steadily unravelling the secrets of bird migration. How and why birds navigate the skies, traveling from continent to continent, has long engaged the imagination, but a full understanding of these annual journeys is surprisingly recent. Even the most enthusiastic birdwatcher may not know how we got here, or the ways in which the full breadth of scientific disciplines came together to solve the mystery of avian travels.

 

In FLIGHT PATHS, Heisman explores how a group of migration-obsessed scientists engaged nearly every branch of science to understand bird migration—from where and when they take off, to their flight paths and behaviors, to their destinations and the challenges they encounter getting there. Drawing on the work of these men and women—across generations, continents, and disciplines—she traces the development of each technique used for tracking, from the first attempts to mark individual birds to cutting-edge technology using unique DNA markers. Along the way, Heisman touches on some of the biggest technological breakthroughs of modern science, and the scientists who harnessed them in service of a greater understanding of nature in general, and of avian migratory behavior in particular.

 

An exploration of groundbreaking discovery, FLIGHT PATHS illustrates the power of science when it coalesces around a common inquiry. As we continue to face unprecedented conservation and climate challenges, the story of migration research offers a beacon of hope, and a compelling way forward.

 

About the Author

Rebecca Heisman is a science writer based in eastern Washington who loves nerding out about birds. She’s contributed to publications including Audubon Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Hakai Magazine, bioGraphic, Living Bird (the magazine of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), and Bird Conservation (the magazine of the American Bird Conservancy). From 2015 to 2020, she worked for the American Ornithological Society (AOS), the world’s largest professional organization for bird scientists. First as an independent contractor helping promote research published in AOS’s scientific journals, and then as their first full-time communications staffer, Heisman used social media, press releases, blog posts, and more to bring cool bird science to the broader scientific community and the public. It was there that she became intimately familiar with the North American ornithological community and got excited about the varied and wonderful methods out there for studying bird migration. When she left that job in 2020 to return to freelancing, it was with the goal of writing a book that would bring to light the incredible scientific backstory of how we know what we know about migration.