Bird Brains is a rather unimaginatively titled book by one Candace Savage, about whether or not members of the corvid family are capable of what we would call intelligence.

The book is executed in a rather interesting way. Like what a scientific book should be, and unlike what many of them turn out as, this book actually has a central thesis (that corvids, are, indeed, intelligent) and goes through a list of corvid behaviors in the area of socialization, feeding, mating and communication that support her claim. She even backs up her thoughts with two pages of reference notes and five pages of bibliography.

On the other hand, this is a big, bright colorful coffee table book published by the Sierra Club. It's full of full page and two page spreads of corvids doing their thing: playing, flirting, attacking bald eagles and the like. These pictures are very detailed and interesting. You can, if you are in the mood, look through this book without reading a single line of text, and still understand something of the complicated life of a corvid.

So, while I am sure that this book would be scoffed at by the experienced students of corvid cognizance out there, I found that it whetted my appetite for learning about a subject I previously knew little about.

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