Category Archives: Seabirds

Sentinels, or “How Bird Flu Really Got Cookin’” (FSB Book Review)

As we enter the holiday season, we find ourselves with a bit less time to blog. Braden is staying busy teaching birding classes, writing for Montana Outdoors and BWD magazines, and birding like crazy. I have also stayed busy pursuing a new college degree, finishing up editing my 2027 book Birding the Great Wide Open, and squeezing in birding whenever I can. Today, though, we present a review of what may be one of the most important books I’ve read in recent years. It’s one I hope you will pick up for yourself or other birders in your life as it has huge implications for the future of birds—and humans. Enjoy!

On New Year’s Eve, 2019, Braden and I visited a refuge called the Hula Valley Nature Reserve in northern Israel (see Braden’s post Winter Birding in Israel, Part II: Valley of the Cranes). Though small by some standards, the reserve holds a remarkable diversity of bird life. Riding around in golf carts under cool, damp skies, we observed 44 species including Pied Avocets, Ruffs, and both Booted and Greater Spotted Eagles. The marquee birds, the ones that attract thousands of visitors each year, were thousands of Common Cranes. In fields surrounding the reserve, we counted more than 2,000 of them—but no doubt missed many more.

In 2019, Braden and I were lucky enough to visit Israel’s fabulous Hula Valley Nature Reserve, where we saw more than 2,000 Common Cranes. Only the following year, the H5N1 bird flu virus swept through the reserve, killing more than 8,000 cranes along with many other birds.

Strikingly, our visit intersected with two important global events. Even as we stood watching the cranes, the COVID-19 virus was silently making its way out of China, poised to ravage the rest of the world. Braden and I, in fact, barely made it home before commercial air traffic ground to a halt.

The second event happened the following year, in 2021, when a virus known as H5N1 exploded across the planet. This virus killed untold millions of wild birds and other animals, including many threatened and endangered species. In northern Israel alone, H5N1 killed 8,000 Common Cranes in the Hula Valley, along with 1.6 million chickens and turkeys in commercial poultry facilities. In his new book Sentinels: When Diseases Spread Between Animals and Humans (Scribe Publications, 2026), author Michael Dulaney writes, “Of all the pathogens I’ve learned about this (H5N1) is the big one . . . It scares me more than anything else.” After reading his book, you may feel the same.

But let us back up a step.

In Sentinels, Delaney focuses on several kinds of diseases, including fungal diseases spread by the wildlife trade and, especially in the case of Valley Fever, our increased contact with and destruction of the environment. He also explores Trench Fever, a louse-borne disease made famous during World War I that is now re-emerging among destitute, unhoused populations around the world. However, Sentinels especially focuses on zoonotic diseases, those that spread between animals and people.

**Raptors have been hit especially hard by HPAI—Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. It remains to be seen how well populations will recover. (Eurasian Kestral shown.)**

Lest you think this is a niche topic, according to the CDC, three out of four new diseases in humans originate in animals. They include some of the world’s deadliest: Ebola, coronaviruses such as COVID-19, and H5N1. And if you haven’t already been convinced, the author presents overwhelming evidence that these kinds of diseases represent a significant, global threat to humanity.

As we all have witnessed in recent years, many zoonotic viruses cause human illness and death. However, while popular coverage of zoonotic diseases almost exclusively focuses on wild animals as a threat and source of illness, Sentinels makes clear that the underlying threat isn’t the animals—it is humanity’s rapid destruction of the environment and quest for economic expediency.

Let’s take a look at bird flu.

H5N1 is but one of several types of “bird flu” viruses that health authorities lump together under the name Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or HPAI. In his chapter titled “Henfluenza: Bird Flu”, Dulaney explains that H5N1 first emerged in the poultry industry of Southeast Asia in 1996. Since then, many outbreaks have been reported, often killing 100% of affected chickens and other poultry. In some cases, the disease has jumped to humans with deadly results. But in 2021 a new strain leaped from the poultry industry to wild birds, and those birds quickly carried it around the globe. One of the big surprises of this new strain is how, in addition to birds, it infected a wide array of mammal species including cats, foxes, polar bears, and other marine mammals. In Argentina, it killed tens of thousands of elephant seals, a blow from which the species may never recover. Nothing like that had happened in previous outbreaks.

HPAI’s toll on wild birds, though, has been particularly devastating. No one really has any idea of how many wild birds have died as a result of H5N1 and other bird flu viruses, but they have infected at least 500 different bird species and killed millions of birds. More than half of species affected had never before been hit by this group of viruses, and some bird species experienced die-offs that may have long-term consequences for their survival. In just one recent five month span, from September 2025 to January 2026, the US Geological Survey recorded 241 “bird mortality events” in 28 states, killing 126,000 wild birds. In 123 of these events, HPAI was confirmed or suspected as the cause. At the Great Salt Lake, more than 50,000 Eared Grebes died, twice the number of deaths from a similar outbreak the previous year. The USGS reported that this was the fourth year in a row avian influenza had been rampaging through wild bird populations.

We were lucky to visit the Hula reserve with some of our longtime friends, including biologist Avi Lourie (far right), who was a close friend of my late father (Braden’s grandfather). Little did we know how viruses were about to change the lives of both humans and wildlife.

As bird flu continues to circulate around the globe, it continues to devastate both wild and domestic bird populations. It also keeps jumping to humans. According to the CDC website, 72 cases and two deaths in the US have been reported since 2024. But while news outlets and official government websites continue to portray the risks to human health and domestic animals posed by wild birds, they utterly fail to address the underlying causes of bird flu and other zoonotic diseases.

Which is why Sentinels is such an important book. After reading it, you will have no doubt that it is our own actions that facilitate the mutation and spread of zoonotic diseases. Some are facilitated by the destruction of natural habitats, forcing animals into closer proximity to humans. The root cause of bird flu is the manner in which we raise animals for human consumption. While H5N1 once originated in wild bird populations, its ability to jump to other species was most likely severely limited. Factory farming, on the other hand, has been a virus’s dream come true.

In the US alone, 9.4 billion broiler chickens were “produced” in 2025. Egg-laying chickens cranked out 105 billion eggs. The vast majority of these chickens are grown in enormous, cramped facilities, where tens or even hundreds of thousands of birds are packed together in a single building. Chicken production in China dwarfs even these figures, with one facility supposedly containing three million chickens at any given time.

Although farmers and corporations strive to eliminate HPAI viruses, they are now so prevalant that they find their way into industrial, small scale, and backyard farms with shocking frequency. One recent update from the USDA recorded that in just the most recent 30 days, there had been 23 outbreaks affecting 1.25 million birds. Since February 8, 2022, the virus had infected 210 million birds in 2,285 flocks in all fifty states and one territory.

What happens to all of those birds? As you might guess, as soon as a virus is detected, the entire flock is destroyed, and the facility placed under quarantine. In other words, hundreds of millions of chickens, turkeys, and other domestic animals are killed and disposed of each year because of HPAI viruses. Amazingly, the poultry industry can easily absorb this waste while still making vast profits. According to the USDA, in 2025 the combined value of poultry sales, including eggs, was 70.3 billion dollars.

If enough of us change our own food shopping habits and begin applying pressure to our politicians to enforce a more humane, less dangerous industrial meat industry, humans may have a chance to prevent future pandemics caused by zoonotic viruses.

The main point of this is that within these high-density facilities, viruses can and do mutate at lightning speed. With increasing frequency and impact, they also spill over into wild populations of birds and other animals. That means that even if a wild bird species or population adapts to one strain, it is likely—perhaps inevitable—that another, even more virulent strain will come along. This, in fact, is what has been happening, and we may just be seeing the beginning of global pandemics that threaten entire species of birds and mammals, including humans.

Sentinels is a pretty terrifying read because there are no simple fixes to the problems that it highlights, many of which also are exacerbated by climate change. “This puts any writer on this subject in a tough position,” the author laments. “Most people, we are told, want to read good news.” His message, though, is clear: If we want to reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases, we have to do a much better job protecting the environment. We especially need to change the way we produce food. Is this likely? It’s hard to see how, and the author offers few suggestions. I do know that the book has compelled me to redouble my efforts to source food from farms and farmers that place quality, animal welfare, and human health at a greater premium. If enough people read Sentinels and act on its message, it may help turn the wheel toward a healthier future for both birds and humans.

To order Sentinels, CLICK HERE.

Seabirds as Sentinels (FSB Book Review)

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All posts on FatherSonBirding are written and photographed by REAL PEOPLE.

I love living in Montana, but it has one huge drawback: no ocean. This has a particular impact on me and Braden because while we do get a fair number of shorebirds breeding in and passing through the Treasure State, we almost never have the opportunity to observe, study, and enjoy seabirds. You can therefore understand my particular interest in reading Eric Wagner’s new book, Seabirds As Sentinels: Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters, and the View from Destruction Island (University of Washington Press, 2026).

*Seabirds as Sentinels* by Eric Wagner, University of Washington Press. Click on image or here to order.

For me and many other birders, seabirds—also referred to as pelagic birds—are almost magical. Not only do they have incredible adaptations to live in what is arguably the world’s harshest environment, they are difficult, if not impossible, for most of us to watch. Loyal FSB readers will recall Braden’s and my account of our pelagic bird cruise during the San Diego Birding Festival (see post San Diego Seabirds). These and a precious few other puke-filled outings gave us rare opportunities to view shearwaters, murres, guillemots, and even albatrosses. Unfortunately, our time with these birds has been altogether too brief—a situation not likely to change anytime soon.

**Part of a group of approximately 8,000 Black-vented Shearwaters off the coast of San Diego in 2019.**

One of the real delights of Eric Wagner’s book is that he gives readers the chance to hang out with nesting Pacific Northwest seabirds, especially the Rhinoceros Auklet. Before reading Seabirds As Sentinels, I had seen Rhinoceros Auklets a couple of times, but had no idea where they bred. One answer, it turns out, is on certain islands off the coast of Washington and British Columbia. Wagner devotes a good portion of the book documenting scientists’ efforts to tag and learn about these birds as they nest on Destruction Island, only about three miles off the coast of the Olympic Peninsula.

**Photos from *Seabirds as Sentinels* including a Rhinoceros Auklet, bill filled with fish, in the upper right.**

His accounts of the birds range from their comical “crash landings” as they return to the island each night to feed their chicks to the birds’ remarkable ability to locate shoals of fish and dive deep underwater to catch them. Similar discussions revolve around Sooty Shearwaters and Tufted Puffins. What makes these accounts so captivating is seeing the birds’ activities “in person” through the author’s eyes, an experience most of us will never have.

**A Tufted Puffin from Braden’s and my first pelagic birding cruise off Monterey, California.**

Wagner, though, also wants to educate us, and provides discussions of how the world’s primary ocean currents are generated and how these currents impact marine life. He traces the human history of the region from around the time of first European contact to modern day, including recent tribal efforts to protect an environment increasingly at risk from climate change’s many ramifications.

Black-footed Albatrosses are one of the birds most impacted by human activities. According to Wagner, tens of thousands have died in Hawai’i’s longline tuna fishery alone. (Photo taken off the coast of Monterey, California in 2016.)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to talk about seabirds without pointing out the cataclysmic declines in many species, and the author doesn’t shy away from the topic. As the title suggests, the decline of seabirds mirrors the dramatic impacts human activities are having on our planet. Perhaps most alarming has been the appearance of “blobs,” persistent and unprecedented areas of warm water that either kill or drive away the prey seabirds and a host of other species depend on. Estimates of how many seabirds have died during recent blobs are mind-boggling. As many as four million Common Murres alone may have starved to death as a result of the blob of 2015 and 2016—about half of Alaska’s Common Murre population.

**Common Murres have already been severely impacted by warmer ocean temperatures (Monterey, California, 2016).**

The author doesn’t provide us with any false solutions about this and other environmental problems. After all, we all know what we have to do. We have to stop burning fossil fuels. We have to stop using our ocean as a dumping ground for plastics and other waste. We have to quit overfishing the prey species thousands of other species also depend on. What the book does do, though, is raise our awareness of why these things matter—and perhaps provide each of us with the resolve to keep working toward a solution in whatever ways we can.

If you enjoyed this post, check out our other bird-related book reviews such as The Great Auk and The Shorebirds of North America.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The Social Lives of Birds (Book Review)

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With single-digit temperatures in Montana this week, it is still very much book reading season, a time when all birders can—and should—beef up our birding resumés by tapping into the vast wealth of research and experience of the global birding and scientific communities. This past week, I delved into a topic that intrigues most birders by picking up Joan E. Strassmann’s The Social Lives of Birds: Flocks, Communes, and Families (Tarcher, 2025).

**Joan Strassmann’s The Social Lives of Birds is packed with delightful revelations for beginning and experienced birders alike. (Click on the cover for ordering info.)**

A well-regarded professor and scientist, Strassmann has created a comprehensive resource that introduces readers to almost every aspect of bird society. She begins by answering the simple question “Are Birds Social?” (You can probably guess the answer to that!) Then, chapter by chapter, she explores topics that fascinate beginning birders as much as they do veteran scientists. These include flocking behavior, mixed-species flocks, the predilection of many birds to roost and/or nest in colonies, the pros and cons of nesting and/or roosting together, lekking behavior, and more.

**The author devotes an entire chapter to the fascinating and intriguing world of seabird colonies, such as those of one of the world’s most popular birds, the Blue-footed Booby.**

I learned something fascinating with each chapter. For instance, I was first drawn to the book because the cover showed a line of six Long-tailed Tits packed tightly together on a branch. I had had the pleasure of observing these birds in the Netherlands (see our post Layover Birding in Amsterdam), Japan (see our post Birding Japan: Kyoto), and Spain (see our post Birding Barcelona, Part 1: The Urban Core), but had no idea that they lived and foraged in stable flocks that are often built around a main breeding pair and its offspring. In her book, Strassmann recounts a study that showed that on chilly nights, the tits nestle tightly together to stay warm, and that often it is the lowest birds on the “tit totem pole” that have to endure the chillier end positions. This is no trivial matter since the birds lose about 9 percent of their total body mass in a single, chilly night.

**After observing Long-tailed Tits in Europe and Asia, I was fascinated to learn more details of their highly social behavior in *The Social Lives of Birds*.**

Similar revelations emerge with every chapter, examining birds from a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic habitats. My favorite chapter was the last, “Supersocial Groups: Birds That Are Always Together.” That’s probably because it featured one of my favorite birds, the Acorn Woodpecker (see our post College Search Birding in California), and three other species I was fascinated to learn more about: White-winged Choughs, Sociable Weavers, and a bird Braden and I are always delighted to see, Pinyon Jays. Regarding the latter, Braden and I have seen Pinyon Jays only a handful of times here in Montana, and I had wondered why they aren’t more common. Strassmann explains that the birds need extremely large territories to guarantee a dependable food supply. Unfortunately, their main food source, the pinyon pine, has suffered extreme losses from clearing for agriculture and other reasons. Warmer temperatures driven by climate change have also impacted the production of pinyon pine seeds, leading to large-scale die-offs of these beautiful, dynamic, gregarious birds.

**Strassmann devotes much of the final chapter on one of Braden’s and my favorite birds, Pinyon Jays, shown here in a cemetery in Helena, Montana.**

The Social Lives of Birds struggles a bit over whether it wants to be a comprehensive resource or an engaging narrative in the vein of the recently reviewed The Great Auk or A World on the Wing. The author mentions her personal connections to many of the topics, but I found these more distracting than engaging. Still, that will not prevent readers from enjoying the book and harvesting a wealth of information—knowledge that will help you look at birds with greater understanding and appreciation each time you head out to bird.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

A World on the Wing (Book Review)

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With fewer birds around, winter is an excellent chance to catch up on bird-related reading, both for enjoyment and education. I find this a perfect time to check out both new bird-related titles, and older books that I have somehow overlooked. Speaking of the latter, during the December holiday my father-in-law handed me Scott Weidensaul’s remarkable 2021 release, A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds (W. W. Norton). I’m so glad that he did!

**An easy reading style, engaging storytelling, and fascinating information render A WORLD ON THE WING one of a handful of required reading books for birders.** (Click on the image for ordering information.)

In A World on the Wing, Weidensaul manages to take an overwhelming body of global information about bird migration and distill it into a series of stories that give the reader a captivating picture of what’s going on out there. The book’s first chapter hooked me immediately with the author’s visit to one of the world’s most vital shorebird stopover sites—and one I knew almost nothing about—the mudflats surrounding the Yellow Sea. These mudflats are nothing less than the linchpin to the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), a vast, complicated series of routes used by millions of birds migrating from the Southern Hemisphere to breeding grounds in the far north. According to an online UNESCO article, about ten percent of all migrating birds on the EAAF depend on the Yellow Sea stopover area. They include two of the planet’s rarest shorebirds, the “Spoonie”, or Spoon-billed Sandpiper, with a population estimate of about 500 or fewer, and Nordman’s Greenshank with fewer than 2,000 individuals. Beyond that, the area provides critical support to 400 other bird species, including 45 considered threatened.

My 2023 visit to Japan highlighted how extensively crucial habitats for migrating birds have been gobbled up and polluted by development across the globe.

This first chapter sets the tone for a global, diverse journey through myriad aspects of bird migration. One chapter focuses on the incredible physiological adaptations of migrating birds, including their abilities to sleep on the wing, reduce or increase the size of internal organs to optimize weight and function, and navigate by taking advantage of quantum physics. Other chapters focus on species or groups of migrating birds across the globe. Some of these birds, such as the Kirtland’s Warbler and Snowy Owl, will be familiar to many readers while others, such as Bar-tailed Godwits and Amur Falcons, are less so. Every chapter, though, is filled not only with revelations, but personal anecdotes and experiences that make the stories come alive.

While many key stopover sites have been protected in North America, our own migrating bird numbers continue to plummet. Shorebird species have been especially hard-hit. (Shown here: Dunlins at Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon.)

Taken as a whole, the book serves as an impassioned plea to protect migratory birds and, well, just do things better on this planet. The crucial mudflats of the Yellow Sea, for instance, are critically imperiled by industrial development, pollution, and interruption of sediment flow caused by thousands of dams across China’s rivers. It’s not that the loss of these mudflats would put a dent in bird populations. It could wipe them out. The author quotes one scientist as saying, “There is no more buffer. There is no more ‘somewhere else’ for these migrants.” The threats to migrating birds are multiple and widespread, varying only in their particulars. In some places, pesticides take terrible tolls. In other places, it’s illegal hunting for local culinary specialties. Almost everywhere, habitat loss and climate change loom large.

In Cyprus, Italy, France, and other countries, millions of migrating songbirds are needlessly and illegally slaughtered to satisfy traditional and/or eccentric culinary tastes. According to an Audubon article, at least 157 species are caught, including 90 species of conservation concern. (Shown here: European Robin.)

Somehow, the author manages to balance these threats with the overarching wonder of bird migration and leaves the reader feeling hopeful—or at least determined—along with being much better informed. This balance, along with the engaging writing style and storytelling make this one of a handful of bird-related books that I consider required reading for anyone interested in birds and conservation.

Order this book at your local independent bookstore!

Books for the Happy Holiday Birder (FSB Shopping Guide, Part 2)

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If you’re like me, you never read quite as many books as you’d like. This year, though, I was very fortunate to read and review some outstanding bird-related titles that you’re going to want to consider for your holiday buying. Most—but not all—of these were published in 2025 or late 2024. I’ve also included a few books that aren’t solely about birds—but give great insights into how to protect them. Of course, you will want to begin your shopping with eight or ten copies of my book Birding for Boomers—And Everyone Else Brave Enough to Embrace the World’s Most Rewarding and Frustrating Activity. This popular gift book has received half a dozen awards and even made a couple of bestseller’s lists. Once you’ve placed that order, however, you’ll want to check out the titles below. Please note: we receive no compensation for any of these recommendations (other than a free review copy or two), so the thoughts are all our own. Enjoy!

Purely Enjoyable Bird Storytelling

Let’s start with the “most fun” category of reading—great storytelling that just happens to be about birds. In the past, I’ve recommended such titles as Christopher Skaife’s The Ravenmaster, Joshua Hammer’s The Falcon Thief, and Tim Gallagher’s classic, Imperial Dreams. My favorite title from this year’s reading is Tim Birkhead’s The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife. This wonderful, often whimsical tale focuses on an extinct species most of us have heard of, but know little about. Birkhead gets totally into Bird Nerd mode by both explaining the biology and history of the Great Auk, and tracing some of the antics of egg collectors who were totally obsessed with obtaining Great Auk eggs. You’ll love this! See our full review here.

The Great Auk by Tim Birkhead (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Also on the short list for this category is Bruce M. Beehler’s Flight of the Godwit, a must-read for anyone interested in the remarkable lives of shorebirds—and who isn’t? Through the tales of his own peregrinations, Beehler follows the migrations of many of North America’s most charismatic shorebirds, telling us all kinds of cool things that I certainly never knew before. See our full review here.

Birding Memoirs

My top pick for this category is Christian Cooper’s 2023 book, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World. I admit that I put off reading this book for a couple of years after it came out. It’s sheer popularity made me insanely jealous as an author, but once I picked it up, I was captivated. Cooper’s down-to-earth honesty about his life and passion for birds sucked me right in, both with its engaging storytelling and how it broadened my perspective on birding in our culture.

My second pick for this category is Richard L. Hutto’s new book, A Beautifully Burned Forest: Learning to Celebrate Severe Forest Fire. This book is half memoir and half science book and I enjoyed both parts equally. Perhaps as a fellow Southern Californian, I especially related to Hutto’s boyhood experiences exploring the chaparral ecosystem, but I also appreciated Hutto’s impassioned plea to bring common sense to fire management, especially when it comes to protecting burned forests from the ravages of so-called “salvage” logging. See our full review here.

Oh, and if you’re wanting to learn all about Braden’s and my early years of birding, don’t miss my classic first adult book, Warblers and Woodpeckers: A Father-Son Big Year of Birding!

In-Depth Group Guides

Advanced Bird Nerds will definitely want to add Amar Ayyash’s The Gull Guide: North America to their holiday shopping lists this year. Like most birders, I have been—and remain—incredibly intimidated by gulls. Sure, I recognize the adult plumages of many species, but when you start getting into hybrid gulls and first-, second-, and third-year plumage variations, my brain and confidence begin to melt. The Gull Guide does not solve this problem, but it does accomplish two important things. First, it gives great insight into gulls for the casual birder. Second, it offers myriad minute details for those who are bound and determined to become experts on everything gull. Both of these things are accomplished with an extensive, remarkable collection of photos that serve to educate and guide. See our full review here.

A less technical book that may be more to the taste of the casual birder is The Shorebirds of North America: A Natural History and Photographic Celebration by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson. This beautiful book strikes a nice balance between detail and readability. A lot, but not all, of the information is fairly general, but the photos are wonderful and if you’re a shorb fan, you will enjoy it. See our full review here.

Three More for the Planet

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention three more titles that made a big impact on me this year. The first is Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie by Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty. I thought I knew all about the tragic history of the destruction of America’s grasslands. I did not. This highly readable book provides astonishing insights into how we lost most of our grasslands—and why that destruction continues today. Grassland birds are our most imperiled group of birds, losing at least forty percent of their collective populations in just the last fifty years. If you care about these animals and want to know what we can do to slow their precipitous demise, please read this one!

Similarly, Jordan Thomas’s When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, gives us an inside look at the often counterproductive politics and decision-making behind today’s “fire fighting industrial complex.” With riveting storytelling and astonishing revelations, this is a perfect companion to Hutto’s A Beautifully Burned Forest.

And if you’re wrestling with how to keep from being overwhelmed in today’s world, where we are confronted by one environmental threat after another, I highly recommend the late Thich Nhat Hanh’s Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. I read a few pages of this every morning and I gotta say that it helps keep me sane in our complicated, highly imperiled world. Not only does it raise serious questions about how we all live, it provides approaches and encouragement for how each of us can truly make a difference.

Don’t miss our holiday guides to birding equipment and, in our next post, charitable giving!