Birds at Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep, by Roger F. Pasquier
Princeton University Press, 2025
360 pages, hardcover
ABA Sales–Buteo Books 15564
During migration here in North America, much of our birding centers around watching warblers move all too fast for our cameras and binoculars among the treetops, while raptors zip by or circle over hawkwatching sites and shorebirds skitter across sand and mud. Though we may watch flocks of shorebirds sleep at roosts during high tide on the coast or, if we’re lucky, find a sleeping Northern Saw-whet Owl or Long-eared Owl tucked away in a conifer on their trek back to the northern forests where they nest, much of our birding involves viewing birds on the move, awake and active, rarely sitting still. We know what birds are doing when they’re awake—foraging, preening, nesting—but what are they doing while they sleep? In some cases, quite a lot.
While many of us birders dream about birds while we sleep, we may also wonder what birds think about while they sleep. Birds at Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep, by Roger F. Pasquier, answers many of the questions you may have had—or didn’t even know you had—about birds and what they do while resting and sleeping. Pasquier writes Birds at Rest as the ultimate authority on bird sleep, resting, and roosting. Reading through it felt like I was back in college again, and I sensed I learned more about avian biology and bird behavior in this book than I did in some of my classes. Pasquier did an exemplary job reviewing literature across the globe, highlighting species and a laundry list of examples under each topic, without solely focusing on North America or some other region as such accounts often do.
This literature review left no stone unturned, diving into every detail known about the need for and intricacies of bird sleep and how their sleep differs from ours and other animals’. In fact, I learned more about our own sleep and the key factors that influence it, along with general knowledge about sleep, such as exactly what REM sleep is, than I ever did in any biology class. Pasquier also discusses roosting behaviors in birds and their relation to sleep and discusses the wide variability in bird roosting and sleeping behaviors. Birds at Rest includes myriad examples and citations throughout, including many that are almost mind-blowing. For example, Snow Buntings bury themselves in snow to survive the cold which gives me so much respect for what these tiny organisms endure. The litany of examples of unique avian behaviors described throughout invokes an additional sense of awe for these birds and inspires continued value of their pure existence.
Pasquier concludes with a summary of how our often detrimental human behaviors are changing the exceptional behaviors these species have spent millions of years evolving. As I write this, I’m enjoying migration here in North America and watching birds endure one of the most grueling, difficult, and taxing parts of their lives. More than ever, birds require sleep and rest in migration. But what happens when birds are attracted to artificial lights at night, start migrating earlier than usual when there is less daylight, or when an owl is disturbed all day in a busy park and cannot get enough rest to restore energy needed to complete its arduous journey north? Pasquier discusses how birds are—and aren’t—adapting to increasing challenges, making rest and re-charging at stopover sites, and even on breeding and wintering grounds, more difficult for birds.
Birds at Rest is the ultimate textbook on avian sleep. But it’s also an important read for birders, scientists, conservationists, and everyone. While there is so much I learned in the book, the takeaways on what we can do for birds are the most important parts. This book is a must-read. It will inspire you to think more about what the birds you’re watching in migration need on their journey to survive—not just food and water but also rest—and what we can do to help them get all the rest they need.
Greg Lawrence is an avian biologist and project manager at Tetra Tech, where he specializes in bird surveys, permitting, reporting, and more. A lifelong birder based in Rochester, New York, Greg typically can be found enjoying migration along the Lake Ontario shoreline, particularly at the legendary Braddock Bay hawk watch.
