The Social Lives of Birds: Flocks, Communes, and Families, by Joan E. Strassmann
Tarcher, 2025
304 pages, hardcover
ABA Sales–Buteo Books 15560
The Social Lives of Birds: Flocks, Communes, and Families, by Joan E. Strassmann, comprehensively analyzes birds’ social patterns and behaviors. Strassmann uses her experience as an evolutionary biologist to dissect the complex social behaviors that birds display. By combining personal narrative and well-researched information, Strassmann’s book tells a compelling story.
The introduction, like any good one, sets the tone for Strassmann’s book. Beginning with an anecdote, Strassmann immediately infuses her voice into the writing. Strassmann’s introduction announces to the reader that her book will be a mixture of scientific research and her own observations. This combination of details reaches a large audience with its easy to-digest information. Strassmann weaves her personal narrative with studies and research to share her passion for birds and desire to understand them.
The book consists of ten main chapters detailing how birds group and why they behave in certain ways. The book begins with the most commonly known patterns—flocks, roosts, and colonies—before narrowing to more specific terms and behaviors. Strassmann focuses the first five chapters on behaviors that can be easily seen. By starting with these easily identifiable behaviors, Strassmann explains that these patterns are not new to anyone, whether or not you are a birder. We see flocks and roosts all the time. To illustrate this, Strassmann uses anecdotes of times when she watched birds casually live out the behaviors.
The later chapters explore behaviors we might not recognize or realize we’re looking at. These chapters explain mating patterns and familiar dynamics in colonies or nests. By adding this information later in the book, Strassmann has prepared her reader for the more complicated concepts. While she could’ve written about family dynamics in chapter two, the reader might have felt lost or confused by being thrust into these concepts so early.
However, if Strassmann hadn’t gone on to include the less noticeable patterns, the reader wouldn’t grasp how birds have specific reasons for their behaviors and movements. Chapters like Where Males Dance and Females Choose and Families with Helpers: Older Siblings, Lonely Bachelors, and More show the reader how intricate birds are. Here, Strassmann elegantly combines personal observation and concrete research to create an educational and enjoyable story. Strassmann’s attention to detail and ability to use figurative language while simultaneously discussing research allows her to seamlessly combine fact and personal narrative.
Strassmann excels at including multiple sources that further explain the behavior she describes. While this could feel clunky and overwhelming in the hands of a less-competent author, Strassmann’s writing is the opposite. I enjoyed reading these parts because, while they are fact-heavy, Strassmann is also telling a story. She uses her stories to explain the research she conducted, allowing the book to read more like prose and less like a textbook. My favorite aspect of the book was how Strassmann never pretends to have all the answers. Instead, she admits that even the best birders and ornithologists don’t know why birds act in certain ways. In chapter two, Roosts, Strassmann introduces the behavior by saying, “There are three main hypotheses for communal roosting.” I liked this phrasing because by using hypothesis, she’s telling the reader that, despite all the research Strassmann included, people still aren’t completely sure why roosts work.
The Social Lives of Birds, while written by Strassmann, doesn’t lack other researchers’ opinions. She fills her chapters with data from birders and scientists across the world. Birds’ social patterns are complex and widely studied. Including numerous studies illustrates that there is always something new to learn. Strassmann writes, “As I researched all these birds and discovered their lives, I turned personally to the ornithologists who figured out what the birds are doing and why.”
Some studies are followed by stories about Strassmann’s personal connection to the researcher. These inclusions are another engaging element that add to the book. While the book does read as fact-heavy at times, this combination of elements allowed me to push through the denser chapters. In the conclusion, Strassmann reflects on the new knowledge she has found. She recounts the standout birds that hadn’t left her mind since she began this book: “Here, I tried to share my joy in the social lives of birds and the discoveries ornithologists made about them. From the vantage point of understanding what birds are doing, perhaps we can find it in our hearts to treasure them more.” This candor here and throughout her book paints Strassmann as less all-knowing and more as a bird-lover who wants to learn.
This informative book explained to me what might actually be happening in birds’ brains. We may not ever fully understand what’s going on in those tiny heads, but Strassmann’s book gives readers a strong idea of why we see what we see. Strassmann’s main goal was to understand why and how birds are social. With her extensive research and wonder of birds, she wrote a book that explains why birds do what they do.
Hailing from New Jersey, Julia DiGeronimo is a birder and writer based in Portland, Oregon. She found her love for birding after careful studies of a Great Blue Heron in her local park. Julia loves reading, walking, and talking with the animals that cross her path. She is a freelance journalist who enjoys helping people tell their stories.
