Noah Strycker > Quotes

“Birds teach us that borders are just lines drawn on a map— a lesson we can all take to heart.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“After all, a healthy adult owl needs about five lemmings a day just to stay alive (which makes you wonder: Does a snowy owl wake up in the morning and think, “Yes! A lemming for breakfast! And brunch! And lunch! And two for dinner!”).”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“For a while, homing pigeons were most notable for their use in military operations. When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, a swift-flying carrier pigeon delivered the message from present-day Belgium across the English Channel to Count Rothschild, of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who was apparently the first person in England to hear the news. The quick-thinking count made several critical financial decisions and amassed a considerable fortune based on his advance knowledge of the outcome of Napoleon’s last campaign.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“Sure, we can never know whether or not real altruism exists in this universe, but wouldn't it be wise for us–considering the bleak alternative–to take a cue from fairy-wrens, and act as if it did?”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“Does physics underlie even the spontaneous, beautiful displays of life on earth? The answer depends, in a sense, on whether you believe math is discovered or invented; whether it's a pervasive force, guiding every action in this universe, or whether logic is imposed by the human brain.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“Perhaps restlessness has a genetic component. If so, emigrants would be expected to establish populations with more wanderlust in their DNA than those back at home. Scientists have identified one particular allele, called 7R, of our DRD4 gene that may fit this description; it has been linked to attention deficit disorder and attraction to novelty, earning its nickname: the risk gene. Research has documented that people with the 7R allele take 25 percent more financial risk than those without it. Tellingly, the allele tends to be more concentrated in recently established populations (in terms of historic human expansion): Most people in the Americas have it, a few in Europe do, and it is rare in parts of Asia. People with this “wanderlust gene” may be literally hardwired to seek new experiences.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“The aesthetics alone are inspiring. New York–based photographer Richard Barnes, best known for his starkly artistic portraits of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, released a captivating collection of black-and-white images of starling flocks over Rome in 2005. His photos are carefully framed against urban horizons. Some are simply beautiful, others sinister and Hitchcockian, but all are somehow magnetic (more on that later). In a statement accompanying Barnes’s images, author Jonathan Rosen observes, “Part of the fascination of the starlings is the way they seem to be inscribing some sort of language in the air, if only we could read it.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“The importance of natural diversity in this tiny nation cannot be overstated. It’s even written in the constitution: Ecuador is the only country in the world to recognize “Rights of Nature”—the idea that ecosystems have inalienable rights, just like people do—at the highest legal level. “Nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence,” states Article 71 of the country’s constitution, in accordance with the Ecuadorian concept of Buen Vivir, which emphasizes harmony with other people and nature above material development.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“Judging by the roadside shops, Ghana was quite a God-fearing country. As we drove through a city called Kumasi, I noted the Saint Computer Service, By His Grace Phones, With God Carpentry Works Shop, God Is in Control Sewing and Decoration, the Sweet Mother Bar, and—leaving nothing to chance—the Holy Driving Institute. I pointed out a store called the Nothing But Christ Electrical Shop to Kalu.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“For me, that afternoon, the Marvelous Spatuletail represented something far beyond a single bird. It distilled the whole experience of Peru, incarnated in avian form— all of the rough, raw material of an entire country compressed into one bright and shining diamond.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“Theft seems to be a persistent personality trait. Rossini was inspired to write an opera in the early 1800s called La Gazza Ladra—The Thieving Magpie—and people who have an unusual preoccupation with shiny objects are said to have “magpie syndrome.” This thieving reputation may be part folktale, but the birds do occasionally swipe things, often for no obvious purpose. When a magpie was caught stealing a customer’s car keys at a garage in Littleborough, England, it made the Manchester Evening News, and also in Britain, The Telegraph reported in 2008 that a magpie had snatched a woman’s $5,000 platinum engagement ring from her windowsill while she was in the shower—luckily, her husband-to-be found it tucked safely in the bird’s nest in a nearby oak tree, albeit three years later! One of the most intriguing behaviors of wild magpies involves their apparent habit of holding impromptu funerals. Sometimes, when a magpie finds a dead comrade, it will begin squawking at full volume, calling in all other magpies in the area, which join in an intense racket as they gather around the body. At some point, they all go quiet; there follows a period of contemplation, during which time different individuals will sometimes gently probe or preen the carcass, before each bird silently takes its leave, one by one.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“Palm oil, squeezed from nuts produced on squat trees, is used in half of all supermarket products—including lipstick, soap, chocolate, instant noodles, bread, detergent, and ice cream—and labeled under a host of names, such as vegetable oil, vegetable fat, glyceryl, and Elaeis guineensis (the plant’s scientific name). Just today, you’ve probably eaten palm oil, washed your clothes with it, and rubbed it on your scalp, skin, and teeth. The stuff is ubiquitous—it’s even an ingredient in biofuels—but nearly invisible. Few people realize how much palm oil they consume, and even fewer know where it comes from. The global demand has doubled in the past decade and is expected to double again by 2050, “at the expense of tropical forest,” according to the World Wildlife Fund.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“Expertise comes from focusing on a single region or taxonomic group, or even just one species. There is no such thing as “the greatest birder in the world”—and even if such a determination could be made, it probably wouldn’t be the guy with the most notches on his binocs, me included.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“He was right, of course. When all birds are created equal, no bird is worth a significant amount of time. It’s an age-old tradeoff: you can go narrow and deep, or broad and shallow, but you can’t focus in all dimensions at once.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“The famous golfer Walter Hagen, perhaps the first athlete ever to earn a million dollars, recognized the need to slow down once in a while. He might even have been pondering hummingbirds when he once quipped: “Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“Along with other members of the corvid family—crows, ravens, jackdaws, rooks, jays, nutcrackers, treepies, and choughs—magpies have long been thought by scientists to be among the world’s smartest birds, with parrots a close second, and among the most intelligent of all animals.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“Magpies are well known for taunting larger animals, especially pets. They are probably just trying to drive off a perceived predator, but sometimes they seem to consciously trick other creatures with mean-spirited mind games. One BBC documentary featured a pet magpie that loved to torment two domestic dogs by imitating the alarm call of ducks on the pond outside his house; this would invariably send the poor canines scrambling outside to chase a nonexistent fox—because the ducks often called warnings to one another when the fox passed by. Another pair of magpies once repeatedly taunted a cat along a busy country road in Britain by perching in a tree, waiting for a break in traffic, and then flying down to the pavement to lure the kitty into the road; when a car approached, the birds would flutter up at the last second while the cat scrambled to avoid becoming roadkill.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“The bee hummingbird, which lives in Cuba, weighs as little as 1.8 grams—about a third as much as a sheet of printer paper. You could mail sixteen of them for the price of a single postage stamp.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“They are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a twenty-five-year-old adventurer who visited Cape Crozier in 1911 during Robert Scott’s ill-fated South Pole expedition. “Their little bodies are so full of curiosity,” he observed, “that they have little room for fear.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

“So what does a list measure, if not expertise or talent? Some argue that a list is only a metric of the depth of one’s pockets and the free time to empty them. Those critics have a point, but I think a list is grander than that: besides reflecting how many places a person has traveled, it measures the desire to see those places and those birds firsthand. A list, in other words, is a personal account of dreams and memories. It conveys poetry and passion and inspiration.”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“Spotlighting for animals at night, you’re looking for their luminous eyes. Eyeshine is technically an effect of the tapetum lucidum, a layer of tissue behind the retina of some vertebrate animals that reflects light, allowing the eye’s photoreceptors a second chance to process incoming signals. This gives nocturnal species their superior low-light vision, and the tissue is highly visible: if you direct light at an animal with a tapetum lucidum, its eyes will seem to glow in the dark. The color varies by species, and you can often guess the type of animal by its eyeshine. Cat and dog eyes glow iridescent green; horses and cows are blue; fish are white; and coyotes, rodents, and birds are red. (Primates, including humans, don’t have a tapetum lucidum, so you won’t see any eyeshine by spotlighting a person. The redeye effect in powerful flash photos is a reflection of blood vessels at the back of the eyeball.)”
― Noah Strycker, Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World

“Those few individuals quickly multiplied across the continent into a population of 120 million, distinguishing the European starling as about the seventh most abundant bird species in North America today (after the American robin, dark-eyed junco, red-winged blackbird, red-eyed vireo, white-throated sparrow, and yellow-rumped warbler, according to Partners in Flight). Few species have ever spread so fast or multiplied so quickly—except humans.”
― Noah Strycker, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human