John M. Marzluff > Quotes

“Our words have no inherent meaning to a corvid; they are arbitrary, but the natural communication system of these birds also involves arbitrary symbols (calls) that refer to specific objects and actions in their world.”
― John M. Marzluff, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

“Natural selection is intolerant of idle verbosity.”
― John M. Marzluff, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

“Kay Schaffer was drawn to the window of her Dayton, Ohio, house by an early evening ruckus of crows. The birds cawed wildly as they took flight before settling in a large tree where they looked down upon a dead crow. After twenty minutes, the gathering quietly dispersed. Two weeks later, the dead crow was still untouched, but something or someone had surrounded the corpse with an outline of sticks.

-Gifts of the Crow”
― John Marzluff and Tony Angell

“pace of genetic selection, recombination,”
― John M. Marzluff, In the Company of Crows and Ravens

“Species diversity can be thought of as an insurance policy against today's environmental change and tomorrow's new evolutionary challenges.”
― John Marzluff

“Woodpeckers are natural engineers whose abandoned nest and roost cavities facilitate a great diversity of life, including birds, mammals, invertebrates, and many fungi,moss, and lichens. Without woodpeckers, birds such as chickadees and tits, swallows ans martins, bluebirds, some flycatchers, nuthatches, wood ducks, hooded mergansers, and small owls (screech, saw-whet, and pygmy) would be homeless.”
― John Marzluff

“To remember what bio-diversity is and why it is important, we must conserve nature close to where we live and work as well as develop distant reserves.”
― John Marzluff

“Better choices require some thought and sacrifice but are respectful of other thoughtful and innovative animals with which we live. And ultimately our tough choices will sustain our natural diversity.”
― John M. Marzluff, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

“One of the riskiest nations on that list is the United States, where our actions threaten 14 percent of 8,812 assessed plants and animals with extinction and 283 species (3 percent) are known to have gone extinct.”
― John M. Marzluff, In Search of Meadowlarks: Birds, Farms, and Food in Harmony with the Land

“In a world where so much of our natural heritage is being lost, why not celebrate the few bright spots where it is surviving and adapting?”
― John M. Marzluff, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

“Imagine the world from a bird’s perspective. Sounds that we cannot discern play in slow motion to a bird’s musical ears, enabling it to discriminate messages hidden to us. Most objects loom large to birds’ small bodies, but they can fly through, around, or over large barriers, giving them unique perspective and the ability to explore fine detail. Their speed and agility make the living world seem slow, whether they are hovering to sip nectar, perching to spy a mouse, or sailing on a breeze as they eye a child fumbling with a sandwich.”
― John M. Marzluff, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

“Those of us who retain dead trees or place nest boxes in our yards enjoy the wonder of watching woodpeckers listen and dig for termites; we are serenaded by wrens; and we benefit from the appetites of swallow, chickadee, bluebird, and flycatcher broods that are sated on insects, including pesky mosquitoes.”
― John Marzluff

“The acute attention that ravens pay to our subtle signals underscores the degree to which they can draw conclusions from our body language. They perceive our intentions even though we may not be consciously aware of them.”
― John M. Marzluff, Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans