Jacqui

“Each spring the robins nesting in our cherry tree attack the side mirror of our car as if it were a rival, pecking furiously at their own reflections while streaking the door with guano. But who among us hasn’t been toppled by our vanity or made an enemy of our own image?”
― Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds

“In some cities, you can find smoked cigarette butts in sparrow nests, which effectively function as a parasite repellent. Butts from smoked cigarettes retain large amounts of nicotine and other toxic substances, including traces of pesticides that repel all kinds of harmful creepy crawlies—an apparently ingenious new use of materials.”
― Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds

“We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“What kind of intelligence allows a bird to anticipate the arrival of a distant storm? Or find its way to a place it has never been before, though it may be thousands of miles away? Or precisely imitate the complex songs of hundreds of other species? Or hide tens of thousands of seeds over hundreds of square miles and remember where it put them six months later? (I would flunk these sorts of intelligence tests as readily as birds might fail mine.)”
― Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds