Quotes from Tim Birkhead

Touch' is a multi-faceted concept, reflecting the different types of receptors. The simplest are free nerve endings which detect pain and changes in temperature; slightly more complex are Merkel's tactile cells (which detect pressure); followed by Grandry bodies, which consist of two to four tactile cells and detect movement (velocity); and the lamellated Herbst corpuscles (similar to Vater-Pacinian corpuscles in mammals), which are sensitive to acceleration.

Ingeniously, [Heinrich Wickmann] was able to use a pencil to mark that bit of the egg he could see inside the hen's oviduct, through its cloaca prior to laying. (I can just imagine his wife popping into his study with a cup of coffee and seeing Wickmann with his pencil up a hen's bottom: 'What are you doing, dear?' she asks...).

When I mentioned to a friend I was writing a book about eggs he told me to be sure to mention how in Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" the young Arabella incubates a sky-blue egg of a song bird in the cleavage of her bosom ... When I checked, I was disappointed to find it wasn't a song thrush egg, but that of a chicken ... The original image in my mind disintegrated like the sound of a vinyl record after the power has been turned off.

Theunis Piersma and his colleagues in the 1990s showed how red knots were able to detect tiny immobile bivalves (like mussels and clams) hidden in sand. When the bird pushes its beak into wet sand it generates a pressure wave in the minute amounts of water lying between the sand grains. This pressure wave is disrupted by solid objects, such as bivalves, which block the flow of water, thereby creating a 'pressure disturbance' detectable by the bird.

Working on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, Beissinger's study species was the wonderfully named pearly-eyed thrasher – a common thrush-like bird.

Science is described as a search for… on the basis of the available scientifice evidence, we currently believe. Changing your mind in the light of new ideas or better evidence constitutes cientific progress. … on the basis of the current evidence this is what we believe to be true.

In a final flourish, drawing on his extensive knowledge of avian anatomy, he presents a critique of the supposed morphology of divine beings: "If angels had any reality, they would be very clumsy and awkward fliers with a slow heavy flight, lacking as they are in aerodynamic shape.

Magnetic sensations are different because, unlike light and sound, they can pass through body tissues. This means that it is possible for a bird (or other organism) to detect magnetic fields via chemical reactions inside individual cells throughout its entire body.

It appears that it is the robin's ability to see contours and edges in the landscape that provides the appropriate signal to trigger the magnetic sense. Extraordinary! As one of my colleagues said: 'You couldn't make this stuff up.

Striking evidence of the ability of birds to hear the fine details of song involves the so-called 'sexy syllables' in canary song.

THERE ARE CURRENTLY VERY CLOSE TO TEN thousand species of birds in the world, both beautiful and improbable, and they have contributed more to the study of zoology than almost any other group of animals (Konishi et al. 1989). The reasons are obvious: birds are diurnal, they are often easily observed and studied, and we like them.

In a similar vein, John Videler (2006) of Leiden University suggested the "Jesus Christ dinosaur" model of flight origins, whereby protobirds may have gained advantages for both escape and foraging by running over the surface of water rather than land.