The Hindu Business Line : Feel lucky to be called bird-brained!

Bird may well be the last word you'd like to type for news search these days. Unless you're prepared to get swamped by more than 6,000 reports on bird flu. For a change, therefore, you can think of taking a dip into Adele Nozedar's The Secret Language of Birds, from HarperCollins.

"The language of birds is very ancient, and like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood," reads a quote of Gilbert White, with which the book opens.

"Legend has it that Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, the great communicator, actually invented the alphabet by watching the flight patterns of birds," says the book, dipping into `a treasury of myths, folklore and inspirational true stories'.

Homo sapiens is a relative newcomer to the world. We are only 35,000 years old, compared to birds, which have been here for 150 million years, says the author!

All the while, the birds have been calling and chirping, singing and cooing. If you `watch, listen and understand,' you can understand the secret lingo of birds, assures Nozedar. Take care, however, because the language is "a sort of code, relying on wordplay, puns, coded messages and double meanings, which would appear to give the key to many hidden secrets and mysteries."

Birds can convey messages, literally too, as carriers of post. Amazingly, "a healthy pigeon can fly stretches of up to 1,000 km." Wikipedia informs that remote police departments in Orissa employed homing pigeons `to provide emergency communication services following natural disasters'.

Not any longer, it looks like; because "in March 2002, it was announced that India's Police Pigeon Service messenger system in Orissa was to be retired," says http://en.wikipedia.org. "During the Second World War, Allied pigeons held the rank of Captain and would be buried with full military honours," informs a blurb in the book.

Fooled by the phrase `bird-brain' explained as `a stupid person,' as in Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, one may tend to underestimate the potential of birds. "In fact, the opposite is true," avers the author. Raven, for instance, have `tool-making and using capabilities' on par with primates, he says.

"And cunning crows have been known to steal fish from fishermen by pulling up the lines when the fishermen were looking in the opposite direction."

Going by brain-to-body ratio, "if crows were human, their average intelligence quotient (IQ) would be 135," as against the average human IQ of 100. So much so, you should feel lucky to be called bird-brained.

Birds have special senses far beyond human reach. How else do you think they can fly halfway round the globe and return to the same place? Birds gain information from subtle clues such as the stars and the position of the planets, explains Nozedar.

A relatively recent discovery is that the hoopoe can detect `piezo-electrical charges in the atmosphere, which can presage lightning storms'. Time resolution of birds is said to be ten times more efficient than that of humans; as a result, "what we hear as one sound could actually be ten different sounds for the bird."

What is tragic is that in the last 400 years `over 100 species of birds have become extinct'. Of the 10,000 or so species of birds we have in the world, more than 10 per cent face the threat of extinction, informs Nozedar.

In some species of parrots, `there may be less than ten of each bird left in the world'. The number of Indian vultures has dwindled `by a massive 95 per cent' in about a decade, mainly because `pesticides and chemical in the tanning process' have proved fatal for these self-appointed scavenger birds.

"It seems ironic that the vulture, despite having a bellyful of powerful anti-bacterial agents that can withstand the very worst kinds of contagion evident within rotting carcasses, is being killed outright by man-made chemicals," writes Nozedar wryly.

A book that can make bird-lovers of the lay.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in