A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds (2022 BookTube Prize for Nonfiction - Group G)

 A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul is a science and nature nonfiction book about the most recent science of bird migration. The book largely focuses on the people who are tracking and obtaining this information about birds, the technology that is helping them, and the fantastic feats and stories of the birds themselves who are at the heart of this science. Weidensaul has been a science writer (first working for newspapers and then writing books) and a citizen ornithologist and conservation scientist for 30+ years and his specialty is bird migration. As a field researcher, it is clear when reading this book that a lot of his expertise is in technical details and experiences of fieldwork, and he does an impressive job of telling a compelling story about some pretty stunning scientific details and phenomena.

    Listening to this book on audio, it was easy to tell that the prose is of a nice, readable quality, similar to good science journalism with a bit of nature-memoir tossed into the mix. The chapters do build upon each other and reference prior concepts, although the thesis of the book feels kind of vague. The book is 400 pages, but there are no real arguments or strong recommendations that the author seems to espouse during the telling. Weidensaul’s background is in natural history journalism and he came up as a journalist in the late twentieth century, so it is unsurprising to me that his writing has a formal journalistic feel. Weidensaul mostly avoids claiming a specific editorial perspective or recommendations for the reader. This is definitely a common convention of writing of this kind, although I have my own feelings on whether objectivity is possible in this context.

    The scientific information in this book is interesting and serves Weidensaul’s overall point which is that birds are awesome in the dictionary sense of the word and deserve our respect, appreciation, and support. The scientific material in the book is also accessible to a layperson, in mine (and my husband’s) opinion, because the author uses each chapter to tell a story about a specific community of birds and uses that story to highlight a topic relevant to the overall fields of ornithology and migration science. The scientific material is often related to technology (different kinds of trackers), bird behaviors and characteristics, data science, and some physics, with a sparse sprinkling of climate science and general ecology. The breadth of the scientific information covered in this book was pretty stunning, but there is very little intermingling of other sciences (social, political, economic) or personal perspectives on the material, which were my major critiques of the book.


    Coming back to the thesis and the authorial voice, while the prose sometimes reads as objective and removed from personal opinion, the author’s own privilege is present throughout the book, and yet the thesis is pretty vague and leaves a lot up to general interpretation. As a reader, it is clear to me that Weidensaul has a background and perspective that is very different from my own because of what he says and doesn’t say about gender, race, and class within this book. It’s not a problem at all that Weidensaul has different perspectives and experiences from my own, but it is critical to me that nonfiction be clear about the author’s perspective in order to be straightforward with the reader. Especially with hard science writing (but really with any academic writing) it is impossible for me to 100% endorse the opinions of a writer who has failed to take their own position into account — this is just frankly bad science as you aren’t controlling for as many variables as possible. Pretending journalistic objectivity is not the same as being up-front with your readers about your personal situation, and I don’t know that Weidensaul did this consciously as a writer, but it makes me extra aware of where his perspective differs from my own and others and how that may influence his arguments and discussion of the science in the book. Additionally, the book takes us on a long journey to sort of get to the question of what we can do to impact bird species decline, and I feel like the answer that Weidensaul leaves us with is essentially: keep measuring and tracking what is happening and addressing with local conservation efforts when possible. This is a pretty lackluster response after a 400-page book espousing just how fucking amazing these birds are!

    Here is where we get to the critique of this book that really has me heated, because ultimately I think the scientific ideas shared in this book are critically flawed and incomplete in their diagnosis of the causes of bird species collapse. Weidensaul largely ignores some major factors directly contributing to both the growing technology and information infrastructure for tracking bird migration and the shocking declines in many migratory species that he has personally observed as a field researcher: colonialism/neocolonialism and capitalism. The same money that pays for a lot of conservation funding these days was extracted from the resources and labor of people across the world, and many of these places are now seeing environmental, social, and economic challenges that are wreaking havoc on local humans and animals. To ignore the systems underpinning these problems is really to leave the reader wondering what Weidensaul thinks causes these problems. Although the author doesn’t openly blame specific groups of people, he is pretty clear to mention numerous criminal elements and corruption in non-Western countries, while remaining pointedly moot on such issues when discussing the U.S. and parts of Europe. When covering the Pacific Northwest, Weidensaul fails to mention that unsustainable farming practices and monocultures have been driven by corporate greed, even as individual farmers and their land are increasingly more exploited, and indigenous peoples are having their water and resources stolen from them. I walked away from this book feeling strongly that there was pro-Western bias that colored much of this book.

    In one particularly painful chapter, Weidensaul recounts the woes of a European ornithologist who completed field research in the Sahel region for many years. The Sahel is a massive region comprising parts of 14 countries including Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. In a cringeworthy paragraph, Weidensaul writes of this ornithologist that they were very disappointed to discontinue their field work due to destabilization in the region. Weidensaul then quotes the ornithologist who explains that the destabilization (which is never described in detail) has made the region particularly unsafe for white tourists who are likely to be kidnapped for money. To be honest, the description of this situation made my stomach turn because there was absolutely no discussion of personal privilege or even a modicum of attention paid to what the local people felt about the field research to begin with or the ongoing destabilization in the region. Don’t get me wrong, I love birds, but if you notice that migratory birds are struggling in a region over time and you also notice that the people of that region are struggling, it takes only a little insight to wonder if these struggles may be connected in some way. Perhaps the local people and local scientists have useful perspective to add about this environmental situation because they are the actual experts on their environments. Unfortunately local experts and citizen scientists of these countries were not frequently consulted throughout the book about their perspectives on the problems facing the migratory birds in their locales or the contributing issues.

    Over the course of a 400 page book there are brief and passing references to global human-induced climate change and more frequent references to human-driven die-offs related to hunting, deforestation, loss of water (due to human mismanagement and climate change), and pesticides. Weidensaul even goes as far as to openly acknowledge that these impacts are human driven, and briefly provides a socio-ecological context for the events (ex. alfalfa farmers in the Pacific Northwest killed off a major food source of predatory birds to protect their plants). What the author fails to do is make any connections with the external economic, political, and social circumstances that are causing these specific incidents across the world. In fact, in some instances this book feels very “white savior” in the sense that there are many references to white, wealthy, Western scientists going to other countries to do fieldwork and “save the birds” from the local people who are also often “gangsters,” “criminals," or lacking in education. This is frankly offensive and also strikes me as ultimately unhelpful to the birds and conservation efforts, because this book fails to address the questions about what is causing these collapses: in many cases racist and imperialist capitalism itself.

    In the final chapter of the book, Weidensaul briefly discusses how human-driven changes in social policy and economics (a shifting reliance on tourism versus a reliance on subsistence hunting, criminal punishment for killing certain birds, etc.) has caused a major comeback for a bird species in Northwestern India, but even in this final chapter there is no real reference to any of the very real geopolitical, climate, and economic shifts that have specifically rocked this region of India even in the last 60 years. It is also pretty disturbing to me that the takeaways from this chapter are “maybe start relying on tourism for money” and “let’s use police to fix nature problems” — ouch. I ultimately think a stronger scientist would have addressed the overlapping struggles between local people and local birds with a keener eye to pulling in a variety of perspectives, voices that are specifically of those regions (versus a mix of some local scientists and what seem like many wealthy hobbyist birders), and even — dare I say — initial recommendations for what a layperson could do to have an impact on the challenges or get involved with the causes discussed in this book.

    In the end, the major flaws in the thesis of this book and the lacking critical perspective in the authorial voice were enough to really downgrade a book that was still well-written and covered a very interesting subject. I wish this author had a better editor, and I really wish we got more books on conservation written by scientists and authors who do work primarily in their own lands, and who recognize how deeply connected racism, sexism, economic exploitation, and environmental degradation are to each other.

    One final note: While listening to this book, I frequently found myself wishing for visual cues for the story, specifically maps because there is a lot of discussion of pretty complex geography and flight patterns, and pictures or illustrations of the birds who sounded amazing, but were difficult to visualize. This is not a fault of the book, because I believe that the physical copy has both maps and pictures, but just a note for a reader who may be trying to choose a format. The audiobook is solid, but I definitely would have benefited from having the maps and visuals in front of me when reading this book.