Pacific Coast Feather Co

Thor Hanson's 'Feathers': a delightful inquiry into a lightweight miracle

Book review

San Juan Island conservation biologist Thor Hanson's delightful new book "Feathers" looks at the wondrous construction and functions of feathers. Hanson discusses his book Friday at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park and Sunday at the Eagle Harbor Book Co. on Bainbridge Island.

By Irene Wanner

Special to The Seattle Times

Thor Hanson

Everything in the natural world is fair game for study, San Juan Island conservation biologist Thor Hanson writes in his delightful second book, "Feathers" (Basic Books, 336 pp., $26.99).

His first, "The Impenetrable Forest: My Gorilla Years in Uganda," won the 2008 USA Book News Award for nature writing. Feathers and gorillas might seem an odd pair of passions. But Hanson adds that ever since he saw vultures squabbling over a carcass in Kenya, the sight of their dark plumage, downy collar and bald heads (this last detail the perfect evolutionary solution for ease of cleaning themselves after feeding) made him want to write about feathers.

He then tells a story about jogging one day, hoping to discover what subject to tackle in a new book. The unmistakable scent of something decaying attracted him to a stand of trees where a bald eagle and four turkey vultures were eying a dead deer. One of the vultures flew off, dropping a flight feather, "long, dark and beautifully curved, lying there on the pavement like an open parenthesis." Feathers and vultures, clearly, had chosen Hanson's topic for him.

The result is a fascinating inquiry into one of those common things that are easy to overlook until someone shows what a miracle it is. Feathers protect birds from sun and rain, wind and cold; they display healthy males during breeding season but camouflage nesting females; they ward off bugs and bacteria; best of all, they enable flight.

The world's roughly 400 billion birds sport from 1,000 (ruby-throated hummingbird) to more than 25,000 (tundra swan) feathers each. In most species, they outweigh the skeleton's dry weight 2 to 1.

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Pacific Coast law journal, containing all the decisions of the Supreme Court of California, and the important decisions of the U.S. Circuit and U.S. District Courts for the District of California, and of the U.S. Supreme Court and higher courts of other states