Jennifer Ackerman explores the abilities of birds: to use tools, to participate in a society, to produce songs, to create beauty, to navigate distances, and to adapt to changing environments. The research she reviews reveals how bird brains are more similar to humans than previously thought, as well as how birds experience the world in ways that people can not. Littered with unanswered questions, the book ultimately tells how the large body of avian science can only begin to imagine the world of the birds.