Ten Birds That Changed the World by Stephen Moss review – on a wing and a prayer | Science and nature books

Taking a numerical approach to the natural world – as in Simon Barnes’s History of the World in 100 Plants, for example – is a handy way to carve off a manageable slice from a potential plethora of examples. There are, for instance, nearly 10,000 bird species worldwide. In his new book, naturalist Stephen Moss wisely chooses just 10, but in doing so tells the story of the long relationship between birds and humanity – and it has mostly been a disastrous one.

Egrets, for instance, were hunted almost to extinction for their snow-white feathers, or aigrettes, which became the accessory of choice for wealthy women. During the first three months of 1885, 750,000 skins of little and snowy egrets were auctioned in London. In China, Mao Tse-Tung ordered the mass extermination of sparrows as part of a campaign against the Four Pests (the other targets were rats, flies and mosquitos). Some 1bn birds were slaughtered – one boy became a national hero for single-handedly strangling 20,000 sparrows with his bare hands. This led to their near extinction and contributed indirectly to the Great Famine that killed between 15 and 55 million people, since the sparrows were no longer available to prey on the insects that ruined crops.

Egrets were not the only species that earned human beings huge profits. In one fascinating chapter, Moss tells the story of the Guanay cormorant and the astronomical sums made from their nitrogen- and phosphate-rich poop – or brown gold, as it was called. Between 1840 and 1879, at today’s values, an estimated £6.1 to £9.1bn worth of guano in today’s money was shipped from Peru. Thousands of indentured workers died in terrible conditions harvesting it.

The book is packed with remarkable facts and figures like this. But Moss is also a companionable narrator, often mixing personal recollections into the science and natural history, such as his trip as a boy to the Tower of London with his mother, where he first saw the ravens, which have been associated with the site since medieval times. He later returned to meet Christopher Skaife, the official ravenmaster at the Tower.

The chapter on ravens – which match great apes in their ability to perform complex tasks and Moss rates as “more inspiring than any other species on the planet” – is one of the best in the book. There is also a remarkable section on Darwin’s finches. I approached this with an incipient yawn, thinking I had heard it all before. But Moss turns the story on its head, showing that the story of the Galápagos finches’ seminal role in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is, in fact, a myth. Indeed, it was only much later that naturalists Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent years studying the colony of finches on the island of Daphne Major, showed how natural selection took place among finches in real time, and at speed.

Flowing like an underground stream beneath the entire book is arguably the greatest manmade threat that birds now face: the climate crisis. The melting of sea ice in Antarctica means that the breeding cycle of emperor penguins is being disrupted, with the result that penguin chicks are put at risk of drowning. The food sources on which they depend are also dwindling. Many other bird species are threatened. “When we mess with nature,” says Moss, “we do so at our peril: the emperors may go extinct first, but they foretell our own, not-so-distant, future.”

Taking a numerical approach to the natural world – as in Simon Barnes’s History of the World in 100 Plants, for example – is a handy way to carve off a manageable slice from a potential plethora of examples. There are, for instance, nearly 10,000 bird species worldwide. In his new book, naturalist Stephen Moss wisely chooses just 10, but in doing so tells the story of the long relationship between birds and humanity – and it has mostly been a disastrous one.

Egrets, for instance, were hunted almost to extinction for their snow-white feathers, or aigrettes, which became the accessory of choice for wealthy women. During the first three months of 1885, 750,000 skins of little and snowy egrets were auctioned in London. In China, Mao Tse-Tung ordered the mass extermination of sparrows as part of a campaign against the Four Pests (the other targets were rats, flies and mosquitos). Some 1bn birds were slaughtered – one boy became a national hero for single-handedly strangling 20,000 sparrows with his bare hands. This led to their near extinction and contributed indirectly to the Great Famine that killed between 15 and 55 million people, since the sparrows were no longer available to prey on the insects that ruined crops.

Egrets were not the only species that earned human beings huge profits. In one fascinating chapter, Moss tells the story of the Guanay cormorant and the astronomical sums made from their nitrogen- and phosphate-rich poop – or brown gold, as it was called. Between 1840 and 1879, at today’s values, an estimated £6.1 to £9.1bn worth of guano in today’s money was shipped from Peru. Thousands of indentured workers died in terrible conditions harvesting it.

The book is packed with remarkable facts and figures like this. But Moss is also a companionable narrator, often mixing personal recollections into the science and natural history, such as his trip as a boy to the Tower of London with his mother, where he first saw the ravens, which have been associated with the site since medieval times. He later returned to meet Christopher Skaife, the official ravenmaster at the Tower.

The chapter on ravens – which match great apes in their ability to perform complex tasks and Moss rates as “more inspiring than any other species on the planet” – is one of the best in the book. There is also a remarkable section on Darwin’s finches. I approached this with an incipient yawn, thinking I had heard it all before. But Moss turns the story on its head, showing that the story of the Galápagos finches’ seminal role in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is, in fact, a myth. Indeed, it was only much later that naturalists Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent years studying the colony of finches on the island of Daphne Major, showed how natural selection took place among finches in real time, and at speed.

Flowing like an underground stream beneath the entire book is arguably the greatest manmade threat that birds now face: the climate crisis. The melting of sea ice in Antarctica means that the breeding cycle of emperor penguins is being disrupted, with the result that penguin chicks are put at risk of drowning. The food sources on which they depend are also dwindling. Many other bird species are threatened. “When we mess with nature,” says Moss, “we do so at our peril: the emperors may go extinct first, but they foretell our own, not-so-distant, future.”