In The Genius of Birds acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. Consider as Ackerman does the Clark's nutcracker a bird that can hide as many as 30000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds and thrashers species that can store 200 to 2000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; the well-known pigeon which knows where it's going even thousands of miles from familiar territory; and the New Caledonian crow an impressive bird that makes its own tools. This elegant scientific investigation and travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science.