Taking Flight by Lev Parikian

4.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
In the headlong rush that is modern life these days, we rarely stop and take to time to actually look at the natural world around us. It was one of these moments at home when Lev Parikian was looking at the bird feeder in the garden when it dawned on him that the blue tit flew. It was something that he instinctively knew but had never really thought about. At all.

“The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” – Douglas Adams

This ability to move through the air in defiance of the gravity that holds us in place we have overcome with the modern wonders of aeronautical engineering, but for the other creatures of this planet, some of them have been flying for at least hundreds of millions of years. This is his journey of discovery of the wonders of flight.

He begins with mayflies. These have been emerging from rivers with the sole purpose of finding a mate for the past 300 million years. Waiting for them are trout and birds who will be gorging themselves on the feast that has appeared. Even though they are primitive flying insects, they were not the first to take to the air. That is thought to be an insect that could fly around 100 million years before, but there are huge gaps in the fossil record, so this is not something anyone can categorically confirm.
From the mayflies, he explores the insect world and there are further chapters on butterflies, beetles bees and the amazing masters of the air that are dragonflies, one of the few animals that can fly backwards. Each of the chapters is stuffed full of the amazing things that he has found out during his research for the book and I found it fascinating.

The next animals that learnt how to fly are from the age of the dinosaurs. I had always thought that pterodactyls were dinosaurs too, but it turns out that I was wrong. These were the first flying vertebrates and we know a little about them but with huge gaps in the fossil record, there is a lot that is speculative. One fact that I thought was quite amusing is that the baby pterosaurs are known as flaplings. In the mass extinction event that happened 66 million years ago, these were wiped out. The dinosaurs weren’t though, these are the birds that are still with us.

This would have given them a posture, while walking, not dissimilar to a folding canvas picnic chair. Pick it up by the tail, give it a shake, and it might unfold with a click.

The final chapters are about one of his obsessions, birds. Ironically he begins with the flightless birds and penguins, and he rightly asks the question, why if you had gone to the effort of evolving to fly would you abandon it? This is one of the questions that we may never know the answer too, but the natural world is very good at filling niches.

Out of the 10,000 of so species of birds in the world, he has had to be really strict and keep it to a few, so there are chapters on geese, pigeons, albatross and the hummingbird. But he does allow some others to sneak in while we are not paying attention, and he does manage to include his beloved swifts. The final chapter is about the only other flying mammal, the bat, though it is an amusing anecdote that all mammals that have flying in their name, i.e. flying squirrel, don’t fly, but glide.

This is another really enjoyable book by Parikian. If you have read and liked his other books then you will probably like this too, I know I did. If you are hoping for a cold and clinical book about the mechanics of flight from the very first insects to the feather marvels that we see in the sky then this is probably not the book for you.

If you are looking for a book that describes the continual wonder the author has in any creature that can take to the air and fly then you may have found your gateway. Any book that quotes Douglas Adams is onto a winner in my opinion. There is a little less whimsy and humour in this compared to his other books, but that said, it is still here and it really did make me laugh as usual.