Where Song Began

Listings

Within four weeks of its release Where Song Began had reached number 4 position on the Australian Independent Bookseller Bestseller List. It appeared on bestseller lists in the Sydney Morning Herald and Courier Mail.

Bookworld listed it as one of the 10 best books of 2014, giving it third place, with the comment that “Low distills a massive and complex amount of research into something quite readable for the everyday layperson.”

Booktopia featured it as one of the 5 best non-fiction books of that year, “The sleeper hit of 2014”.

Readings bookstore had it as one of the 10 best non-fiction books of 2014.It appeared in the Courier Mail as one of the 30 best books of 2014, with a description of it as “A completely engaging book.”

In the Sydney Morning Herald Tim Flannery listed it as his favourite book of the year, with the comment that it “took a familiar subject and revealed it in a completely new light.”

In the Sydney Morning Herald, and Australian Book Review, poet Robert Adamson nominated it as his favourite book of 2014, describing it as “stunning”.

In the US, the book appears in 4th place on a Nature Conservancy list of “essential reading for the bird-brained bibliophile.”

It appears on a University of California Berkeley summer reading list.

Prize shortlistings are mentioned in the next column.

Reviews

In a lead review published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Sean Dooley offered these comments:

“Low has produced a brilliantly readable book that not only gives Australian birds recognition long overdue, but allows for a fresh understanding of the way the world (and particularly our island continent) functions.”

“One of the main achievements of Australian biologist Tim Low in his impressive new book, Where Song Began, is to turn the world upside down when it comes to how we regard Australian birds.”

“Tim Low is the rare author who is able to turn complex and sophisticated research into a form digestible to the general reader without ‘dumbing down’ the science.”

The book received strong praise from Tim Flannery, in a very long review in the The New York Review of Books, which ends with this:

“Where Song Began provides a novel interpretation of Australia’s avifauna that will enrich the understanding of anyone interested in birds. As a professional biologist familiar with much of its matter I found myself astonished again and again.”

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Bob Beale said:

“This book is a great poke in the eye to anyone who says non-fiction books are the living dead in the age of Google. Where Song Began is a serious feat of synthesis that few bird observers or natural historians – let alone few authors – would have the knowledge, experience, time or access to academic resources to pull together.”

In a very long lead review published in The Australian, Nicolas Rothwell emphasised the book’s role in improving understanding of the Australian environment:

“Biologist Tim Low is as much a natural with words as he is a scholar of the natural world. He is caught up in the circle of gifted scientists, ecologists and field workers engaged in reshaping our picture of the Australian environment and the creatures it enfolds. Birds are a particular focus of his work, and thought – and it turns out that birds may well hold the most telling clues to the record of the Australian biosphere.”

In a major review in the Journal Emu, Naomi Longmore wrote this:

“This book is remarkable on many levels. First, Low proves to be a master at translating new scientific breakthroughs into a compelling and eminently enjoyable read that will bring a new perspective on Australian birds to readers irrespective of their ornithological background. Second, the diversity of sources drawn upon by Low make for a lively read, with the discussion skipping seamlessly between personal anecdotes, historical accounts, quotes from Shakespeare, the fossil record, Indigenous folklore, and scientific facts and figures. Third, the astonishing depth and breadth of the research that has gone into this book guarantee that there is much that’s new to learn about Australia’s birds for even the most avid ornithologist. More than anything, I enjoyed and admired Low’s ‘big picture’ approach, which although sometimes speculative, is bold and thought-provoking, and has much in common with the breadth of scope in Jared Diamond’s books on human evolution. No book could be more appropriate for the readership of Emu Austral Ornithology!”

In Wildlife Australia, biologist Darryl Jones wrote this:

“Where Song Began will be regarded as Tim Low’s masterpiece. It is bewilderingly grand in ambition, rich in scientific detail and personal observations, and overflowing with ideas and, indeed, revelations.”

In another review by a biologist, in Australian Book Review, Peter Menkhorst described the book as “important and illuminating”. He went on to say this:

“Far from being yet another book about Australian birds, Tim Low has produced an original, quirky, and thought-provoking overview of Australia’s bird fauna, actually of Australia’s biota, aimed at a general readership. Importantly, he has achieved this with scientific validity intact. Read it and change the way you look at the Australian bush and its inhabitants.”

In the March 2017 issue of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, William E. Davis wrote that ‘Low is to be congratulated for producing this very idea-rich ecological tapestry. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found it very thought provoking.”

In December 2016 it was reviewed in Britain’s Literary Review, which described it as an“Illuminating and engaging study.”

In a review in BBC Wildlife magazine, leading bird author Jonathan Elphick was very approving: “I discovered revelations in each of these 12 chapters. The book is written by a biologist with a gift for translating complex scientific research into riveting prose.”

In a November review in America’s Bird Watcher’s Digest it earned this praise:

“Books about ecology and evolutionary biology are rarely so entertaining and engrossing, but Low is a story-teller, and nearly every page offers a compelling, often shocking, story.”

In October it received a recommendation from the editors of Scientific American.

In September the Open Letters Monthly declared it “one of the best works of natural history to appear all year.”

Other reviews have appeared in Canada and Costa Rica.

Many other reviews have appeared. Some reviewers have paraphrased the book in ways that are not entirely accurate. Where Song Began does not say that group-breeding is the norm in Australia or that all pigeons originated in Australia.

Extracts

An extract from the book appeared in The Weekend Australian Magazine.

Another extract appeared in Australian Birdlife magazine.

Here is a short sample of text:

“The birds in northern Europe and northern North America, where most ornithologists live, have unusually narrow habits, limited by severe winters. Territories advertised by song are held only while breeding lasts. Our sense of what the world’s birds are like was skewed by these northern birds.

This distortion was so strong that as recently as 1996 we can find an article in the Journal of Avian Biology depicting most of the world’s birds as unusual. American author Thomas Martin declared, ‘Tropical and southern hemisphere birds represent a particulary interesting and apparently paradoxical system for studying life history evolution.’ Insights eluded him because his every question was inverted. ‘Is food more limiting in the tropics and southern hemisphere?’ he asked, not ‘Is food especially plentiful in the northern summers?’, which it is, since insects peak then.”