Physics, Birding and Blindness

So I’ve had some very nice reviews of my book, The Physics of Birds and Birding. I am very grateful for these, and they have been coming from birding organizations, birders, bloggers, and several ornithology journals.

On a recent podcast, the American Birding Association had three reviewers good through their top five birding books of 2025, and I’m thrilled that I made the cut for one of them! That podcast can be found here.

Others have added:

While I confess that I have always found the physics of optical lenses to be dry and hard to follow, I found Hurben’s discussions on this subject to be the clearest and most engaging I’ve ever seen in my four decades of teaching physics. [T]he many figures in this book… are models of clarity and pedagogy.—Prof. James Kakalios, author of The Phsyics of Eveyday Things, Wilson Journal of Ornithology

Avian aerodynamics, birding beam widths, corvid calculus, duck dynamics — Hurben takes us through the alphabet of physics on the wings of birds. I am a physicist and lifelong birder, and have learned a lot about both from this extraordinary and engaging book. —Dr. Mark Denny, author of Long Hops: Making Sense of Bird Migration

Hurben takes the science of physics to a whole new dimension with his book that ties physics to the birds around us. —Carrol Henderson, author of Birds in Flight: The Art and Science of How Birds Fly

The Physics of Birds and Birding is an incredible journey through the universe of ornithology. Not only for physicists, this book offers fantastic insights into the colors, patterns, songs, flying skills and flight movements of birds. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about their hobby of bird watching. —Holger Merlitz, author of The Binocular Handbook

Masterful… Few people could write a book on this subject and very, very few could do it anything like as well as this author. —Mark Avery, author and environmental campaigner

I enjoyed reading this book and I learnt a lot. —Stephen Menzie, British Birds

I’m not going to repeat what the publishers say, except that I agree with their claims, and congratulated them on publishing this addition of birding lore… They say that Inuit peoples have dozens of words for snow… subtleties missed by those of us whose lives are not so interwoven with a frozen habitat… and this author embodies insights no less subtle. —Bo Beolens, Fatbirder

Fascinating! …the book offers a wealth of insights that can give birding interest even more depth and fascination. —Hans Meltofte, Journal of the Danish Ornithological Society

Overall, the book treats birding as a starting point for exploring physics, rather than as a practical guide to observing birds in the field, and in doing so it effectively reveals the deeper connections that underpin the natural world. If you are comfortable with physics driving the narrative, then you will find this book an engaging read – it’s full of insights that will deepen a birder’s understanding and sense of wonder about the world around them. — Caroline Brighton, British Trust for Ornithology

[T]he writing style is pleasant and readable, and the author sometimes is nicely sidetracked into weaving in some background on eminent physicists. — Kai Pflug, 10,000 Birds

So while both physicists and non-physicists have been praising the book, it is odd that the one negative review came from someone writing for a physics organization. I had been anticipating a certain kind of poor reaction, but not from this direction.

The criticism isn’t about anything in the physics itself, which would really be the main concern. I spent years refining and double- and triple-checking the details of the underlying science. My next concern would be that the prose was clunky, too cute, or worst of all, reminiscent of modern spoken English.

No, the complaint from this reviewer, called David Norman, is that a book with the word “physics” in the title dares to be about… physics.

Apparently Mr. Norman suffers from a certain haughtiness I’ve noted in a few others in my field: they think that equations, which are the meat and potatoes of our science, have no place in a popular physics book, because apparently the hoi polloi will experience great anxiety (or worse) upon seeing them. Perhaps he feels that only people of his pedigree should be allowed to view them, and that everyone else must be protected from the scary math.

This is a very arrogant stance and insulting to the reader, of course. Mr. Norman would do well to understand that there are people besides physicists who can understand equations, or who are sophisticated enough to move past them if they are not helpful. And if they need to work a bit to process them, then maybe that’s okay? I am reminded of something the brilliant John McWhorter once said: “A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect.”

An even more ridiculous criticism from this reviewer is that my book does not have any color images of birds. I suggest to this reader (looker?) that if that is what he is pining for, he might want to consult books that are advertised to do just that. For the rest of us, there is nothing in my book’s title that suggests in any way that it will be chock full of plates featuring avian photography.

I pray that Mr. Norman never opens up Robert K. Adair’s wonderful book, The Physics of Baseball, which not only contains equations, but also fails to supply any glossy color photos of baseballs, gloves, bats or players engaged in the sport. I’m guessing he’d give it a scathing review.

As so many non-physicists have managed to get through those equations without their heads exploding, and have liked the book, I’m left to give Mr. Norman’s review 0/5 stars.