Audubon Magazine / Fall 2021

This Stunning Collection of Bird Portraits Explores the Nature of Beauty

Photographer Tim Flach's new book invites us to marvel at the sheer diversity of avian species.

Knobbed Hornbills are endemic to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Their brilliant facial colors are produced by a combination of red and yellow carotenoid pigments and nano structured blue collagen fibers in the skin. Like many hornbills, they have extravagant eyelashes that would be the envy of any fashion model. Avian eyelashes are really specialized bristle feathers on the margins of the upper and lower eyelids that help keep debris out of birds’ eyes. Knobbed Hornbills feed on fruit and nest in cavities of enormous tropical forest trees, making them acutely vulnerable to deforestation. Photo: Tim Flach

By Richard O. Prum

Contributor, Audubon Magazine

Published Fall 2021

The diversity of birds continues to amaze us. Their colorful plumages, fascinating ecologies, and complex behaviors enrich our lives and challenge our imaginations. In an entrancing collection, Birds (Abrams, November 2, 2021), photographer Tim Flach invites us to wonder anew at avian diversity—capturing with his camera awe-inspiring images of natural phenomena that I explore in the book’s accompanying text.

With their sensuous textures, striking color patterns, and whimsical highlights, birds’ beauty certainly delights us, but its real audience is birds themselves. Avian ornaments have evolved through their capacity to intrigue, entrance, inform, and attract mates. In this way, birds are agents in their own evolution.

Birds have complex, four-color visual systems and intricate social lives filled with rich opportunities for intimate individual interactions. As a result, they have evolved a tremendous diversity of plumage and facial ornaments that function in their social and sexual communication.

Below are just a handful of the stunning species we feature in the book: