The compelling quest to turn the green canary red

Rich in historical detail, studded with curious characters - some of them human - and brimming with scientific insights. The Red Canary reads like a fine novel Matt Ridley Takes a small episode from history and draws a surprisingly important lesson from it, in an elegant and diverting way Sunday Telegraph His grasp of the science involved is to be expected from a professor of behaviour and evolution. What is more surprising is his capacity to make it not just comprehensible but fascinating, but making his own genetic cross of science, philosophy, history, sociology and narrative New Statesman

Tim Birkhead is a professor at the University of Sheffield where he teaches animal behaviour and the history of science. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and his research has taken him all over the world in the quest to understand the lives of birds. He has written for the Independent, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife. Among his other books are Promiscuity, Great Auk Islands, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Birds which won the McColvin medal, and most recently, Bird Sense. He is married with three children and lives in Sheffield.