As they migrated across great distances, ancient humans may have used birdsong and bird sightings to find food and water in unseen territory. Today, attending to birds helps scientists track not only avian migration but also environmental change. Birds remain our sentinels.

Feathered Entanglements offers a rich tapestry of human-bird relations across the Indo-Pacific. In this era of uncontrolled industrialization, we have grown increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The ways in which birds feature in the daily life, symbolic systems, and material culture of humans, from pigeon keeping on the rooftops of Amman to the rituals of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, can teach us how to live with other species amid the challenges of the Anthropocene.

In a time of intensifying ecological crisis, we need, more than ever, to protect and appreciate non-human lives. Feathered Entanglements embraces the connection between humans, birds, and our shared world.

Scott E. Simon is a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa.

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Frédéric Laugrand is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval.

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