Book Review: Sy Montgomery shares ‘What the Chicken Knows’ in new mini hardcover

Three clucks to Sy Montgomery, who 14 years after publishing “Birdology,” is still finding ways to make money off the charming stories she told in that book about various avian species. “What the Chicken Knows,” subtitled “A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird” was a chapter in “Birdology,” but is being re-released as a mini hardcover.

Readers who haven’t read it will be, briefly, captivated. In just 67 pages (16 of which are glossy color photographs) Montgomery introduces us to her “Ladies,” the ever-changing flock of hens she raised on her New Hampshire farm for decades starting in the 1980’s. Blending her personal experiences as queen of the coop with everything you’ve ever wanted to know about chicken behavior, it’s a fun and informative way to spend an hour.

Here’s a sampling of what you’ll learn: Chickens outnumber people 4:1, they have more in common, anatomically, with dinosaurs than humans, you can mail order up to 350 different varieties of chicks, and roosters really are much meaner than hens. Montgomery sprinkles in those facts and plenty more as she shares stories about how her chickens behaved over the years and what they taught her about “how rich and varied their lives are, as fraught and joyous and changeable as our own.”

Montgomery is wary of anthropomorphizing her feathered friends, so while she names them, she also tells plenty of stories that could be rebranded for a TV show called “When Chickens Attack!” The funniest involves her minister, who makes the mistake of running his hand down one of the hens’ backs, a gesture that makes them assume a distinctive mating crouch. Across the yard, Alex “saw a moral travesty, an insult to his roosterhood: the minister was trying to have sex with his hen.” The minister survives the bloody “spurs first” attack to the back of his calves, but learns to tend his own flock.

“What the Chicken Knows” joins “A Hummingbird’s Gift” and “The Hawk’s Way” as standalone mini-books pulled from the pages of “Birdology.” Each has a new introduction by the author and would make nice stocking stuffers for bird lovers in anyone’s life.

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