Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get Headaches?: And Other Bird Questions You Know You Want to Ask

In 1983, Mike O'Connor, an out-of-work schoolteacher, opened The Birdwatcher’s General Store on Cape Cod. Since that time, he has answered thousands of questions about birds both at the store as well as in a weekly newspaper. The questions are diverse: how can I attract birds, how can I get ride of the ‘bad’ birds, why don’t woodpeckers get headaches, why are the birds dropping poop in my pool? Answering the questions has been easy; keeping a straight face has been the hard part. Finally it occurred to him that he could answer these questions once and for all, and stop being accosted at the supermarket. Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get Headaches? is the solution for the beginning birder who has a book that explains the subtle and ill-defined variation between Common and Ruddy Ground Doves, as a well-known field guide puts it, but who is really much more interested in why birds sing at 4:30 am rather than 7:00 am, or whether it’s ok to feed bread to birds, or how birds seem to rediscover your feeders so quickly when you’ve just filled them after a long vacation. Or, for that matter, why robins are not boring.