Birds Up Close with Lorna Gibson: Author Talk and Book Signing

Have you ever wondered how birds work? Lorna Gibson's new book, Birds Up Close: An Engineer Explores Their Hidden Wonders, draws on her experience as a professor of engineering at MIT and as a lifelong birder, to describe how birds work from an engineering perspective. Feathers, bones, bills, eggs, flight: all come in for scrutiny, sometimes at the microscopic scale, sometimes at a more macroscopic scale.

Join Lorna as she shares highlights from her book, including how the microscopic structure of feathers give rise to their remarkable properties—like the bright red of a male Cardinal and the iridescent reds and greens of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, how they keep birds warm and dry—providing excellent down insulation against heat loss, how they form the aerodynamic shape of the wing to enable flight, and so much more.