"Birds are extraordinary creatures by almost any measure. But they are especially impressive when we are so brash as to compare them to ourselves in their astonishingly diverse ways of becoming parents and of parenting. We need three or four decades to accomplish what birds of many species routinely accomplish in less than a month—court, mate, build a nest, lay from one to about twenty eggs, incubate them, and then feed and protect them to adulthood. In some cases birds also provider their offspring's education. They may have to tens of thousands of miles just to start the nesting season."