The Beak of the Finch

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time is a book on evolution written for the layman by Jonathan Weiner. The finches of the title are Galapagos Finches or 'Darwin's Finches,' passerine songbirds in the Galapagos Islands. The adaptations of their numerous species, in three genera, exploiting several ecological niches in the rugged and dry Galápagos Islands provided evidence to Charles Darwin that “species are not immutable.”

The author Jonathan Weiner follows the career of two biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, who have spent twenty years proving that Charles Darwin did not know the full strength of his theory of evolution. On a desert island among the Galapagos, Daphne Major, the Grants are showing that among the finches of the Galapagos, natural selection sometimes takes place so rapidly we can watch it at work.