Good morning Mark,
Just writing to thank you for the excellent ‘A message from Martha‘ which I have just finished reading this morning (I know it’s been around a while – I’ve been busy!). I’ve never been particularly excited by pigeons – especially dead ones- but I was stirred to read your book partly by a vague and distant memory of an animated film I recall seeing at school in the seventies (around the time of the infamous Kevin Keegan perm!).
The book is a hugely enjoyable combination of natural history, eulogy and travelogue. You gained an extra brownie point for mentioning my native Lincolnshire.
More broadly thank you for your work in environmental campaigning – particularly with Wild Justice (you must get some unpleasant ‘feedback’ from some quarters).
Your efforts are admired and much appreciated.
In some ways, in fact in quite a lot of ways, I think ‘A Message from Martha‘ is my best book – but it does depend what sort of mood I’m in. It was written in 2013 so that it would appear in 2014 to coincide with the centenary of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, a native bird of North American forests which a few decades earlier had been the most numerous bird on this planet.
2013 was a long time ago, even 2014 was a long time ago, but books live on and it’s just lovely to get an email like this one, completely out of the blue, from someone who has come across the words that were in my head all those years back – and enjoyed them, and felt moved enough by them actually to tell the author.
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Agree. It’s a good read. But more importantly, it’s an important read.
Woodpigeons not singing much here this August. That’s odd because now is the height of their nesting season. Their chanting should be filling the soundscape until we’re all oblivious of it.
I wonder what the song of the Passenger Pigeon sounded like. The bird must have created the mightiest of all dawn choruses ever.
Martha’s message is important and relevant to the remaining vaquitas. As is the quote at the beginning of chapter 4.
And Melomys rubicola. It was only a rat.