This book takes eight interesting bird species, Nightjar, Manx Shearwater, Dipper, Skylark, Raven, Black-throated Diver, Lapwing and Nightingale, and describes the author’s observations of them on repeat visits to particular sites. The chapters thus comprise pen portraits of the individual species and the author’s thoughts about them and the places they inhabit.
The range of chosen species span a wide range of songs from the highly musical Skylark and Nightingale to the eerie shrieks of the Manx Shearwater and the mechanical churring of the Nightjar and they represent different habitats too.
It’s a similar mixture to my 2022 Book of the Year, Patrick Galbraith’s In Search of One Last Song (click here for review) and the much earlier Michael McCarthy’s Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo, one of my favourite books, (Amazon).
I was pretty cool about this author’s previous book, Raptor (click here for review) but it won prizes and lots of people liked it. I enjoyed this book a lot more as it is well written and the species are fascinating.
The cover? Clean, and a good choice of species, nicely drawn by the late, great, Norman Arlott. I’d give it 8/10.
Wild Air: in search of birdsong by James Macdonald Lockhart is published by 4th Estate.
My forthcoming book, Reflections, will be published on 4 July.
Details – click here and read what others think about it.
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One thing that mystifies me is that Mark’s book is not published until next month, yet, for many weeks, there has already been extensive commentary on its content from many frontline naturalists. Do they get proof copies or copies of the actual book? Just asking.
James – I can explain. Those quotes that you see on book covers (or in the case of my book on my website https://markavery.info/ and on the publisher’s website https://pelagicpublishing.com/products/reflections) are from advance copies, often pdfs, pre final proofs. Obviously, you only get positive comments from this method!
For interest, I am quite often asked to give such quotes but hardly ever do because I write book reviews so why would I want to provide a phrase when, if I want to, I can write an essay?