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Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood
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66/99
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70/99
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About This Book
From the bestselling and award-winning nature writer Adam Nicolson, a glorious new adventure into the British wilderness.By Adam Nicolson's home, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and thicketed by brambles. It is passed through by deer, wild boar and many birds – nightingales who sing in the evening, a cuckoo, turtle doves, pheasants, robins, owls. A couple of years ago, he deicide to embark on an attempt to redress his ignorance, to encounter birds, to engage with this marvellous layer of life he had so far looked past. He wanted to look and listen, to return to 'bird school' and see what it might teach him.This gorgeous book is the result, tracing Adam's adventure setting up a small shed on the edge of the field and getting to know the where they nest, how they sing, how they mate and fight, what preys on them, what they are like as living things. It beautifully written and woven through with philosophy, literature, science and emotion. Bird School pulls back the curtain on seemingly ordinary birds, and exposes our relationship as people with the wild.
Reviews
"When he stays put, Bird School is a worthy addition to a literary lineage that stretches back to the 18th-century writer and naturalist Gilbert White ..."
"In thirteen chapters packed with information, we are led through the layers of history, palaeontology, poetry, music and science, all showing the ways that birds have become an indivisible part of human life and culture ..."
"One of the more interesting sections involves blackbirds and a work of Beethoven."
"Like one of the nests Nicolson finds on his property, it's been deftly assembled ..."
"An evocative ode to English birds that invites readers to look more closely at the world around them ..."
"Nicolson is especially good at illuminating what goes unseen (or unheard), like the fact that birds perceive time more slowly than humans."
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