Thomas Hardy notes the thrush's 'full-hearted evensong of joy
illimited', Gilbert White observes how swallows sweep through the air
but swifts 'dash round in circles' and Rachel Carson watches sanderlings
at the ocean's edge, scurrying 'across the beach like little ghosts'.
From early times, we have been entranced by the bird life around us.
This anthology brings together poetry and prose in celebration of birds,
records their behaviour, flight, song and migration, the changes across
the seasons and in different habitats - in woodland and pasture, on
river, shoreline and at sea - and our own interaction with them. From
India to America, from China to Rwanda, writers marvel at birds - the
building of a long-tailed tit's nest, the soaring eagle, the
extraordinary feats of migration and the pleasures to be found in our
own gardens. Including extracts by Geoffrey Chaucer, Dorothy Wordsworth,
Richard Jefferies, Charles Darwin, James Joyce, John Keats, Charlotte
Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Anton Chekhov, Kathleen Jamie, Jonathan Franzen
and Barbara Kingsolver among many others, this rich anthology will be
welcomed by bird-lovers, country ramblers and anyone who has taken
comfort or joy in a bird in flight.
