Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
What draws us to the beauty of a peacock, the flight of an eagle, or the song of a nightingale? Why are birds so significant in our lives and our sense of the world? And what do our ways of thinking about and experiencing birds tell us about ourselves? Birdscapes is a unique meditation on the variety of human responses to birds, from antiquity to today, and from casual observers to the globe-trotting "twitchers" who sometimes risk life, limb, and marriages simply to add new species to their "life lists."
Drawing extensively on literature, history, philosophy, and science, Jeremy Mynott puts his own experiences as a birdwatcher in a rich cultural context. His sources range from the familiar--Thoreau, Keats, Darwin, and Audubon--to the unexpected--Benjamin Franklin, Giacomo Puccini, Oscar Wilde, and Monty Python. Just as unusual are the extensive illustrations, which explore our perceptions and representations of birds through images such as national emblems, women's hats, professional sports logos, and a Christmas biscuit tin, as well as classics of bird art. Each chapter takes up a new theme--from rarity, beauty, and sound to conservation, naming, and symbolism--and is set in a new place, as Mynott travels from his "home patch" in Suffolk, England, to his "away patch" in New York City's Central Park, as well as to Russia, Australia, and Greece.
Conversational, playful, and witty, Birdscapes gently leads us to reflect on large questions about our relation to birds and the natural world. It encourages birders to see their pursuits in a broader human context--and it shows nonbirders what they may be missing.
Now Jeremy Mynott's book, Birdscapes.
Jeremy is a classicist but has always been interested in birds and he distilled his thinking about birds to produce this wonderful book. He explores the myriad reasons why people are so engaged with birds. It’s like walking with a very erudite but very passionate and interesting man, strolling through lots of different landscapes. He starts the book in Russia, then Suffolk, the Scilly Isles and so on. The ground he covers is immense. You feel you are having a conversation with an incredibly interesting travelling companion. His references range from Aristotle and Keats to Puccini to the Monty Python parrot sketch. Typically for Jeremy he couldn’t stop himself putting in a footnote about a Danish fossil parrot! It’s a fabulous book. I’d recommend it not only to anyone interested in birds but also for anyone who has a husband, wife, son or daughter who’s nuts about birds and can’t understand why – this will tell them.
What did Aristotle have to say about birds?
Aristotle said a lot about birds. Many of the Ancient Greeks wrote about birds and, of course, you know about their prognostications of the future using birds as omens. In fact, the Greek word for ‘bird’, ornis, was also their word for ‘an omen’. It’s interesting how much birds still enter our lives in common vocabulary and expressions: for instance, larking about, eagle-eyed, cocksure, swanning around, being gullible and so on.
Why is that?
I often write about why birds capture our imagination so much. I think the primary thing about birds is that we envy their ability to soar off a cliff or migrate from one end of the world to the other – their ability to fly. But more than that, they have so much going for them. They are ubiquitous in a way that mammals aren’t. It’s extraordinary how so many television programmes focus on mammals. We do love mammals – we are mammals ourselves, of course – but they are very hard to see. Most of them are nocturnal. It’s easy to see rabbits and deer, but they’re not brightly coloured. Mammals often just skulk and are harder to observe but birds have an immense interaction with our eyes.
You can watch birds anywhere. If you just look up there are plenty of birds, even in inner London where I live. It’s a bit grey here but right now I can see a wood pigeon perched on a TV aerial, and a flock of starlings flying past. I see sparrowhawks here, I see terns in summer, I see herons, woodpeckers, cormorants, gulls.
I see seagulls everywhere in London.
People who don’t watch birds call gulls seagulls but birders always call them gulls. They are still associated with coasts but many have taken to living far inland over the past 100 or so years – black-headed gulls following the plough are a common sight in farmland, while in our big cities, including London, they are commonly fighting for scraps of bread in parks and gardens or visiting rubbish dumps, along with the bigger herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls.
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Jonathan Elphick is a natural history author, editor and consultant. He is a Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a Fellow of the Linnean Society, the world's oldest active biological society. His books include an award-winning field guide for the BBC, The Birdwatcher’s Handbook: A Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland; Birds: The Art of Ornithology; another bestselling field guide (with John Woodword), The RSPB Pocket Birds; A Unique Photographic Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, and (with photographer David Tiplin) Great Birds of Britain & Europe. Among the many books he has edited is The Natural History Museum Atlas of Bird Migration. Jonathan is currently working as Researcher with author Mark Cocker and David Tipling on a world-ranging follow-up to Birds Britannica, Birds & People; writing a bird book for the Natural History Museum, and embarking on a more personal landscape and nature memoir.
