Will open new avenues for every lover of good writing about birds … The more you read, the more avenues for your own exploration you will spot. That’s what makes a good anthology, and this is a very good, very individual one. - Cage & Aviary Birds
One of the lasting memories of the past few months will be the amplified presence of birds in our daily lives, so this book could hardly be more timely … and is illustrated with exquisite woodcuts by the engraver/author Eric Fitch Daglish. - Country Life
Woodcuts by Eric Fitch Daglish enhance the writing and create an anthology that is a delight to dip into. - The Field
Testimony to our ongoing love affair with birds. - BBC Wildlife Magazine
This rich anthology is a celebration of birds chaptered with themes ranging from ‘river, coast, sea, shore’ to the changing seasons, documenting the behaviour, flights, songs and migrations of birds in stirring prose and poetry. - Coast Magazine
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.
Jaqueline Mitchell is a writer and compiler of anthologies, specialising in social and cultural history, and an editor of non-fiction.
Eric Fitch Daglish (1892–1966) was a wood engraver and illustrator. His book Woodcuts of British Birds was published in 1925.
- Hardback
- 272 pages, 198 x 129 mm
- 25 black and white illustrations
- ISBN: 9781851245291
- Publication May 2020
