A Sweet, Wild Note: What We Hear When the Birds Sing

by Richard Smyth

Overview

In this fascinating account, Richard Smyth asks what it is about birdsong that we so love. Exploring the myriad ways in which it has influenced literature, music, science, and our very ideas of what it means to be human, Smyth’s nuanced investigation shows that what we hear says as much about us, our dreams and desires, as it does about the birds and their songs. At a time when our birdsong is growing quieter, with fewer voices, more thinly spread, A Sweet, Wild Note is a celebration of the complex relationships between birds, people, and the land; it is also a passionate call to arms lest our trees and hedgerows fall silent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783963775
Publisher:	Elliott & Thompson
Publication date:	02/01/2019
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 5.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Richard Smyth is a regular contributor to Bird Watching magazine, and he writes and reviews for the Times, Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, New Statesman, and BBC Wildlife. He is the author of English History: Strange But True.

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

1 An Infinity of Possibilities 1

2 A Song of Many Parts 27

3 Coming Home 61

4 An Elusive Song 93

5 A Captive Melody 127

6 A Hush Descends 155

Further Reading 175

Acknowledgements 182

Index 184

Editorial Reviews

"A lively sense of the absurd, a wryly precise prose style and an appropriately magpie-like curiosity for his subject. There's a wonderful democracy of reference to a book that draws on Radiohead and The Simpsons as well as Messiaen and Duchamp; that considers East End bird-catching alongside the Romantics and current bioacoustics research. . . . Smyth has taught himself to hear, and it's impossible to read his vivid account and not listen just a little closer yourself." —Spectator


"Between the fibrillating throats of birds and the human mind lies an extraordinary landscape, a place created by the intersection of culture, biology, and literature. Richard Smyth is a brilliant, insightful, and witty guide in this fascinating terrain." —David George Haskell, author, Pulitzer finalist The Forest Unseen


"This is a delightful book that does exactly what it says on the cover: it plays a sweet wild note. If you are already tuned in to bird song you will learn a lot more and if you aren't you will want to be. Reading it honestly seems to have improved my (ornithological) listening and hearing as well as cheering my heart." —Sara Maitland, author, A Book of Silence

From the Publisher