Waiting for the Albino Dunnock: How birds can change your life

by Rosamond Richardson

Overview

'A beautiful book' Tim Birkhead, author of Bird Sense
'The prose is sublime, and so is the intelligence behind it' Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

The extraordinary world of birds has the power to change lives, as it did the author's. The pleasure and fascination of bird-watching, together with the silence and stillness involved, can play a part in changing the way that we live our lives - and can help us when we have to deal with adversity.

Personal and elegiac, Waiting for the Albino Dunnock shows us how beauty is central to our emotional wellbeing, and reminds us of the careless damage we are inflicting on the natural world. This glorious pilgrimage into the soaring world of birds opens our eyes afresh to the beauty which surrounds us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474603027
Publisher:	Orion
Publication date:	04/06/2017
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Rosamond Richardson is the author of several books about the countryside, including the international bestseller Country Wisdom. She wrote regularly for Britain's biggest-selling bird magazine Bird Watching, and for several years was a contributor to The Countryman. Familiar to many as author of the Penguin Classic Hedgerow Cookery and co-presenter of BBC Two's Discovering Hedgerows, she also wrote for Landscape and Countryside magazines. She died in May 2017.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

July: Norfolk's Brecklands, north-west Essex walking 5

August: North-west Essex, Suffolk, the Fens beginner's mind 27

September: Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk migrations 57

October: Suffolk, Norfolk, the Essex woods ornitheology 83

November: Essex, Cambridgeshire, a refuge on the Suffolk coast freedom 111

December: Dunwich Forest, the Suffolk coast, the Ouse Washes, Essex solitude 139

January: Cambridgeshire, the north Norfolk coast, the Ouse Washes, Essex stillness 163

February: Essex, the Suffolk coast, the Norfolk/Suffolk border silence 183

March: Spain, Wales, the Suffolk coast, Essex music 207

April: Essex, Cambridgeshire, northern Greece, wild Macedonia joy 237

May: Essex, the Outer Hebrides (Lewis and Harris) the consolation of beauty 265

June: Skye, the Cairngorms, north-west Essex the uncommonness of the commonplace 293

Epilogue 321

A Note on Albino Dunnocks 327

Thanks 329

Select Bibliography 331

Index 335

Editorial Reviews

A beautiful book—Tim Birkhead, author of BIRD SENSE

Glorious, beautifully written pilgrimage into the soaring world of birds ... The prose is sublime, and so is the intelligence behind it—Bel Mooney, DAILY MAIL

Rare, charming and unforgettable ... Her prose has the clarity, poise, precision and transcendent beauty of someone who was brought up reading the classics and knows the joy of finding the right words. Every sentence is perfect—Richard Davenport-Hines, THE OLDIE

Beautifully written—CHOICE magazine

[Richardson] writes...with a poetic lyricism—Eithne Farry, SUNDAY EXPRESS

This exquisite depiction of bird-watching as personal pilgrimage is written with passion, poetry and the freshness of a newcomer: 'the real voyage of discovery consists in...seeing with new eyes'

—THE LADY

Richardson is both a looker and a see-er and her open-eyed delight in the beauty around her has an infectious quality enhanced by exquisite writing—Sara Maitland, BBC COUNTRYFILE

[Richardson's] lyrical memoir of a year of birdwatching in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Greece is a life-enhancing record of birds (and books).—DAILY MAIL

From the Publisher