Birds

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.

"For centuries, birds have inspired the abiding interest of writers, and it’s easy to see why. . . . Studying birds inevitably leads to interest in a hundred other vivid realities of the natural world. That relationship resonates throughout the pages of Birds: An Anthology. . . Birds is really about the birds of the English countryside and how these flying wonders and their surrounding landscape shape each other. Among the standouts are contributions from Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, George Eliot and Daniel Defoe.", "This is exactly the sort of book to have nearby when you’re simply looking to relax and enjoy the power of the written word – as well as the sight of a well-wrought woodcut – to carry you away to somewhere peaceful and filled with birds.”

Jaqueline Mitchell is a writer and compiler of anthologies, specialising in social and cultural history, and an editor of non-fiction.Eric Fitch Daglish (1894–1966) was a wood engraver and illustrator. His book, 'Birds of the British Isles', was published in 1948.