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The Seabird's Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet's Great Ocean Voyagers
In The Seabird's Cry, Adam Nicolson travels ocean paths, fusing traditional knowledge with astonishing facts science has recently learned about these creatures: the way their bodies actually work, their dazzling navigational skills, their ability to smell their way to fish or home and to understand the discipline of the winds upon which they depend.
This book is a paean to the beauty of life on the wing, but, even as we are coming to understand the seabirds, a global tragedy is unfolding. Their numbers are in freefall, dropping by nearly 70 percent in the last sixty years, a billion fewer now than in 1950. Extinction stalks the ocean, and there is a danger that the hundred-million-year-old cries of a seabird colony, rolling around in the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become but a memory.
This book is a paean to the beauty of life on the wing, but, even as we are coming to understand the seabirds, a global tragedy is unfolding. Their numbers are in freefall, dropping by nearly 70 percent in the last sixty years, a billion fewer now than in 1950. Extinction stalks the ocean, and there is a danger that the hundred-million-year-old cries of a seabird colony, rolling around in the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become but a memory.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2017
211 people are currently reading
2737 people want to read
About the author
Adam Nicolson
63 books224 followersAdam Nicolson writes a celebrated column for The Sunday Telegraph. His books include Sissinghurst, God’s Secretaries, When God Spoke English, Wetland, Life in the Somerset Levels, Perch Hill, Restoration, and the acclaimed Gentry. He is winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the British Topography Prize and lives on a farm in Sussex.
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September 11, 2020Years ago, when I had my Great Adventure of sailing the Atlantic with three friends, we use to see Mother Carey's Chickens, aka stormy petrels, small flocks of tiny birds perching on waves just rolling along when we were far from land. I used to wonder how they could live at sea and survive the storms. But much like the dolphins, they loved a rough sea, that's when both of them would always appear.
I was reading about research into British seagulls and fearfulness just before I bought this book. Researchers tested both juvenile (under 1 year old) and adult (4 years old plus) seagulls by tempting them with bags of chips . They found if people looked at the birds, they would fly off or if not very rattled, walk off. But if the researchers didn't look them in the eye, but looked sideways, they could get much closer to the birds who continued scarfing down the chips for much longer. Apparently the birds, unusual for animals, watch to see where people are looking. Perhaps they feel guilty at stealing the food?
We are allowed out of lockdown until 1pm now, so I often go walking in the marina which is more or less deserted apart from charter yachts, laughing gulls, pelicans and the elegant 4' tall white herons, all of them fishing. I thought i would try to not look directly at the laughing gulls but sideways. It didn't make any difference they just stood 10' away and cackled at me. Maybe tomorrow I'll tempt them with some food and see.
I was reading about research into British seagulls and fearfulness just before I bought this book. Researchers tested both juvenile (under 1 year old) and adult (4 years old plus) seagulls by tempting them with bags of chips . They found if people looked at the birds, they would fly off or if not very rattled, walk off. But if the researchers didn't look them in the eye, but looked sideways, they could get much closer to the birds who continued scarfing down the chips for much longer. Apparently the birds, unusual for animals, watch to see where people are looking. Perhaps they feel guilty at stealing the food?
We are allowed out of lockdown until 1pm now, so I often go walking in the marina which is more or less deserted apart from charter yachts, laughing gulls, pelicans and the elegant 4' tall white herons, all of them fishing. I thought i would try to not look directly at the laughing gulls but sideways. It didn't make any difference they just stood 10' away and cackled at me. Maybe tomorrow I'll tempt them with some food and see.
April 14, 2020
There are some books that I rate as 3 stars because they are a decent read without being exceptional. There are other books where I find I love some elements and dislike others, and I rate them as three stars as a sort of compromise. This book is one of those.
Living as I do by the sea I have tended to view the more coastal (as opposed to oceanic) seabirds as unremarkable creatures, though admittedly I have always been impressed by the sight of a gannet on an arrow dive into the sea. The author was formerly the owner of the uninhabited Shiant Isles, off the west coast of Scotland - he has now transferred ownership to his son. The islands have a large population of seabirds, but you cannot say of the author that familiarity has bred contempt. He has an immense love for seabirds and throughout the book uses the most poetic language to describe them, frequently quoting actual poetry. There were occasions when his language was a little too extravagant for my taste.
There is plenty of brilliant stuff in this book though, particularly around the amazing navigational abilities of seabirds, and their hunting strategies. The sad history of the destruction of seabird populations by humans, often for nothing more than amusement, is also well documented. The behaviour of some scientists in the past was also a reminder that in some respects at least the world has changed for the better.
Early on the book the author introduces the reader to the concept of “Umwelt”, developed in the late 19th century by a Baltic German called Jakob von Uexküll. It’s difficult to convey this concept succinctly, but it might be said that it relates to how each animal species lives within its own perceptual world, to which other species are wholly or partly blind. It’s explained in much more detail in the book.
Having introduced such an interesting idea, I felt the author rather spoiled things with another aspect. He tended to anthropomorphise to a level which just didn’t sit comfortably with me. Pairs of mating birds were referred to as “husband and wife”, and the term “love ritual” was used instead of “mating ritual”. Throughout the text human emotions were used to explain bird behaviour, and at times the author came close to judging the behaviour of individual seabirds according to how well they fitted in with 21st century notions of how humans should behave. It was this aspect of the book that I didn’t like, and I didn’t think it helped with understanding the Umwelt of the species being discussed.
I will say though, that after finishing the book I had a much greater knowledge of seabirds than before, and a much greater sense of wonder about them.
Living as I do by the sea I have tended to view the more coastal (as opposed to oceanic) seabirds as unremarkable creatures, though admittedly I have always been impressed by the sight of a gannet on an arrow dive into the sea. The author was formerly the owner of the uninhabited Shiant Isles, off the west coast of Scotland - he has now transferred ownership to his son. The islands have a large population of seabirds, but you cannot say of the author that familiarity has bred contempt. He has an immense love for seabirds and throughout the book uses the most poetic language to describe them, frequently quoting actual poetry. There were occasions when his language was a little too extravagant for my taste.
There is plenty of brilliant stuff in this book though, particularly around the amazing navigational abilities of seabirds, and their hunting strategies. The sad history of the destruction of seabird populations by humans, often for nothing more than amusement, is also well documented. The behaviour of some scientists in the past was also a reminder that in some respects at least the world has changed for the better.
Early on the book the author introduces the reader to the concept of “Umwelt”, developed in the late 19th century by a Baltic German called Jakob von Uexküll. It’s difficult to convey this concept succinctly, but it might be said that it relates to how each animal species lives within its own perceptual world, to which other species are wholly or partly blind. It’s explained in much more detail in the book.
Having introduced such an interesting idea, I felt the author rather spoiled things with another aspect. He tended to anthropomorphise to a level which just didn’t sit comfortably with me. Pairs of mating birds were referred to as “husband and wife”, and the term “love ritual” was used instead of “mating ritual”. Throughout the text human emotions were used to explain bird behaviour, and at times the author came close to judging the behaviour of individual seabirds according to how well they fitted in with 21st century notions of how humans should behave. It was this aspect of the book that I didn’t like, and I didn’t think it helped with understanding the Umwelt of the species being discussed.
I will say though, that after finishing the book I had a much greater knowledge of seabirds than before, and a much greater sense of wonder about them.
March 18, 2018
A wonderful combination of scientific revelations about the lives and ecology of seabirds and of the human emotional and spiritual responses to these otherworldly birds from poets and others’ personal encounters with them over human history. I appreciated his overall thrust of raising consciousness of the special intelligence of each of 10 types of seabird he covers and the threats to their abundance or survival from global warming and other negative human impacts on their environment. But what I really loved was his knack of conveying a rich portrait of each bird’s character and habits and eloquent reach toward their significance to human imagination.
He kicks off with a reflection on whenever humankind has explored to the farthest reach on the oceans there are always seabirds mysteriously going beyond our horizons. They figure in Homer, Milton, Coleridge, and Melville as messengers or symbols of a world beyond our apprehension:
Seabirds somehow cross the boundary between the matter-of-fact and the imagined. Theirs is the realm both of enlargement and of uncertainty, in which the nature of things is unreliable and in doubt.
He quotes Seamus Heaney as latching onto seabirds for a source of meaning after a significant loss of a family member:
What came first, the seabird’s cry or the soul
Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?
How habitable is perfected form?
And how inhabited the windy light?
To Heaney’s questions, he responds:
There are no answers, only questions and suggestions, but in that Platonic vision Heaney’s imagined soul-seabird is not only a boundary crosser, but linked to the emergence and genesis of things. The seabird’s cry comes from the beginning of the world.
Thinks such thinking is too rich? Just imagine being out in a sailboat in a roaring gale, struggling to survive, and when you look up, there glides an albatross, totally at home, inscrutable in its majesty:
Albatross in storm. ” The farther from home we might feel ourselves to be, the more at home they are. That is their world and they are part of what we long for: beauty on the margins of understanding”.
Nicolson chapters cover one set of seabirds which are global masters of flying and which fish by plunge diving, including fulmars, shearwaters, albatrosses, and gannets. A second set are birds that are shorter-range flyers which do deeper dives for fish from the surface of the sea, using webbed feet for propulsion. These include the puffins, the cormorants and shags, the guillemots, and the auks and razorbills. Two other chapters are devoted to kittiwakes and gulls, which are more intermediate-range flyers; the former feeding on the surface of the sea and the latter ashore as predator and omnivorous scavengers. Except for the gulls, all these species are long-lived (three decades or more), take years to begin breeding, nest in cliff and island colonies, invest in one or two eggs per year, and are mostly monogamous with the two parents taking turns hunting and tending the egg or chicks.
For his narrative, Nicolson travels to experience the nesting sites and debrief the scientists and naturalists who study them off, including his own haunts in Scotland Hebrides and the west coast Ireland and further afield in the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Newfoundland, and Pacific Ocean sites like Ascension, the Falklands, the Canaries, Alaska, and the Azores. He doesn’t bog down his story with the complexities of evolutionary theory and ecology, but he conveys enough to satisfy amateur and knowledgeable readers alike. For most of human history, they were beyond our reach, and when we did master sea navigation, they had little defense against our predation. Meat, eggs, feathers, skin, and oil from their fat were all useful for subsistence of various tribes, but when the Europeans turned to commercial exploitation or blasting them for sport many were pushed toward extinction. Just during the 20th century population declines of two-thirds or more of most species have been documented. So sad given the existence of some, like the shag, from soon after the end of the dinosaurs around 200 million years ago. A set of cave paintings from about 20,000 years ago features great auks in a mating display, meaning both that humans were hungry enough to boat to their remote island preserves and wise enough to revere their nature.
Most of the true flying masters of the sky are in the order Procellariiformes (“tubenoses”), including the albatross, shearwater, fulmar, and petrels. When one mate stays on the nest, the other goes afar for up to two weeks to feed, bringing back nutrition delivered by regurgitation. Not so lovely to dwell on. What is amazing as how far they travel, as revealed in recent years from miniature radio transmitters or GPS recorders. One fulmar paused for a gale to build up, then followed a storm, ending up completing a nearly 4,000 mile round trip with a long visit to what is called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. How they and other birds can navigate such distances for feeding or annual migrations to distant wintering sites has been a challenging research subject. Work on homing pigeons and other species have implicated variations on compass functions provided by the sun and stars and a magnetic field sense (of still obscure physiology in my biological readings), but usually the necessary complement of a mental map based on complex learning about geographical features. Experiments on shearwaters where they were transported to arbitrary sites out of their experience (e.g. Scotland birds taken to Italy or even America) reveal they find their way home. Recent studies where a chemical nasal wash was applied that knocked out their sense of smell indicate a critical role for that sense in navigation. The inference is that the seemingly featureless ocean has a geography of scent which the birds can learn to contribute to their map, possibly from sulfite compound plumes associated with krill feeding on plankton blooms at current upwelling sites. I just have to love how the mysteries of clever life around us rarely turn out to have simple explanations, but reflect emergent complexities that perpetually recede from the complete grasp of science.
Such intelligence in the eye of an albatross. Their prominent olfactory system of such "tubenoses" gives them a comic look, but the system may help them track sites with their food fish and allow scent mapping of the oceans for navigation. The can live up to 60 years and rack up several million miles of travel. The energy requirement for soaring the winds is little more than the rate for sitting on their nest. Coleridge’s portrayal of their encounter at sea as ominous and a source of bad luck for killing one, in reality most cultures saw them as good news and welcome prey for tasty eating.
Nicholson rises above the romantic notions of seabirds that his own lyrical splendor of language and delving into mythological and spiritual conceptions of their reality contribute to. He doesn’t shy away from taking in stride patterns of vicious intra-species competition, even cannibalistic predation of other colony member’s chicks in some species like the gannets. It appears to be some adaptation to food shortages with some mediation through stress hormones. Closer looking reveals some signficant nurture over nature in the unleashing of what seems so pathological from human morality. Perps much more often grew up in two-egg nests in which they were the victors by murderously pushing their sibling from the nest. And were typically involved in brutal bullying in gangs of older juveniles against younger chicks when both their parents happened to be away. That violence breeds more violence also appears in a social contagion effect among the Nazca boobies in the Galapagos islands, where nest raiding for eggs or young chicks can escalate to the point that almost no members of a colony find success in breeding.
A gannet feeding frenzy off Scotland. Note the bullet-shape form one takes on its plunging dive. Instead of hollow and mesh-like bones of most birds, theirs are more solid to reduce buoyancy for their dives and the solidity of their skulls assume a ram-like aspect. I reveled in their dreadful poetry in motion in a past visit to their colony site at Bonaventure in Quebec.
In his earlier book on his residence on a set of small Hebridean islands he inherited, “Sea Room”, Nicoloson had some great moments capturing a malevolent sense one can easily get from the slithery, raucous, and smelly shags. Here he balances that out with tales of tenderness and love between mates. For ages, their cormorant close relatives have been cast as villainous as spurred by the lurking and shroud-like appearance they typically show while standing ashore with their wings spread. In Milton’s version of the Fall, Satan appears as a snaky bird roosting in the Tree of Knowledge, which Nicholson argues to be a cormorant. It turns out that their adaptation of wettable outer feathers to reduce their buoyancy for deep diving requires attention to drying between dives to minimize heat loss.
Typical pose of a cormorant drying its feathers, often in history taken as an ominous spectre.
From the perspective of human morality, the trend among seabirds toward high rates of fidelity and monogamy among the seabirds makes for an admirable character trait. Stable mate relations clearly goes hand in hand with the adaptive value of teamwork to enhance success in offspring rearing and tag-teaming of fishing duties. As typical, the male frequently pursue extramarital sex, but the females are the gatekeepers (even more so than among mammals as without penises there can be no rape). Because the exposure of seabird colonies makes possible prolonged observation of social behavior, there is a growing body of fascinating and often amusing accounts of adulterous behavior among the 10-30% of adults among the various species who stray from their marriage. A veritable Peyton Place at times. It turns out that in many cases, the driver here is females pursuing a better husband, a dumping of hubby after a poor record in his child tending skills
Marital debate between guillemots.
The resiliency and flexibility of seabird behaviors make for alternating parallel themes in this book. Resiliency is evident from their survival for millions of years, but the counter to that is that 140,000 of 150,000 species estimated as ever evolved have become extinct. One projection has it that human expansion in the Pacific was responsible for loss of 2,000 bird species, mostly prior to 1300 AD. The spread of cats and rats has been a big factor in recent centuries. The surprising fragility in the success of individuals and colonies is revealed in various threads. A study in kittiwakes revealed that adding a third egg to their nest has a devastating effect on rates of reproductive success. Something as simple as an offshore feeding ground shifting a hundred miles in connection with currents changed by global warming can defeat the energy balance maintained by puffins, which must dive 600-1,200 times a day to feed itself and a chick or two. Nicholson undermines the outward perception of these cute birds as mostly proper and reserved with a sense of their possible restraint due to terror and stress. In the face of current threats to survival of many seabird species, he raised hope that regulations on trawler, gill net, and long-line fishing and progress on reducing ocean pollution can have a positive impact. On his own part, he took the effort in a scientific strategy to eliminate rats from his own Shiant Islands, the nesting site of about half a million seabirds. Their health represents a suitable “canary in the coal mine” as an index of human stewardship of the planet and a continuing source of inspiration about the mysteries in the web of life:
Seabirds can seem …like victims in the world, almost like refugees, hopelessly dependent on what life can offer them, subject to weather and dearth, with failure stalking them at every turn. But they have an intriguing doubleness in them: individuated but profoundly collective, individually weak but in their giant colonies and networks of colonies, a trans-oceanic system of existence, a cumulative assertion of life. That is why they are one of our imaginative reservoirs, summer ambassadors from the winter ocean, come to visit us in our mundane existence, creatures from the otherworld temporarily and for a moment afloat in ours, and for all their vulnerability a reminder of the beauty and mystery of existence.
A rewarding read all around. Highly recommended. This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.
Surprising beauty apparent in distinctive patterns on guillemot eggs, predating Jackson Pollack. The nostalgia chic among Victorian Brits in the 19th century over the extinction of such species as the Great Auk was paralleled by the collection and commercialization of their eggs, which resembles the earlier tulip mania phenomenon in the Netherlands.
He kicks off with a reflection on whenever humankind has explored to the farthest reach on the oceans there are always seabirds mysteriously going beyond our horizons. They figure in Homer, Milton, Coleridge, and Melville as messengers or symbols of a world beyond our apprehension:
Seabirds somehow cross the boundary between the matter-of-fact and the imagined. Theirs is the realm both of enlargement and of uncertainty, in which the nature of things is unreliable and in doubt.
He quotes Seamus Heaney as latching onto seabirds for a source of meaning after a significant loss of a family member:
What came first, the seabird’s cry or the soul
Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?
How habitable is perfected form?
And how inhabited the windy light?
To Heaney’s questions, he responds:
There are no answers, only questions and suggestions, but in that Platonic vision Heaney’s imagined soul-seabird is not only a boundary crosser, but linked to the emergence and genesis of things. The seabird’s cry comes from the beginning of the world.
Thinks such thinking is too rich? Just imagine being out in a sailboat in a roaring gale, struggling to survive, and when you look up, there glides an albatross, totally at home, inscrutable in its majesty:
Albatross in storm. ” The farther from home we might feel ourselves to be, the more at home they are. That is their world and they are part of what we long for: beauty on the margins of understanding”.
Nicolson chapters cover one set of seabirds which are global masters of flying and which fish by plunge diving, including fulmars, shearwaters, albatrosses, and gannets. A second set are birds that are shorter-range flyers which do deeper dives for fish from the surface of the sea, using webbed feet for propulsion. These include the puffins, the cormorants and shags, the guillemots, and the auks and razorbills. Two other chapters are devoted to kittiwakes and gulls, which are more intermediate-range flyers; the former feeding on the surface of the sea and the latter ashore as predator and omnivorous scavengers. Except for the gulls, all these species are long-lived (three decades or more), take years to begin breeding, nest in cliff and island colonies, invest in one or two eggs per year, and are mostly monogamous with the two parents taking turns hunting and tending the egg or chicks.
For his narrative, Nicolson travels to experience the nesting sites and debrief the scientists and naturalists who study them off, including his own haunts in Scotland Hebrides and the west coast Ireland and further afield in the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Newfoundland, and Pacific Ocean sites like Ascension, the Falklands, the Canaries, Alaska, and the Azores. He doesn’t bog down his story with the complexities of evolutionary theory and ecology, but he conveys enough to satisfy amateur and knowledgeable readers alike. For most of human history, they were beyond our reach, and when we did master sea navigation, they had little defense against our predation. Meat, eggs, feathers, skin, and oil from their fat were all useful for subsistence of various tribes, but when the Europeans turned to commercial exploitation or blasting them for sport many were pushed toward extinction. Just during the 20th century population declines of two-thirds or more of most species have been documented. So sad given the existence of some, like the shag, from soon after the end of the dinosaurs around 200 million years ago. A set of cave paintings from about 20,000 years ago features great auks in a mating display, meaning both that humans were hungry enough to boat to their remote island preserves and wise enough to revere their nature.
Most of the true flying masters of the sky are in the order Procellariiformes (“tubenoses”), including the albatross, shearwater, fulmar, and petrels. When one mate stays on the nest, the other goes afar for up to two weeks to feed, bringing back nutrition delivered by regurgitation. Not so lovely to dwell on. What is amazing as how far they travel, as revealed in recent years from miniature radio transmitters or GPS recorders. One fulmar paused for a gale to build up, then followed a storm, ending up completing a nearly 4,000 mile round trip with a long visit to what is called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. How they and other birds can navigate such distances for feeding or annual migrations to distant wintering sites has been a challenging research subject. Work on homing pigeons and other species have implicated variations on compass functions provided by the sun and stars and a magnetic field sense (of still obscure physiology in my biological readings), but usually the necessary complement of a mental map based on complex learning about geographical features. Experiments on shearwaters where they were transported to arbitrary sites out of their experience (e.g. Scotland birds taken to Italy or even America) reveal they find their way home. Recent studies where a chemical nasal wash was applied that knocked out their sense of smell indicate a critical role for that sense in navigation. The inference is that the seemingly featureless ocean has a geography of scent which the birds can learn to contribute to their map, possibly from sulfite compound plumes associated with krill feeding on plankton blooms at current upwelling sites. I just have to love how the mysteries of clever life around us rarely turn out to have simple explanations, but reflect emergent complexities that perpetually recede from the complete grasp of science.
Such intelligence in the eye of an albatross. Their prominent olfactory system of such "tubenoses" gives them a comic look, but the system may help them track sites with their food fish and allow scent mapping of the oceans for navigation. The can live up to 60 years and rack up several million miles of travel. The energy requirement for soaring the winds is little more than the rate for sitting on their nest. Coleridge’s portrayal of their encounter at sea as ominous and a source of bad luck for killing one, in reality most cultures saw them as good news and welcome prey for tasty eating.
Nicholson rises above the romantic notions of seabirds that his own lyrical splendor of language and delving into mythological and spiritual conceptions of their reality contribute to. He doesn’t shy away from taking in stride patterns of vicious intra-species competition, even cannibalistic predation of other colony member’s chicks in some species like the gannets. It appears to be some adaptation to food shortages with some mediation through stress hormones. Closer looking reveals some signficant nurture over nature in the unleashing of what seems so pathological from human morality. Perps much more often grew up in two-egg nests in which they were the victors by murderously pushing their sibling from the nest. And were typically involved in brutal bullying in gangs of older juveniles against younger chicks when both their parents happened to be away. That violence breeds more violence also appears in a social contagion effect among the Nazca boobies in the Galapagos islands, where nest raiding for eggs or young chicks can escalate to the point that almost no members of a colony find success in breeding.
A gannet feeding frenzy off Scotland. Note the bullet-shape form one takes on its plunging dive. Instead of hollow and mesh-like bones of most birds, theirs are more solid to reduce buoyancy for their dives and the solidity of their skulls assume a ram-like aspect. I reveled in their dreadful poetry in motion in a past visit to their colony site at Bonaventure in Quebec.
In his earlier book on his residence on a set of small Hebridean islands he inherited, “Sea Room”, Nicoloson had some great moments capturing a malevolent sense one can easily get from the slithery, raucous, and smelly shags. Here he balances that out with tales of tenderness and love between mates. For ages, their cormorant close relatives have been cast as villainous as spurred by the lurking and shroud-like appearance they typically show while standing ashore with their wings spread. In Milton’s version of the Fall, Satan appears as a snaky bird roosting in the Tree of Knowledge, which Nicholson argues to be a cormorant. It turns out that their adaptation of wettable outer feathers to reduce their buoyancy for deep diving requires attention to drying between dives to minimize heat loss.
Typical pose of a cormorant drying its feathers, often in history taken as an ominous spectre.
From the perspective of human morality, the trend among seabirds toward high rates of fidelity and monogamy among the seabirds makes for an admirable character trait. Stable mate relations clearly goes hand in hand with the adaptive value of teamwork to enhance success in offspring rearing and tag-teaming of fishing duties. As typical, the male frequently pursue extramarital sex, but the females are the gatekeepers (even more so than among mammals as without penises there can be no rape). Because the exposure of seabird colonies makes possible prolonged observation of social behavior, there is a growing body of fascinating and often amusing accounts of adulterous behavior among the 10-30% of adults among the various species who stray from their marriage. A veritable Peyton Place at times. It turns out that in many cases, the driver here is females pursuing a better husband, a dumping of hubby after a poor record in his child tending skills
Marital debate between guillemots.
The resiliency and flexibility of seabird behaviors make for alternating parallel themes in this book. Resiliency is evident from their survival for millions of years, but the counter to that is that 140,000 of 150,000 species estimated as ever evolved have become extinct. One projection has it that human expansion in the Pacific was responsible for loss of 2,000 bird species, mostly prior to 1300 AD. The spread of cats and rats has been a big factor in recent centuries. The surprising fragility in the success of individuals and colonies is revealed in various threads. A study in kittiwakes revealed that adding a third egg to their nest has a devastating effect on rates of reproductive success. Something as simple as an offshore feeding ground shifting a hundred miles in connection with currents changed by global warming can defeat the energy balance maintained by puffins, which must dive 600-1,200 times a day to feed itself and a chick or two. Nicholson undermines the outward perception of these cute birds as mostly proper and reserved with a sense of their possible restraint due to terror and stress. In the face of current threats to survival of many seabird species, he raised hope that regulations on trawler, gill net, and long-line fishing and progress on reducing ocean pollution can have a positive impact. On his own part, he took the effort in a scientific strategy to eliminate rats from his own Shiant Islands, the nesting site of about half a million seabirds. Their health represents a suitable “canary in the coal mine” as an index of human stewardship of the planet and a continuing source of inspiration about the mysteries in the web of life:
Seabirds can seem …like victims in the world, almost like refugees, hopelessly dependent on what life can offer them, subject to weather and dearth, with failure stalking them at every turn. But they have an intriguing doubleness in them: individuated but profoundly collective, individually weak but in their giant colonies and networks of colonies, a trans-oceanic system of existence, a cumulative assertion of life. That is why they are one of our imaginative reservoirs, summer ambassadors from the winter ocean, come to visit us in our mundane existence, creatures from the otherworld temporarily and for a moment afloat in ours, and for all their vulnerability a reminder of the beauty and mystery of existence.
A rewarding read all around. Highly recommended. This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.
Surprising beauty apparent in distinctive patterns on guillemot eggs, predating Jackson Pollack. The nostalgia chic among Victorian Brits in the 19th century over the extinction of such species as the Great Auk was paralleled by the collection and commercialization of their eggs, which resembles the earlier tulip mania phenomenon in the Netherlands.
August 1, 2019
We are living in an age of loss. Over the last sixty years, the world population of seabirds has dropped by around 70%. Adam Nicolson is distraught at their decimation. We all should be.
This stunningly well written book is divided into 11 chapters, 10 of which concentrate on a particular bird’s habitat, habits, population, survival techniques, role in the wider ecosystem, and future. Fulmar, puffin, kittiwake, gull, guillemot, cormorant and shag, shearwater, gannet, great auk and razorbill, and finally, the albatross. Some of the experiments scientists have performed on them in the interests of advancing our understanding of them are horrific and inexcusable. I found these sections very hard to read and can’t imagine anyone could be so desensitised that they wouldn’t.
Decimated by overfishing, fishing techniques such as longlining, global warming, pollution, hunting, the introduction of new predators into their territories, some birds are disappearing and others are learning, or evolving, to adapt. I’ve only recently become fascinated by birds. In June this year I visited Lunga, a small island off the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, to see the puffins. Like everyone else, I’m drawn to these funny little birds and could have watched them for much longer than the couple of hours we were given. On the island is a colony of guillemots. I have never heard a noise like it. It was deafening. I’ve never smelled a smell like it when the wind turned either!! I saw shags close up, having only ever seen them at a distance hanging out their wings to dry on rocky coasts. What beautiful birds they are! Razorbills, looking as if they were wearing Ray-Bans, sat contentedly amongst the puffins. It was a privilege to have this experience.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. Henry Beston
The Seabird’s Cry is not only thought-provoking, it’s a beautifully written elegy to seabirds by someone who truly loves them, is fighting to save them, and is appealing to the rest of the world to do the same. I’d give it more than 5 stars if I could.
This stunningly well written book is divided into 11 chapters, 10 of which concentrate on a particular bird’s habitat, habits, population, survival techniques, role in the wider ecosystem, and future. Fulmar, puffin, kittiwake, gull, guillemot, cormorant and shag, shearwater, gannet, great auk and razorbill, and finally, the albatross. Some of the experiments scientists have performed on them in the interests of advancing our understanding of them are horrific and inexcusable. I found these sections very hard to read and can’t imagine anyone could be so desensitised that they wouldn’t.
Decimated by overfishing, fishing techniques such as longlining, global warming, pollution, hunting, the introduction of new predators into their territories, some birds are disappearing and others are learning, or evolving, to adapt. I’ve only recently become fascinated by birds. In June this year I visited Lunga, a small island off the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, to see the puffins. Like everyone else, I’m drawn to these funny little birds and could have watched them for much longer than the couple of hours we were given. On the island is a colony of guillemots. I have never heard a noise like it. It was deafening. I’ve never smelled a smell like it when the wind turned either!! I saw shags close up, having only ever seen them at a distance hanging out their wings to dry on rocky coasts. What beautiful birds they are! Razorbills, looking as if they were wearing Ray-Bans, sat contentedly amongst the puffins. It was a privilege to have this experience.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. Henry Beston
The Seabird’s Cry is not only thought-provoking, it’s a beautifully written elegy to seabirds by someone who truly loves them, is fighting to save them, and is appealing to the rest of the world to do the same. I’d give it more than 5 stars if I could.
January 5, 2022
Click here to hear my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.
The winner of the 2018 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, this book is a consideration of the lives of ten different seabirds/groups of seabirds and gives readers a glimpse into their worlds. Each chapter is a self-contained unit - making the book read more like an essay collection - but it's jam packed with fascinating information and insights, all presented in a masterful way.
The winner of the 2018 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, this book is a consideration of the lives of ten different seabirds/groups of seabirds and gives readers a glimpse into their worlds. Each chapter is a self-contained unit - making the book read more like an essay collection - but it's jam packed with fascinating information and insights, all presented in a masterful way.
October 8, 2018
(4.5) This is an extraordinarily well-written and -researched book about the behavior, cultural importance, and current plight of the world’s seabirds. A worthy Wainwright Prize winner. I marveled at how certain species can navigate thousands of miles and end up back on the same rock with the same mate, year on year. Each chapter takes up a different species and dives deep into everything from its anatomy to the legends surrounding it. Nicolson simultaneously conveys the playful, intimate real lives of the birds and their complete otherness – something we forget at our peril, as when a beachcomber picked up an injured gannet and lost an eye. This is a rewarding but dense book: I started off reading a chapter a day but couldn’t sustain the pace and had to decrease to a few pages a day. There’s more detail about academic studies than one would expect from a work of popular science, but it’s necessary as evidence of the crisis: seabird numbers have dropped by two-thirds in the last 60 years, and some we may not be able to save. For the rest, we must do all we can.
Some favorite lines:
“That fluency and hardness, the cauterizing cold, the oceanic extent, the taunting inaccessibility, the freedom, the evasiveness, the otherness: these are the ingredients of the seabird’s world.”
“Birds have set up their territories in the branches of the human psyche for at least 60,000 years. And we have always had a double relationship to them: we have used them and loved them, nurtured and destroyed them, investigated them and sold them, looked at them with some awe and made toys, hats and dinner out of them.”
“I know from experience how blind one can be to deep and threatening change. Our natural assumption is that we live in constancy.”
Some favorite lines:
“That fluency and hardness, the cauterizing cold, the oceanic extent, the taunting inaccessibility, the freedom, the evasiveness, the otherness: these are the ingredients of the seabird’s world.”
“Birds have set up their territories in the branches of the human psyche for at least 60,000 years. And we have always had a double relationship to them: we have used them and loved them, nurtured and destroyed them, investigated them and sold them, looked at them with some awe and made toys, hats and dinner out of them.”
“I know from experience how blind one can be to deep and threatening change. Our natural assumption is that we live in constancy.”
August 31, 2025
THE CALLIGRAPHY OF BEAUTY
I've been in a reading malaise, for which I've blamed Ron Chernow. But it's Summer, so there's also baseball and visits here and there. And maybe I should cut back on Woodoku. In any event, this book may have got me back on track. It has in abundance the two things I look for in non-fiction: cool stuff to learn or re-think and gorgeous writing.
Here's a way of looking at evolution that I hadn't previously considered. Yes, we have evolved from other creatures and there are things we can do, now, that they can't. Like typing this review on my laptop. But in the process of evolution, there are things that we've lost. Like migrating instincts and being able to narrow our bodies and plunge-dive for herring. Which is the greater skill?
The author looks at ten species of seabirds, each one more fascinating than the one before. So I've learned about the divorce rate of puffins; the market for Great Auk (now extinct) eggs; and how there was nothing superstitious about the killing of pre-Coleridge albatross. Gannets lay two eggs at a time. When the chicks hatch, one will kill the other, while the parents watch with disinterest. The winner will continue to act with an almost evil violence the rest of its life. So, if you see an injured gannet on the beach, resist the urge to save it.
I mentioned the gorgeous writing. Here's this about shearwaters:
I watched for hours: the way they touch the sea with their wingtips as they turn is the source of their name. Those primaries dipped into the water, first one wing then the other, leave a fine trailed wake behind them; no need for a safety margin, but as certain at speed as a motorcyclist taking a corner, his knee grazing and kissing the tarmac. It is an ancient name, which means simply 'cut-water' or 'slice-water'. Occasionally the birds flapped their wings, rose and moved away, but it was the shearing movement to which the eye always returned, the sweep of the body, the calligraphy of beauty, each move as unconsidered as the one before, the birds playing the instrument of themselves.
While the author bemoans the toll of fishing and warming waters on the bird population, he ends with a kind of hope, noting that birds have often adapted to changes, and that we are seeing evidence of those changes even now.
I've been in a reading malaise, for which I've blamed Ron Chernow. But it's Summer, so there's also baseball and visits here and there. And maybe I should cut back on Woodoku. In any event, this book may have got me back on track. It has in abundance the two things I look for in non-fiction: cool stuff to learn or re-think and gorgeous writing.
Here's a way of looking at evolution that I hadn't previously considered. Yes, we have evolved from other creatures and there are things we can do, now, that they can't. Like typing this review on my laptop. But in the process of evolution, there are things that we've lost. Like migrating instincts and being able to narrow our bodies and plunge-dive for herring. Which is the greater skill?
The author looks at ten species of seabirds, each one more fascinating than the one before. So I've learned about the divorce rate of puffins; the market for Great Auk (now extinct) eggs; and how there was nothing superstitious about the killing of pre-Coleridge albatross. Gannets lay two eggs at a time. When the chicks hatch, one will kill the other, while the parents watch with disinterest. The winner will continue to act with an almost evil violence the rest of its life. So, if you see an injured gannet on the beach, resist the urge to save it.
I mentioned the gorgeous writing. Here's this about shearwaters:
I watched for hours: the way they touch the sea with their wingtips as they turn is the source of their name. Those primaries dipped into the water, first one wing then the other, leave a fine trailed wake behind them; no need for a safety margin, but as certain at speed as a motorcyclist taking a corner, his knee grazing and kissing the tarmac. It is an ancient name, which means simply 'cut-water' or 'slice-water'. Occasionally the birds flapped their wings, rose and moved away, but it was the shearing movement to which the eye always returned, the sweep of the body, the calligraphy of beauty, each move as unconsidered as the one before, the birds playing the instrument of themselves.
While the author bemoans the toll of fishing and warming waters on the bird population, he ends with a kind of hope, noting that birds have often adapted to changes, and that we are seeing evidence of those changes even now.
May 21, 2019
I will start by saying that I am a scientist, in fact a seabird ecologist, and I came in to reading this book with a certain level of expectance – and yes, bias – so my review may not concern the general reader; but I have endeavoured to be as fair as possible.
Nicolson is clearly passionate about his subject material and his descriptions can hit the mark well. However, there are unfortunately many times where Nicolson has a tendency to produce over-long and convoluted descriptions that detract from the experience of the book. This may please the more artistic, but for me there was, at times, too much flouncy writing.
The information on the seabirds themselves is generally well put together, especially when Nicolson draws on a specific study or historical information. But where the book falls down is sadly in the more basic information. Unfortunately, Nicolson often doesn’t cite his sources when pertaining to the basic ‘stats’ of the birds (i.e. age, dive depth, egg size, number of species etc.) resulting in the information given sometimes being embellished, exaggerated or occasionally even false. This is a shame as he clearly is capable of doing the research and providing good information in relevant ways, so when he misses the mark it is very frustrating.
However, there are two instances where Nicolson gets it very wrong!
Firstly, Nicolson writes that “[Puffins nest in burrows that] hides the egg and chick from gulls and rats”. This is unbelievably untrue, they nest in burrows to avoid airborne predators like gulls, yes, but the rats are incredibly damaging and can regularly eat eggs inside the burrows, hence the need to eradicate them where possible from seabird islands. It is strange, Nicolson is clearly aware of this fact having been involved with the rat eradication on the Shiants and knows how other burrow nesting seabirds recovered afterwards; so he must know that puffins are also susceptible to rat predation.
Secondly, and most worryingly, the major issue of plastics gets one paragraph in the whole book when they are described as “one disturbing footnote”! A footnote!!! One of the biggest conservation issues of the modern age and a major killer of seabirds and Nicolson affords it one paragraph at the end of a chapter calling it a footnote. Disgraceful! A pity, as the impacts of fisheries and climate change are mentioned (although they should be afforded much more detail as well) but plastics are brushed-aside when this was the perfect opportunity to highlight the issue further and inspire some real conservation effort in the readers.
A quick note on the publication as well. The pictures are meant to add to the descriptive nature of the book but are provided in black and white. Why (sometimes overly) describe such wonderful images but not provide colour imagery? A wasted opportunity.
In conclusion, I think Nicolson has done a good job in certain aspects of the book, especially when talking about a specific research project or the history of the birds but has a tendency to produce over-long poetic descriptions and hasn’t checked some of the more simple facts entirely accurately. So it is a good book for the artistic or a starting point for those new to the subject of the plight of seabirds, but it is equally, in some ways, disappointing and frustrating for those already aware of, or working to protect, seabird ecosystems.
Nicolson is clearly passionate about his subject material and his descriptions can hit the mark well. However, there are unfortunately many times where Nicolson has a tendency to produce over-long and convoluted descriptions that detract from the experience of the book. This may please the more artistic, but for me there was, at times, too much flouncy writing.
The information on the seabirds themselves is generally well put together, especially when Nicolson draws on a specific study or historical information. But where the book falls down is sadly in the more basic information. Unfortunately, Nicolson often doesn’t cite his sources when pertaining to the basic ‘stats’ of the birds (i.e. age, dive depth, egg size, number of species etc.) resulting in the information given sometimes being embellished, exaggerated or occasionally even false. This is a shame as he clearly is capable of doing the research and providing good information in relevant ways, so when he misses the mark it is very frustrating.
However, there are two instances where Nicolson gets it very wrong!
Firstly, Nicolson writes that “[Puffins nest in burrows that] hides the egg and chick from gulls and rats”. This is unbelievably untrue, they nest in burrows to avoid airborne predators like gulls, yes, but the rats are incredibly damaging and can regularly eat eggs inside the burrows, hence the need to eradicate them where possible from seabird islands. It is strange, Nicolson is clearly aware of this fact having been involved with the rat eradication on the Shiants and knows how other burrow nesting seabirds recovered afterwards; so he must know that puffins are also susceptible to rat predation.
Secondly, and most worryingly, the major issue of plastics gets one paragraph in the whole book when they are described as “one disturbing footnote”! A footnote!!! One of the biggest conservation issues of the modern age and a major killer of seabirds and Nicolson affords it one paragraph at the end of a chapter calling it a footnote. Disgraceful! A pity, as the impacts of fisheries and climate change are mentioned (although they should be afforded much more detail as well) but plastics are brushed-aside when this was the perfect opportunity to highlight the issue further and inspire some real conservation effort in the readers.
A quick note on the publication as well. The pictures are meant to add to the descriptive nature of the book but are provided in black and white. Why (sometimes overly) describe such wonderful images but not provide colour imagery? A wasted opportunity.
In conclusion, I think Nicolson has done a good job in certain aspects of the book, especially when talking about a specific research project or the history of the birds but has a tendency to produce over-long poetic descriptions and hasn’t checked some of the more simple facts entirely accurately. So it is a good book for the artistic or a starting point for those new to the subject of the plight of seabirds, but it is equally, in some ways, disappointing and frustrating for those already aware of, or working to protect, seabird ecosystems.
April 27, 2024
not sure how far I'm going to get/if I'm going to continue in reading this book... I kind of want to, but...
I love the birds, and the idea... and the illustrations appealed... but I was very quickly really turned off by the authors writing style, especially the use of militaristic metaphors.
I suspect his perspective and presentation just don't resonate with my own observation and style of interaction with the natural world.
I love the birds, and the idea... and the illustrations appealed... but I was very quickly really turned off by the authors writing style, especially the use of militaristic metaphors.
I suspect his perspective and presentation just don't resonate with my own observation and style of interaction with the natural world.
September 16, 2019
I have read so many rave reviews of this book, but personally I found it very disappointing.
With a chapter each describing the trials and tribulations of ten different seabirds, and handsome illustrations by Kate Boxer, what's not to like? The perspective of the author is flagged up in his introduction when he casually mentions of his father "when he was twenty...he had bought the (Shiant) islands" - as you do. Later on we have "(E)ver since I have known the Shiants, which my father gave to me in 1978 when I was twenty-one...". So we get a sense of where he is coming from.
The chapters are promising, with a mix of poetic references to the birds and reports of scientific studies. However the tone always comes back to anthropomorphic descriptions of the birds, doing things with intent and emotion. Studies feel cherry-picked for when they make these points, rather than for balance and vigour. The descriptions of evolution throughout the book are not very scientific, echoing out-dated Lamarckian ideas of evolutionary progress. It just started to irritate me as I read on. But it was the emotive, relentless anthropomorphism that had me grinding my teeth as I read on.
Many people have loved this book, but it just drove me bananas.
With a chapter each describing the trials and tribulations of ten different seabirds, and handsome illustrations by Kate Boxer, what's not to like? The perspective of the author is flagged up in his introduction when he casually mentions of his father "when he was twenty...he had bought the (Shiant) islands" - as you do. Later on we have "(E)ver since I have known the Shiants, which my father gave to me in 1978 when I was twenty-one...". So we get a sense of where he is coming from.
The chapters are promising, with a mix of poetic references to the birds and reports of scientific studies. However the tone always comes back to anthropomorphic descriptions of the birds, doing things with intent and emotion. Studies feel cherry-picked for when they make these points, rather than for balance and vigour. The descriptions of evolution throughout the book are not very scientific, echoing out-dated Lamarckian ideas of evolutionary progress. It just started to irritate me as I read on. But it was the emotive, relentless anthropomorphism that had me grinding my teeth as I read on.
Many people have loved this book, but it just drove me bananas.
May 31, 2018
Life on the open ocean is harsh relentless and unforgiving. To survive there takes resilience and millennia of evolution. Seabirds are masters of this environment, relishing the storms that drive the vast ships to save havens, navigating ten of thousands of miles, and when they do touch land inspiring those that see the fight as a species to survive to the next generation.
Nicolson has been fascinated by these utterly wild birds since visiting and then inheriting The Shiants, the Hebridean islands just of the coast of Lewis and seeing the kittiwakes and gannets and other seabirds that use the speck of land for nesting, he came to love all these birds that inhabited the islands and places that he loved. Beginning with the fulmar, a bird which he would watch for hours swirling around off the cliffs of the Shiants, he considers the lives and fortunes of ten of the seabirds, including the guillemot, gulls, shearwaters, the colourful puffins and the master of the southern ocean, the albatross. Weaving together the history of these birds along with cultural aspects, folklore, poetry and the latest that science has revealed about their habits and habitat.
Using the latest miniature technology to track the epic journeys they make, and some of these are vast, far out into the Atlantic using the trade winds to travel vast distances with little or no effort. Whilst this book is a celebration of their dogged existence and mastery against the elements; it is also a warning. As climate change bites harder these birds are beginning to suffer as the food they need to raise their young becomes scarce or it takes much longer to reach. They are also suffering because of the amount of plastic that is clogging up our oceans too, with a rise in young being found with bellies full of waste that they just cannot get rid off. Each chapter is illustrated by the beautiful drawings of Kate Boxer the simple imagery capturing the essence of the bird. There is lots of detail packed in this timely book, but Nicolson is such a quality writer that it doesn't feel like a chore reading it. For me, I think that Sea Room just has the edge on this one, but like that book, his deep love for the birds that inhabit the wild windswept places is evident in the book; how much longer we will have them is not yet know.
Nicolson has been fascinated by these utterly wild birds since visiting and then inheriting The Shiants, the Hebridean islands just of the coast of Lewis and seeing the kittiwakes and gannets and other seabirds that use the speck of land for nesting, he came to love all these birds that inhabited the islands and places that he loved. Beginning with the fulmar, a bird which he would watch for hours swirling around off the cliffs of the Shiants, he considers the lives and fortunes of ten of the seabirds, including the guillemot, gulls, shearwaters, the colourful puffins and the master of the southern ocean, the albatross. Weaving together the history of these birds along with cultural aspects, folklore, poetry and the latest that science has revealed about their habits and habitat.
Using the latest miniature technology to track the epic journeys they make, and some of these are vast, far out into the Atlantic using the trade winds to travel vast distances with little or no effort. Whilst this book is a celebration of their dogged existence and mastery against the elements; it is also a warning. As climate change bites harder these birds are beginning to suffer as the food they need to raise their young becomes scarce or it takes much longer to reach. They are also suffering because of the amount of plastic that is clogging up our oceans too, with a rise in young being found with bellies full of waste that they just cannot get rid off. Each chapter is illustrated by the beautiful drawings of Kate Boxer the simple imagery capturing the essence of the bird. There is lots of detail packed in this timely book, but Nicolson is such a quality writer that it doesn't feel like a chore reading it. For me, I think that Sea Room just has the edge on this one, but like that book, his deep love for the birds that inhabit the wild windswept places is evident in the book; how much longer we will have them is not yet know.
September 20, 2018
I started reading this book when we were on holiday in Northumberland and after a boat trip out to the Farne Islands where Puffins nest in the Spring. I saw that one of my Goodreads friends was reading this and that inspired me to read it too. I always read fiction so this was a real departure but I am so pleased I persisted. I will never look at sea birds in the same way again from the amazing Albatross flying at ninety miles an hour and flying tens of thousands of miles a year to the incredible tubenose birds who find fish thousands of miles away by detecting one part per billion of chemicals given off by plankton being eaten by krill. Birds that are mostly long lived and who mostly mate for life but in some species incredible stories of sibling murder, cannibalism and even hoodlum teenager birds who mug and rape neighbouring young birds. This book describes sea bird behaviour through reporting ornithological research, personal observation, mythology, poetry and cultural traditions associated with living near and on sea birds but all in a very readable and engaging way. Incredible book, lovely photographs. Of course there is the story of the devastation being done to sea bird numbers by warming oceans, long line fishing, plastic and other human activity and the real risk of extinction to large varieties of species. The author finished on a positive story about the return of birds to the Shaints after the culling of the rat population that had been systematically destroying bird eggs. Really memorable book and worth reading.
October 12, 2019
For me my knowledge of seabirds isn't up to much, unless you put in a large amount of effort then you're not going to see them or even hear the mad cacophony that they produce during their get-togethers. The Puffin has gotta be one of the birds you must see, they've got so much character...one of these days I'll go out amongst people and take a boat trip to check out one of their breeding grounds. Maybe take a few of those pasty-stealing seagulls with be to drop off there.
This book is absolutely crammed full of interesting facts and stories. At first it felt a bit daunting because there is hardly any of the usual life story or anecdotes about how the author fell in love with the birds, this book is all about the birds themselves and how they have influenced people throughout history. Once that first interesting fact comes along the book becomes easy to read.
The experiments that early scientists did are shocking, so inhumane it makes you wonder what the hell was wrong with them, some of the things they did are what serial killers do in their youth. One of the most interesting facts was about plastic and why birds keep eating it, I've always thought it was odd as the plastic doesn't look like fish, turns out smell is an important tool when a bird is hunting and the plastic gives off the same smell as their food. Crazy!
There are lots of photos, illustrations, maps and graphs to accompany the writing and though I didn't understand how to interpret all of the graphs they really add to the reading experience. This an incredibly well reached book and well deserving of the Wainwright prize that it won. Now who's got a boat I can borrow?
Blog review> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...
This book is absolutely crammed full of interesting facts and stories. At first it felt a bit daunting because there is hardly any of the usual life story or anecdotes about how the author fell in love with the birds, this book is all about the birds themselves and how they have influenced people throughout history. Once that first interesting fact comes along the book becomes easy to read.
The experiments that early scientists did are shocking, so inhumane it makes you wonder what the hell was wrong with them, some of the things they did are what serial killers do in their youth. One of the most interesting facts was about plastic and why birds keep eating it, I've always thought it was odd as the plastic doesn't look like fish, turns out smell is an important tool when a bird is hunting and the plastic gives off the same smell as their food. Crazy!
There are lots of photos, illustrations, maps and graphs to accompany the writing and though I didn't understand how to interpret all of the graphs they really add to the reading experience. This an incredibly well reached book and well deserving of the Wainwright prize that it won. Now who's got a boat I can borrow?
Blog review> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...
September 22, 2020
Easily the best book I’ve read on birds. If you are into nature books or science books, you will probably like this one. Informative and entertaining.
The chapters on the kittiwakes and shearwaters were my favorites.
The chapters on the kittiwakes and shearwaters were my favorites.
September 24, 2019
I received Adam Nicolson's The Seabird's Cry: The Lives and Loves of Puffins, Gannets and Other Ocean Voyagers for Christmas, and although it took me some months to read, I was keen to get to it. I adore nature writing, and have wanted to read Nicolson's work for a long time, and this seemed like the perfect introduction to it. I found The Seabird's Cry utterly fascinating, and learnt so much from it. Beautifully descriptive, and with a wealth of wonderful research, this is a must-read for any nature lover.
June 19, 2022
'The Seabird's Cry' (2017) - by Adam Nicolson, with illustrations by Kate Boxer.
I can't really recommend this book highly enough. For anyone with an interest in natural history, ecology, evolution, avian life, seabirds in particular, the science of birds, the beauty and harsh reality of nature - this is a categorical must read.
Nicolson splits his book, for the most part, into a chapter dedicated to each bird, including the Puffin, Gannet, Albatross and others. Nicolson tells the story of the life of each bird, it's daily life and travels, how it's community operates and more often than not, the impact of man as 'super predator' on each particular birds' future.
'Seabird's Cry' is written so well, so poetically, so beautifully, so truthfully - Nicolson deftly interweaves the science of seabird ornithologists and reveals the intelligence of seabirds, their knowledge of the sea, the weather, the winds and above all else, survival.
But something surprising and unexpected comes across clearly and repeatedly from Nicolson's book - and that's the clear and many similarities between the life of seabirds and their colonies and the life of man. 'Seabird's Cry' is categorically not anthropomorphic self indulgence, but highlights throughout the behavioural parallels between seabirds and ourselves and the ramifications of same.
At the risk of falling fowl to cliche, 'Seabird's Cry' tells us just about as much about ourselves and our place in the world, as it does about the seabird subjects.
A mention should also be made of the beautiful illustrations from Kate Boxer throughout.
Thought provoking, captivating, moving, beautifully and poetically written, with supporting and accessible science, 'Seabird's Cry' is a brilliant achievement, an excellent book. My review can't do Nicolson's book justice, neither can I convey quite how much I know that 'Seabird's Cry' will stay with me. My advice - just read it.
I can't really recommend this book highly enough. For anyone with an interest in natural history, ecology, evolution, avian life, seabirds in particular, the science of birds, the beauty and harsh reality of nature - this is a categorical must read.
Nicolson splits his book, for the most part, into a chapter dedicated to each bird, including the Puffin, Gannet, Albatross and others. Nicolson tells the story of the life of each bird, it's daily life and travels, how it's community operates and more often than not, the impact of man as 'super predator' on each particular birds' future.
'Seabird's Cry' is written so well, so poetically, so beautifully, so truthfully - Nicolson deftly interweaves the science of seabird ornithologists and reveals the intelligence of seabirds, their knowledge of the sea, the weather, the winds and above all else, survival.
But something surprising and unexpected comes across clearly and repeatedly from Nicolson's book - and that's the clear and many similarities between the life of seabirds and their colonies and the life of man. 'Seabird's Cry' is categorically not anthropomorphic self indulgence, but highlights throughout the behavioural parallels between seabirds and ourselves and the ramifications of same.
At the risk of falling fowl to cliche, 'Seabird's Cry' tells us just about as much about ourselves and our place in the world, as it does about the seabird subjects.
A mention should also be made of the beautiful illustrations from Kate Boxer throughout.
Thought provoking, captivating, moving, beautifully and poetically written, with supporting and accessible science, 'Seabird's Cry' is a brilliant achievement, an excellent book. My review can't do Nicolson's book justice, neither can I convey quite how much I know that 'Seabird's Cry' will stay with me. My advice - just read it.
October 27, 2020
An interesting mix of lyrical references, ornithology, and, sadly, too much anthropomorphism. The intro and the final chapters do a good job of describing the urgency of the problems faced by seabirds. I deeply appreciated the idea of Umwelt, experiencing the world in the terms of the species being considered. The cormorant and shag chapter was the least successful and the albatross one probably the most effective.
July 17, 2018
You might also enjoy:
✱ One Wild Bird at a Time
✱ Mind of the Raven
✱ Under the Sea Wind
✱ The Song of the Dodo
✱ The Outermost House
✱ The Thing with Feathers
✱ One Wild Bird at a Time
✱ Mind of the Raven
✱ Under the Sea Wind
✱ The Song of the Dodo
✱ The Outermost House
✱ The Thing with Feathers
September 12, 2024
Very interesting book. Sometimes gruesome, sometimes hopeful, but often also quite sad. Sea birds are awesome. Very nice voice to listen to.
January 26, 2022
5 feathery, noisy stars.
I love birds. I love all animals, but birds are my favorite (after cats ofc). A book with a puffin on the cover was always going to grab my attention.
But boy, did it hold my attention all the way through. You might think: a chapter (some long) per seabird species. Won't that get repetitive? They fight, they breed, they fish, the end.
Non! For every bird, AN focuses on a part of their biology/ecology that makes it stand out from the other species, features that make you go WOW and WTF in equal measure. Every single species in this book is a (sometimes little, sometimes large) feathered wonder!
I have to note that this is not a happy read. On the one hand, nature can be brutal. You need to only watch 1 or 2 nature docs to know that competition kills and often it's the chicks that suffer the most. On the other hand, the impact of humans (climate change, harmful fishing practices, etc.) on these animals, be it directly, on their habitat or their food supply, makes for grim reading at times. But overall, the moods in this book are pretty balanced, so you won't be left feeling totally hopeless.
Overall, a fantastic read. Highly recommend.
I love birds. I love all animals, but birds are my favorite (after cats ofc). A book with a puffin on the cover was always going to grab my attention.
But boy, did it hold my attention all the way through. You might think: a chapter (some long) per seabird species. Won't that get repetitive? They fight, they breed, they fish, the end.
Non! For every bird, AN focuses on a part of their biology/ecology that makes it stand out from the other species, features that make you go WOW and WTF in equal measure. Every single species in this book is a (sometimes little, sometimes large) feathered wonder!
I have to note that this is not a happy read. On the one hand, nature can be brutal. You need to only watch 1 or 2 nature docs to know that competition kills and often it's the chicks that suffer the most. On the other hand, the impact of humans (climate change, harmful fishing practices, etc.) on these animals, be it directly, on their habitat or their food supply, makes for grim reading at times. But overall, the moods in this book are pretty balanced, so you won't be left feeling totally hopeless.
Overall, a fantastic read. Highly recommend.
July 22, 2019
An RSPB volunteer recommended this book to me - the intent is good, which is to educate and acknowledge the plight of sea birds, and the research behind it is commendable. However to say I disliked this book from the first few pages would be true, and this dislike quite slowly grew to hatred towards the end. When the book is stripped off its artistry ambitions it has a wealth of interesting facts, trivia and bird type/habitat/habit comparisons. But, consider this passage about kittiwakes:
However, there are many things to like about the information in this book. The extravagances of avian intelligence: kittiwakes in Alaska time their flight to the optimum tides for maximum amount of fish; a gull broke a stolen bread into crumbs to attract fish, and then easily caught these fish (perhaps learning from humans). I was surprised to read that birds with larger brains are those that tend to stay in long-term monogamy arrangements with their partners - something I've never known in my years of birding.
"a sprung and beautiful thing, dawn grey, black eyes, black tips to the wings . . . its whole being like a singer’s held note, not flickering or rag-like, nor blown about like a tern, but elastic, vibrant, investigative, delicate . . . "I find that completely pretentious. I love kittiwakes, but I cannot stand that description, it's grasping, unnecessary and off-putting. I do not want to read that puffins carry themselves with "Edwardian propriety", or of the otherwordliness of the wandering albatross or that they inhabit a different, higher spiritual realm than us (ugh wtf). Nicolson is guilty of such description in almost every page.
However, there are many things to like about the information in this book. The extravagances of avian intelligence: kittiwakes in Alaska time their flight to the optimum tides for maximum amount of fish; a gull broke a stolen bread into crumbs to attract fish, and then easily caught these fish (perhaps learning from humans). I was surprised to read that birds with larger brains are those that tend to stay in long-term monogamy arrangements with their partners - something I've never known in my years of birding.
August 8, 2017
I unreservedly loved this book. Nicolson has long been fascinated by seabirds, and explains how these birds differ so much in habit and lifestyle from the garden birds with whom many of us are more familiar. Then he takes ten different species to examine in turn. He refers to his personal observations, to scientific research, to history and to literature to build a rounded and fascinating portrait of each species he's chosen. My husband got used to having a daily bulletin of 'today's most fascinating seabird facts' at breakfast each morning, and now he too is reading the book.
Beautifully written, the book is meticulously researched. Yet Nicolson's style is readable and involving, with sometimes detailed data presented in a clear and accessible manner. His final chapter, while apparently negative about the future for many of our most loved seabirds ends on a positive note. This was a book I was sorry to have finished.
Beautifully written, the book is meticulously researched. Yet Nicolson's style is readable and involving, with sometimes detailed data presented in a clear and accessible manner. His final chapter, while apparently negative about the future for many of our most loved seabirds ends on a positive note. This was a book I was sorry to have finished.
Read
April 27, 2024DNF — shelving this one. prose is really cloying and overly “poetic”. i just want to learn a bit about birds. feel like i’m being written at, rather than written to. all these comparisons to greek literature and stuff… i just don’t need that stuff man: i’ve bought the book, i’m already invested, i don’t need all this overblown convincing about birds being cool
August 17, 2025
2.75
i enjoyed aspects of this book (i have always had a soft spot for sea birds), however the author’s relentless anthropomorphism of the birds really dragged down my overall impression of this book. whilst i understand that this book is aimed at a general audience, and not those like myself who specialise in the polar regions, i do not think that this level of anthropomorphism is helpful in helping the reader empathise or understand the importance of these species. i think instead that this approach only worsens the widespread issue of apathy in relation to both climate change and the collapse of biospheres. i do not think it is helpful for two main reasons: it reinforces the perception that a species is only worth protecting if homo sapiens are able to relate to them, they are ‘like us’, or are of some value (monetary or otherwise) that we can exploit for the ‘good of humanity’, further perpetuating that idea that we as humans are ‘above’ another species. secondly, it is scientifically inaccurate.
i do not think, by any means, that this book has no value - it does a good overall job of setting the scene of the scale of the seabird’s lives. i would however advise caution when reading, and ask yourself why certain choices have been made on the part of the author, and if it was necessary. because a being does not need to be human or human-like to have value.
i enjoyed aspects of this book (i have always had a soft spot for sea birds), however the author’s relentless anthropomorphism of the birds really dragged down my overall impression of this book. whilst i understand that this book is aimed at a general audience, and not those like myself who specialise in the polar regions, i do not think that this level of anthropomorphism is helpful in helping the reader empathise or understand the importance of these species. i think instead that this approach only worsens the widespread issue of apathy in relation to both climate change and the collapse of biospheres. i do not think it is helpful for two main reasons: it reinforces the perception that a species is only worth protecting if homo sapiens are able to relate to them, they are ‘like us’, or are of some value (monetary or otherwise) that we can exploit for the ‘good of humanity’, further perpetuating that idea that we as humans are ‘above’ another species. secondly, it is scientifically inaccurate.
i do not think, by any means, that this book has no value - it does a good overall job of setting the scene of the scale of the seabird’s lives. i would however advise caution when reading, and ask yourself why certain choices have been made on the part of the author, and if it was necessary. because a being does not need to be human or human-like to have value.
September 10, 2024
Very interesting book about seabirds. I really liked that the more scientific parts were alternated with birds in art (The Ancient Mariner by Coleridge, Melville). Humans have a relationship with these birds, which makes protecting them so important. There are only a few glimmers of hope, however.
July 3, 2019
Nicolson's fascination with seabirds began when his father took him to visit a cluster of the Shiants in North West Scotland - islands he has now inherited! It was there that Adam Nicolson’s fascination with seabirds began.
Each chapter is dedicated to one of 10 species of seabirds, such as the puffin, “whose life stands outside the cuteness in which we want to envelop it.” Each chapter is illustrated by the beautiful drawings of Kate Boxer.
Seabirds are difficult to study, because they spend most of their lives over distant seas, coming to land only to breed and rear their young. But science “is coming to understand the seabirds just as they are dying." This book is a manifesto for the Ecozoic, a period which has at its heart the belief that all living beings have a right to life and to the recognition that they have forms of understanding we have never shared and probably never will. Also, regarding our often anthropocentric view of animals: “We have no monopoly on intelligence. We would not know how to exist in a form that is not our own.”
A perfect mix of science about the lives and ecology of seabirds, history, folklore, poetry, and our emotional, human response to them. Nicolson mentions the poets to highlight his observations, but his own prose is also lucid and poetic.
Recommend!
Each chapter is dedicated to one of 10 species of seabirds, such as the puffin, “whose life stands outside the cuteness in which we want to envelop it.” Each chapter is illustrated by the beautiful drawings of Kate Boxer.
Seabirds are difficult to study, because they spend most of their lives over distant seas, coming to land only to breed and rear their young. But science “is coming to understand the seabirds just as they are dying." This book is a manifesto for the Ecozoic, a period which has at its heart the belief that all living beings have a right to life and to the recognition that they have forms of understanding we have never shared and probably never will. Also, regarding our often anthropocentric view of animals: “We have no monopoly on intelligence. We would not know how to exist in a form that is not our own.”
A perfect mix of science about the lives and ecology of seabirds, history, folklore, poetry, and our emotional, human response to them. Nicolson mentions the poets to highlight his observations, but his own prose is also lucid and poetic.
Recommend!
December 24, 2021
Have to go 5 stars based on the superb content but also on how little I knew about seabirds and how much I learned in this book (another Goodwill special!). Half the birds I had barely heard of--fulmars, guillemots, kittiwakes, gannetts, shearwaters and even the 'familiar' ones I was pretty ignorant about--gulls, puffins, albatrosses, cormorants. Each bird got their own chapter to star in and all of them were impressive in their own right. Their feats of long-distance flying and navigation were simply amazing, although some of the methods by which they have been studied by scientists are not even borderline cruel. Of course the final chapter, on the general demise of the seabirds was completely depressing with a daunting list of the multiple threats facing these amazing creatures. Pretty much all human caused--climate change, over fishing (of their food sources and accidental killings in the process), ocean pollution (plastics), introduced predators, etc. the list goes on and on. According to the author in the past 60 years the world population of seabirds has dropped by 2/3. It really does make you wonder about homo sapiens. Our obsession with ourselves is literally killing the rest of the planet. But what is the solution? How about dumping about a billion masks into the biosphere each year to maybe save an infinitesimal fraction of our population?
January 28, 2025
4.5
I really enjoyed learning about the different seabirds! The author had a good mix of scientific facts/writing and then also some descriptions that felt almost poetic. The authors clear love for these birds came across in every chapter.
It only lost 0.5 stars because I personally would’ve preferred less of the fluff and more science!
I really enjoyed learning about the different seabirds! The author had a good mix of scientific facts/writing and then also some descriptions that felt almost poetic. The authors clear love for these birds came across in every chapter.
It only lost 0.5 stars because I personally would’ve preferred less of the fluff and more science!
December 12, 2022
The author looks at research on ten different seabirds, while providing some poetic and literary context for their connections with man and a snapshot of their daily life.
February 12, 2019
Every now and then I must sit down and read a book on birds by a British nature writer. They do things differently than we do, although I am hard pressed to figure out what that is. Nicolson is a great example. This book is deeply researched, but that is not unique to British writers. We have lots of writers who dig deeply into things. It is stylistically rich -- but we have that, too (Lopez, Matthiesen, Williams). But there is something in that combination of research and style with a deep and internalized sense of human cultural responses to the natural world that make some of the British writers unique, and that Nicolson's work illustrates better than many others.
The nine species he writes about here take him all over the world, even though exploration starts on his own Scottish island. He finds the relevant research, even if it is sometimes difficult to find (I was really pleased to see his summary of siblicide among the boobies that David Anderson has studied for so many years). And then there is his comfort with the literary tradition. In his chapter on the albatross we would expect him to quote Coleridge, which he does. But he also quotes at length from the longish passage from a young Melville, and then most surprisingly for an English speaking nature writer, he gives a fair amount of time to the wonderful poem by the young Baudelaire. I find this all making for an incredible texture.
And, of course, it is an appeal for the protection of seabirds, of the big travelers. All of his style, passion, talent and research take us there. It's a wonderful book, certainly for those of us who love and study birds, but I would hope many just taken with wonderful writing would find this book too.
The nine species he writes about here take him all over the world, even though exploration starts on his own Scottish island. He finds the relevant research, even if it is sometimes difficult to find (I was really pleased to see his summary of siblicide among the boobies that David Anderson has studied for so many years). And then there is his comfort with the literary tradition. In his chapter on the albatross we would expect him to quote Coleridge, which he does. But he also quotes at length from the longish passage from a young Melville, and then most surprisingly for an English speaking nature writer, he gives a fair amount of time to the wonderful poem by the young Baudelaire. I find this all making for an incredible texture.
And, of course, it is an appeal for the protection of seabirds, of the big travelers. All of his style, passion, talent and research take us there. It's a wonderful book, certainly for those of us who love and study birds, but I would hope many just taken with wonderful writing would find this book too.
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