Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience

by Jeremy Mynott

What draws us to the beauty of a peacock, the flight of an eagle, or the song of a nightingale? Why are birds so significant in our lives and our sense of the world? And what do our ways of thinking about and experiencing birds tell us about ourselves? Birdscapes is a unique meditation on the variety of human responses to birds, from antiquity to today, and from casual observers to the globe-trotting "twitchers" who sometimes risk life, limb, and marriages simply to add new species to their "life lists."

Drawing extensively on literature, history, philosophy, and science, Jeremy Mynott puts his own experiences as a birdwatcher in a rich cultural context. His sources range from the familiar--Thoreau, Keats, Darwin, and Audubon--to the unexpected--Benjamin Franklin, Giacomo Puccini, Oscar Wilde, and Monty Python. Just as unusual are the extensive illustrations, which explore our perceptions and representations of birds through images such as national emblems, women's hats, professional sports logos, and a Christmas biscuit tin, as well as classics of bird art. Each chapter takes up a new theme--from rarity, beauty, and sound to conservation, naming, and symbolism--and is set in a new place, as Mynott travels from his "home patch" in Suffolk, England, to his "away patch" in New York City's Central Park, as well as to Russia, Australia, and Greece.

Conversational, playful, and witty, Birdscapes gently leads us to reflect on large questions about our relation to birds and the natural world. It encourages birders to see their pursuits in a broader human context--and it shows nonbirders what they may be missing.

Genres: Birds, Natural History

384 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2009

About the author

Jeremy Mynott is Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has contributed to the Cambridge Dictionary of Political Thought and Cambridge Reader in the History of Political Thought and is also the author of several publications in natural history and ornithology.

Reviews

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible adventure in thinking about birds and the world around us. Mynott follows bird leylines and brings us to consider our relationships to birds, language, culture. He asks us to consider our senses in relationship to our understanding of the world. What would it mean to identify by sound and not sight? How would the change language and our perceptions.


A great sense of humor pervades the text.

Enjoy

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really extraordinary book in terms of getting at the heart of human nature and birding. Five stars despite the last few chapters feeling like a different, rushed book -- like an idea/list dump more than the well-integrated first 3/4 of the book.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to review this book because it has more faces than there are species of birds. So I'll start at the beginning: In the introduction the author, Jeremy Mynott, announces that Birdscapes is a journey where he is piecing things together as he goes. He warns that it might be scattered. This is certainly true - in fact it is painfully true and made me constantly wonder why he didn't just get an editor to reshape the book. As a reader, you are tugged in too many directions - a passage of beautiful poetic writing by Mynott about one of his birdwatching trips might suddenly be interrupted by an unnecessarily long quote by another writer, or (in the worst moments) sudden and unexpected classist or sexist comments that are so off kilter with the tranquillity of the writing around.

Locked inside each chapter there are gems of poetic, image and polemic that are worth uncovering, but they are too often marred by poor sections. Mynott clearly has an appreciable encyclopaedic knowledge of birds, a belief in the idea of "thinking through birds", and a flair for narrative writing. The passages where he poetically uncovers his own love of birds are wonderful, and his anecdotal storytelling of his own and others' birdwatching adventures are bright, enjoyable and often hilarious. So for a former chief executive of the Cambridge University Press, it is a poor indictment that this book wants so badly for a good editor. It could have been 200 pages long and been a vastly better book.

Worth mentioning: The chapter on the sound of birds (chapter 6) is extraordinary, and despite a couple of stuttering moments is near-flawless writing. I'd recommend the book on that chapter alone.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book started okay, got weaker with its desire to list and to opine, but then got better as it became more informative and presented kind of collections of I formation in birds, locations, name sources and reasons and kept reaching unit to explore what is the fact of birds and geography and geology and what is humans attributing based in humans perceiving, it gave a bit of a study on language usages, diversities, and origins, and it was just an interesting ramble that sometimes I was glad to be following and sometimes skimming but I read to the end and am happy to have for the stories and the thoughts I will continue to ponder.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This thoroughly analytical approaching to birds, birders, and their hobby is a magnum opus, so dense in places that my eyes glazed over. It required more time and attention than I really wanted to give it. However, I was amazed by the breath of Mynott's knowledge of birds and literature and his ability to analyze various aspects of his topics. I liked his overt organization and enjoyed especially his tales of birding on various continents. I wonder if this book might have been more accessible if he had somehow divided its contents into two or more books.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was never able to read this cover to cover. I hope to return to it some time in the future.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific!