
When I was contacted by publisher
Simon & Schuster to review
A Year on the Wing: Four Seasons in a Life with Birds by Tim Dee, the premise of the book intriqued me. I was told it was a month by month account of a year of birds in the air, and if you've read my blog for any length of time, you'd know that that type of methodical approach would appeal to me. So I took them up on their offer of a free review copy.
Then the book arrived. It was a year of birds in England! What do I know of chiff chaffs and jackdaws? And the locations! The Noup of Noss and Muckle Flugga? Did they send me the next book of the Harry Potter series by mistake? Would I be able to relate to such odd-sounding places and birds I'd never seen (and probably will never see?)
Author Tim Dee starts us out in June with seabirds, another area of unfamiliarity for me. But his wonderful writing quickly captured me, and his vivid descriptions helped me visualize birds I'd never seen. His writing also awakened my senses - I could just about smell the gannets ("the rain from the north brings in their fishy whiff in gobbets of stink"). And even though I don't know what a gannet or a skua look like, Dee's writing helped me picture their movement, their actions. I found that I didn't HAVE to know the field marks to experience the birds as Dee described.
He captures the emotion of being a bird watcher well, describing his first sighting of a woodcock at age 13. "It was exciting but disconcerting...I felt I had been simultaneously shown the bird and excluded from it...the defining condition of most birdwatching." I think all bird watchers can relate to that!
Bird banders, or "ringers" as they call them in Europe, will enjoy his August chapter as he shares his experiences ringing birds and the miracle - and mysteries - of migration. When he described a wren in hand as "an energetic walnut" and "an earthed meteorite", I learned that England's wrens and our wrens across the ocean have much in common.
Month after month, Dee tells composite stories of the birds that inhabited his life, from his youth to present day. His experiences are sometimes a shocking juxtaposition, like when he witnessed a man jump off a bridge into a gorge where Dee then saw his first peregrine falcon. Some months are more interesting to read than others; for me, April held less interest. That, I suppose, is to be expected.
But by the end of
A Year on the Wing, it didn't matter to me that I would never see most of these birds, Dee is skilled enough in sharing what he FELT when he was in the presence of birds that he sparked my emotions. So even though the species of birds may not be universal, the feelings and emotions Dee describes ARE, which makes this book an interesting read on either side of the big pond.
A Year on the Wing: Four Seasons in a Life with Birdsby Tim Dee
Hardcover $24.00
ISBN: 9781416559337
Free Press, October 2009
BONUS! I received 2 additional copies of
A Year on the Wing to give away, courtesy of Free Press. If you'd like to enter a drawing to win a copy of the book, leave a comment on this post. A random drawing will take place 2 weeks from the date of this post and winners will be notified via email. I will give away 2 new copies as well as my (marked-up) review copy.
In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.
Congratulations to the following winners of a copy of A Year on the Wing, provided by Free Press. They were all contacted by email.
Thanks to everyone for reading my review on The Zen Birdfeeder, and keep reading for future reviews of bird-related books.
- LNMP
- Robert
- Dave (review copy)
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