Just published, ‘Birdscapes: Birds in our Imagination and Experience‘ (henceforth BBIE) by Jeremy Mynott is an extremely hard book to review properly (and is not to be confused with last winter’s ‘Birdscapes: A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound’ by the way - how typical, you wait ages for one ‘Birdscapes’ and then two come along at the same time, as the old joke goes…).

I say ‘hard to review properly’ not because BBIE is poorly-written or boring (it’s most definitely neither), but it’s difficult to know how to react to it given the sort of bird books I generally read. Usually I’m in the market for fluff about Big Years (no disrespect intended to authors of Big Years incidentally), detailed histories of endangered species, or straightforward identification guides - something I can pick up, skim or absorb as seems appropriate, find a single fact I want or lose myself in for thirty minutes before the bathwater goes cold.

It’s not difficult to recommend or not recommend a book when you’re dealing with simple stories, or checkable facts and statistics. BBIE, with its dense, erudite vocabulary and structured chapters, its flow of ideas and meditations, its layers of talking-points, doesn’t fit that bill and has consequently taken me weeks to read all the way through.

It’s been worth the effort though. Ranging from thoughtful discussions about listing and obsession, to art, nature, birdsong and music, BBIE seems to cover in one volume almost everything most of us have, at some point in our ‘birding careers’, wondered about why we bird and why we like birds so much. But where most of us would stop, happy to paddle in the shallows and perhaps leave the questions not fully answered, Jeremy Mynott dives into the deep end and stays there until he’s figured everything out. BBIE is consequently not always an easy read.

Again, that’s most definitely not because Jeremy Mynott is a poor writer. His vocabulary has that slightly academic feel that belongs to men of a certain age (he is a former chief executive of Cambridge University Press after all), but he is always absorbing, thoughtful and obviously intelligent and BBIE is carefully and very well written. However I would suggest that it is not particularly “Conversational, playful, and witty” as the press-release the publishers Princeton sent out with BBIE states:

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…

They’re right in that BBIE does lead us to reflect on our relations to birds and the natural world, but it’s not a gentle stroll by any means. Jeremy Mynott (a life-long birder who has apparently been thinking about birds since he first drew breath) takes the reader on an energetic and long cross-country hike, hurdling idea after idea, place after place, chapter by chapter, and drawing on a huge number of sources from Thoreau, Keats, Darwin and Audubon to Oscar Wilde and Monty Python (that Norwegian Blue gets everywhere) as he strides along. Every page requires concentration, every question the author asks - and he asks a lot of questions - is worth thinking about.

That’s not a bad thing in any way at all, of course, but I guess what what I’m saying is that if, like me you’re an over-worked, over-tired parent with little spare time then you’ll find it hard to keep up. Want to check for yourself? How about (and this is a passage I genuinely found just by randomly opening the book and is fairly typical)…

“…if you slow down birdsong to nearer our speed, you hear all kinds of details and elaboration that we would normally miss altogether but which birds are sensitive to and can hear clearly. But then it no longer sounds like songs to our ears or like any conventional kind of attractive music. Are we now closer to hearing what the birds hear, or did the original recalibration to suit our physiology give a more realistic impression? You can make your head spin thinking through these sorts of relativities.”

Indeed you can…

That’s more a criticism of me than of BBIE by the way. The text above makes perfect sense and is written in very readable English. But it does make you think - every page makes you think in fact - and sometimes that gets exhausting. I genuinely wish I did have the time to relax with this book, because though I didn’t always find myself agreeing with the author’s conclusions (do Wood Sandpipers really have “a physical structure in perfect balance between its different elements”?) I really did enjoy watching him at work.

And, boy, does he ever work! One reviewer that Princeton quotes (Christopher Leahy, author of The Birdwatcher’s Companion) says that “Reading Jermey Mynott’s ‘Birdscapes’ is like having a leisurely conversation about a favorite (sic) subject with a close, widely read, and highly articulate friend…“, but with all respect to Mr Leahy that’s not how the book struck me at all. BBIE is far too organised and thorough to be a conversation. My friends aren’t college professors or renowned intellects, but they’re not dim either and I can’t imagine anyone I know having even a quarter of the many references and quotations to hand that Mr Mynott does. To me BBIE reads more like the transcripts of a series of well-prepared presentations made by an imaginative (and ‘entertaining’ rather than ‘fun’) speaker than a meandering chat by the fireside.

There is an order, a progression to the book that is more discourse than conversation, and - again - that’s not a bad thing at all, but if you’re wondering if this is a book for you then I think you need to understand that. Dipping in and out (at least in my case) means missing some of the author’s conclusions, and you will almost certainly need to go back to previously read pages so that you can re-acquaint yourself with some of his more esoteric points.

So, am I recommending it or not? If you want a ‘proper’ book rather than simply a holiday distraction then unreservedly. If you’ve time to properly think about ‘Birdscapes: Birds in our Imagination and Experience’ it’s ultimately a rewarding and very interesting read. If you’re more the sort of reader who wants to relax by discovering whether our hero gets to 700 within the ABA recording area by December 31st and isn’t too bothered if he/she does or doesn’t, then I’d say ‘give it a try’ but don’t be surprised if you feel more challenged than usual.

Which, once again, is hardly a bad thing when all is said and done, is it…?

‘Birdscapes: Birds in our Imagination and Experience‘, by Jeremy Mynott
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (27 Mar 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691135398
ISBN-13: 978-0691135397
Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 16.5 x 3.8 cm