Wild Air: In Search of Birdsong
Shortlisted for the 2023 Highland Book Prize
‘Joyful and mindful, a powerful argument for being still and listening’ Sunday Times
A book about birds, birdsong and the countryside they inhabit, from the critically acclaimed author of Raptor.
In Wild Air, James Macdonald Lockhart sets out to write about a series of birds as though he has his granny’s role of listening to birds’ songs and calls and relaying what she heard to her aged and by then quite deaf father – the famous naturalist Seton Gordon. From a nightjar’s strange churring song on a heath in the south of England, to a lapwing displaying over the machair in the Outer Hebrides, he writes about eight different birds who he has spent most time with, returned to most often and relays what he hears.
The eight species are all representative of a different habitat. Nightjars on a lowland heath; shearwaters on a mountain overlooking the sea; dippers on a river; skylarks in farmland; ravens in woodland; divers on a loch; lapwings on the coast; and nightingales in dense scrub. Not all of the birds are songbirds in the traditional sense, though each possesses its own distinctive music. That music can vary from the strange, as in the weird gurgling sound a shearwater makes inside its burrow, to the joyous exuberance of the skylark’s song. Sometimes, he hears a lot, and sees little (shearwaters in the pitch dark); sometimes he sees a lot, but hears little (black-throated divers on their loch). But in every case the sounds the birds make become an introduction to their lives – an audible introduction to the birds and the places they are found.
”'Enchanting” - Nature
'My oh my this is a beautiful book. My favourite kind of nature writing: quiet, subtle, watchful, immanent.' Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings -
‘Lockhart is committed to understanding each (bird) in its habitat, and to capturing that sense of place in the song… It is both joyful and mindful, a powerful argument for being still and listening. -
”Lockhart doesn’t make the point explicitly, but I think he would say that these songs, and these creatures, are beautiful in themselves, and that beauty alone justifies protecting them and enjoying them ” - and writing about them. At the close of the book, he passes a fellow enthusiast in the dark out listening for nightingales. It’s 'just extraordinary', the man says. The book is pretty extraordinary too.’
Sunday Times -
”'As I see it, Lockhart is really attempting to enter into the realm of these creatures, and to convey a feeling of what their lives are like… He writes beautifully, using words to paint exquisite portraits of his subjects… Poetry, folklore and natural history are woven into the mix. But what I particularly liked about this book is that Lockhart treats the birds and their surroundings as inextricably linked. A dipper’s stream is painted as vividly as the animal itself, giving a sense of clear, cold, running water, small pools, mossy banks.” - Financial Times
”'(A) fascinating insight into the lives of the twittering, fluttering creatures that share our world.” - The Herald
”'Lockhart’s skills as a naturalist are second to none, his observations of skylarks especially fresh and sharp.” - Countryfile
”'Enchanting” - Nature