Wild Air

In Search of Birdsong

James Macdonald Lockhart

$39.99

Hardback

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English

Fourth Estate Ltd
18 September 2023

Animals & nature in art (still life, landscapes & seascapes); Biography; Memoirs; Animals & society; Wildlife: birds & birdwatching

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.

By: James Macdonald Lockhart
Imprint: Fourth Estate Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 141mm, Spine: 34mm
Weight: 460g
ISBN: 9780008399535
ISBN 10: 0008399530
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 18 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

James Macdonald Lockhart is an associate editor of, and regular contributor to, Archipelago Magazine, and a literary agent at Antony Harwood Limited.

Reviews for Wild Air: In Search of Birdsong

Praise for James Macdonald Lockhart 'Lockhart's prose is so intimate, urgent, and visceral as to make his darkly resonant ruminations almost unfailingly gripping' Independent '[Lockhart's] exquisite, poetic language is a sensuous delight' Daily Mail 'Outstanding ... he captures that wild spirit without ever making it feel captive' Sunday Times 'Lockhart is stepping towards the distinguished company of the great modern literary books on birds of prey' Country Life