Book description
If we could see it as a whole, if they all arrived in a single flock,
say, we would be truly amazed: sixteen million birds. Swallows, martins,
swifts, warblers, wagtails, wheatears, cuckoos, chats, nightingales,
nightjars, thrushes, pipits and flycatchers pouring into Britain from
sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of the enduring wonders of the natural
world. Each bird faces the most daunting of journeys - navigating epic
distances, dependent on bodily fuel reserves. Yet none can refuse. Since
pterodactyls flew, twice-yearly odysseys have been the lot of migrant
birds. For us, for millennia, the Great Arrival has been celebrated.
From The Song of Solomon, through Keats' Ode To a Nightingale, to our
thrill at hearing the first cuckoo call each year, the
spring-bringers are timeless heralds of shared seasonal joy. Yet,
migrant birds are finding it increasingly hard to make the perilous
journeys across the African desert. Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo is a
moving call to arms by an impassioned expert: get outside, teach your
children about these birds, don't let them disappear from our shores and
hearts.
