Mark Cocker's brilliant description of his journeys in search of rooks, crows and ravens, birds that obsessed him and changed his life for ever
One night Mark Cocker followed the roiling, deafening flock of rooks and jackdaws which regularly passed over his Norfolk home on their way to roost in the Yare valley. From the moment he watched the multitudes blossom as a mysterious dark flower above the night woods, these gloriously commonplace birds were unsheathed entirely from their ordinariness. They became for Cocker a fixation and a way of life.
Cocker goes in search of them, journeying from the cavernous, deadened heartland of South England to the hills of Dumfriesshire, experiencing spectacular failures alongside magical successes and epiphanies. Step by step he uncovers the complexities of the birds' inner lives, the unforeseen richness hidden in the raucous crow song he calls 'our landscape made audible'.
Crow Country is a prose poem in a long tradition of English pastoral writing. It is also a reminder that 'Crow Country' is not 'ours'- it is a landscape which we cohabit with thousands of other species, and these richly complex fellowships cannot be valued too highly.
Mark Cocker's brilliant description of his journeys in search of rooks, crows and ravens, birds that obsessed him and changed his life for ever
One night Mark Cocker followed the roiling, deafening flock of rooks and jackdaws which regularly passed over his Norfolk home on their way to roost in the Yare valley. From the moment he watched the multitudes blossom as a mysterious dark flower above the night woods, these gloriously commonplace birds were unsheathed entirely from their ordinariness. They became for Cocker a fixation and a way of life.
Cocker goes in search of them, journeying from the cavernous, deadened heartland of South England to the hills of Dumfriesshire, experiencing spectacular failures alongside magical successes and epiphanies. Step by step he uncovers the complexities of the birds' inner lives, the unforeseen richness hidden in the raucous crow song he calls 'our landscape made audible'.
Crow Country is a prose poem in a long tradition of English pastoral writing. It is also a reminder that 'Crow Country' is not 'ours'- it is a landscape which we cohabit with thousands of other species, and these richly complex fellowships cannot be valued too highly.
Mark Cocker's brilliant description of his journeys in search of crows and ravens, birds that obsessed him and changed his life for ever
Mark Cocker is an author, naturalist and environmental activist whose ten books include works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir. His book Crow Country was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2008 and won the New Angle Prize for Literature in 2009. With the photographer David Tipling he published Birds and People in 2013, a massive survey described by the Times Literary Supplement as 'a major literary event as well as an ornithological one'. His latest book, Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet, a fascinating portrait of the Norfolk village where he lives, was published in 2015.
Luminously beautiful and dartingly intelligent, Cocker's obsessive
quest after the ancient trails of rooks across our dusk skies leads
to an almost sacred space: a place where the landscape of the
imagination and the lovingly, minutely observed realities of the
natural world come to roost together
*Richard Mabey*
Guaranteed to ensure that you never look at a crow in quite the
same way again
*Guardian*
Fabulous... Like all classic works of natural history, is is an
extraordinary revelation of riches and wonders and that lie at our
doorsteps, completely ignored
*Independent*
A splendid book...Crow Country's narrative of rookish discovery
unfolds with splendid variety, incorporating scientific exposition,
biography, environmental history, poetry, memoir and biography...
Your heart beats faster as he describes a pack of tight-packed
wigeon flushing in fear from an icy creak. You feel the shock of
recognition as a barn owl meets his gaze. It's infectiously
emotional. At it's most lyrical Crow Country matches the heights of
that deeply eerie work of avian obsession JA Baker's The Peregrine;
yet at its most scientific, it could sit alongside the best
ornithological monographs... Crow Country is a significant,
beautiful work
*New Statesman*
Exquisitely written, passionate exploration of the local and
commonplace
*BBC Wildlife*
Cocker's gift is to draw you into his hobby so deftly that you
quickly begin to share his every enthusiasm
*Observer*
Cocker is a beautiful writer...the twilight and his beloved rooks
bring out the poet in him...a loving observation of the wonders on
the wing in everyday England
*Daily Telegraph*
The nation's most observant and intuitive of nature writers
*Sunday Express*
As obsessive a celebration of rook and jackdaw - and of human
immersion in nature - as anyone could wish
*Irish Times*
A vivid example of the "new nature writing" it is a lyrical and
intense evocation of the world of jackdaws and rook, and an elegy
on watchfulness
*Daily Telegraph*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
