VESPER FLIGHTS

By the author of H is for Hawk here is a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to nature. A literary cabinet of curiosities about the wonders and oddities of the natural world, Helen Macdonald's best loved pieces plus new essays range from nostalgia from the countryside of her youth to a true account of a refugee's flight to the UK. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, she observes the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watches tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeks the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. Chapters include Swan Upping, Deer in the Headlights, The Falcon and the Tower, The Observatory, Murmurations, A Cuckoo In the House, The Arrow-Stalk, Berries, Cherry Stones, Rescue and Goats and What Animals Taught Me. In her own words 'Many of the essays here are exercises in interrogating such human ascriptions and assumptions' on how we inevitably view the natural world as a mirror of ourselves reflecting our own world view and needs, thoughts and hopes. As a scientist she explains how migrating birds navigate by visualising the Earth's magnetic field through detecting quantum entanglement taking place in the receptor cells of their eyes. Science does what we would like literature to do - explain an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us. We need to communicate the value of things so that more of us can fight to save them. Desirable US roughcut page edges, 260pp. First edition US.