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Waiting for the Albino Dunnock by Rosamond Richardson

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Waiting for the Albino Dunnock

Author
Rosamond Richardson
Narrator
Jane Whittenshaw
Publisher
Orion
Publish Date
11 May 2017
Run Time
10 hours 31 minutes
Format
Audiobook
Genre
Memoirs, Wildlife: birds and birdwatching: general interest, Zoology: birds (ornithology)
$13.95

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What to expect

Written by a beginner-birdwatcher with the freshness and passion of a convert, WAITING FOR THE ALBINO DUNNOCK explores the world of birds through the seasons of a single year. It describes encounters with particular birds in the landscapes of East Anglia where the author is rooted. Occasional journeys farther afield take the reader to truly wild places in the Outer Hebrides and Eastern Europe. Yet the ordinary experience of birdwatching is also far more than just that. The beauty of birds has the power to change lives, as it did the author's, and as in the case of the all-but-legendary snow leopard, it is more about the search than the result.

Personal and elegiac in tone, the writing is an unusual combination of prose poems based on the actual experience of seeing a specific bird for the first time, woven with elements of science and wisdom traditions, ornithology (and its punning counterpart ornitheology), mythology and philosophy, taxonomy and history, literature and folklore, conveying the wider picture of what it means to be human in relationship to nature. WAITING FOR THE ALBINO DUNNOCK explores the degree to which wildness is embedded in the human psyche and how beauty is central to our mental and emotional wellbeing, while highlighting the careless damage we are inflicting on the natural world.

Read by Jane Whittenshaw

(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

Critics Review

  • A beautiful book

    Tim Birkhead, author of BIRD SENSE

  • Glorious, beautifully written pilgrimage into the soaring world of birds ... The prose is sublime, and so is the intelligence behind it

    DAILY MAIL

  • Rare, charming and unforgettable ... Her prose has the clarity, poise, precision and transcendent beauty of someone who was brought up reading the classics and knows the joy of finding the right words. Every sentence is perfect

    THE OLDIE

  • Beautifully written

    CHOICE magazine

See more reviews
  • [Richardson] writes...with a poetic lyricism

    SUNDAY EXPRESS

  • This exquisite depiction of bird-watching as personal pilgrimage is written with passion, poetry and the
    freshness of a newcomer: 'the real voyage of discovery consists in...seeing with new eyes'

    THE LADY

  • Richardson is both a looker and a see-er and her open-eyed delight in the beauty around her has an infectious quality enhanced by exquisite writing

    BBC COUNTRYFILE

  • [Richardson's] lyrical memoir of a year of birdwatching in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Greece is a life-enhancing record of birds (and books).

    DAILY MAIL

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Details
Author
Rosamond Richardson
Narrator
Jane Whittenshaw
Duration
10 hours 31 minutes
Release Date
11 May 2017
ISBN
9781409173342
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Orion
Genre
Memoirs, Wildlife: birds and birdwatching: general interest, Zoology: birds (ornithology)

Synopsis

Written by a beginner-birdwatcher with the freshness and passion of a convert, WAITING FOR THE ALBINO DUNNOCK explores the world of birds through the seasons of a single year. It describes encounters with particular birds in the landscapes of East Anglia where the author is rooted. Occasional journeys farther afield take the reader to truly wild places in the Outer Hebrides and Eastern Europe. Yet the ordinary experience of birdwatching is also far more than just that. The beauty of birds has the power to change lives, as it did the author's, and as in the case of the all-but-legendary snow leopard, it is more about the search than the result.Personal and elegiac in tone, the writing is an unusual combination of prose poems based on the actual experience of seeing a specific bird for the first time, woven with elements of science and wisdom traditions, ornithology (and its punning counterpart ornitheology), mythology and philosophy, taxonomy and history, literature and folklore, conveying the wider picture of what it means to be human in relationship to nature. WAITING FOR THE ALBINO DUNNOCK explores the degree to which wildness is embedded in the human psyche and how beauty is central to our mental and emotional wellbeing, while highlighting the careless damage we are inflicting on the natural world.Read by Jane Whittenshaw(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

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