Adam Nicolson for Bird School

Adam Nicolson is an award-winning nature writer with a deep knowledge of the Scottish landscape. Some of his notable nature works include Sea Room about the Shiant Isles, a group of uninhabited islands in the Hebrides, The Seabird's Cry about the disaster afflicting the world's seabirds and Life Between the Tides, a boundary-crossing account of the tides in human and animal life.  He lives on a farm in Sussex.

A feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. Every page is a thrill." ~ Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

Adam Nicolson joins us to discuss his new book Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood, a profound and philosophical exploration of the birds all around us.

Close to Adam Nicolson’s home in Sussex, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and thicketed by brambles. It is the haunt of deer and many birds – nightingales, the occasional cuckoo, ravens, robins, owls and in summer the sweet-singing warblers that come north from Africa to breed in English woods.

Adam Nicolson wanted to look and listen, to return to ‘bird school’ and see what it might teach him. He built a small shed amongst the trees with nesting boxes and bird feeders. Cocooned inside, season after season, he got to know the birds: where they nest, how they sing, how they mate and fight, what preys on them, what they are like as living things.

Beautifully written and woven through with philosophy, literature, science and a sense of wonder, always conscious that that this is an age in which the natural world is under siege, Bird School pulls back the curtain on seemingly ordinary birds, taking a long, careful and concerned look at our relationship with the wild.

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'A joyous journey of discovery! Bird School is a natural history tour de force and an impressive blend of the personal, scientific and cultural' Tristan Gooley, The Natural Navigator and bestselling author of How to Read a Tree

‘As moving as it is fascinating, Bird School is a deeply inspiring work which made me see and appreciate the birds anew.' James Macdonald Lockhart, author of Wild Air