The Running Sky: A Bird-Watching Life

An extraordinary, inspiring book about a lifetime of observing birds, already acclaimed as a classic. The Running Sky records a lifetime of looking at birds. Begining in summer with clouds of breeding seabirds in Shetland and ending with crepuscular nightjars like giant moths in the heart of England, Tim Dee maps his own observations and encounters over four decades of tracking birds across the globe. He tells of near-global birds like sparrows, starlings and ravens, and exotic species, like electrically coloured hummingbirds in California and bee-eaters and broadbills in Africa. In doing so he brilliantly restores us to the primacy of looking, the thrill of watching, and takes us outside, again and again, to stand - with or without binoculars - under the storm of life over our heads, and to marvel once more at what is flying about us.

About the Author :
Tim Dee has been a birdwatcher all his life. His first book, The Running Sky (2009), described his first five birdwatching decades. In the same year he collaborated with the poet Simon Armitage on the anthology The Poetry of Birds. Since then he has written and edited several critically acclaimed books: Four Fields (2013), a study of modern pastoral, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Ondaatje Prize; Ground Work (as editor, 2017), a collection of new commissioned writing on place by contemporary writers; and most recently, Landfill (2018), a modern nature-junk monograph on gulls and rubbish. He left the BBC in 2018 having worked as a radio producer for nearly thirty years. He lives in three places: in a flat in inner-city Bristol, in a cottage on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens, and in the last-but-one house from the south western tip of Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope.

Review :
The Running Sky has the makings of a classic. It's beautifully written, extraordinarily vigilant, and very moving...as we read it, we learn a lot about ourselves as well as the fellow creatures flying through, over and around our own lives Its author has a forensic eye for detail and a gift for poetry...an intimate and erudite account... he is in the front rank of contributors to the literature of natural history Serious and playful...creates a powerful and intensely poetic paean to what others have called the wonder of birds A beautifully haunting and involving memoir. The writer's passion for birds becomes his way of expressing his whole relationship to landscape and history and family: unsentimental and urgently contemporary Dee's extraordinary, beautifully written account of a life spent watching birds is a fine addition to the flourishing genre of British nature writing Lyrical...sure to become a genuine addition to the literature of birds What makes his book wonderful is his passion... He captures the thrill and puzzlement of watching birds as I have never previously seen it captured Thrillingly original memoir ... extraordinary To write a book about a year's bird-watching as keenly observed as this, you have to be dedicated to the point of obsession; to write one as transcendent, you must be a poet As unexpected as it is brilliant... A moving, powerful meditation on the natural world that envelops us, even in the heart of our cities