Mark CockerReseñas

Is this book a natural history? Is it an autobiography? Is it a prose poem? Well, in fact it's all three, and sometimes all at once. In this book, we learn about Mark Cocker's developing fascination with all members of the crow family, as he moves from innner city Norwich to the countryside, and quite simply, gets to see more corvids. He indulges in lyrical descriptions of their movements, follows research projects of his own devising, travels and reads voraciously in search of more information about his new love, and engages his readers as he does so. A magical book.

Mark Cocker wants us to enjoy the swift as much as he does: to feel a sense of wonder at its aerial acrobatics and its extraordinary journeys across continents. He wants us too to understand how all of life is inter-connected: how we are share the same origins if you go back far enough - to the Cretaceous period in fact. Mark Cocker, a non-scientist, explains all this in accessible language. And each chapter brings with it more knowledge about the swift - what and where it eats and nests, how far and how high it flies - everything that is known about this creature: while emphasising how much there is that is still unknown. He shows how farming practices have reduced drastically the insect numbers on which the bird depends, and so much else. Each chapter begins with Mark in his garden, at a different time of the day, observing the swifts on their daily round. Each chapter unfolds into demonstrating the swift's - and our - interconnectedness. Their numbers are drastically decreasing. Mark Cocker invites us to imagine a world with no swifts. I'd rather not.

Every day possible, Mark Cocker has taken a walk from his home alongside the Norfolk Broads National Park, down to the river near his home. These two-mile walks get him outside in the natural world and away from any screens or other distractions. It also gives him time to see the minute daily changes that happen, the imperceptible way that a tree changes from skeletal branches to the first flush of leaves, glimpsing the first of the spring flowers, spotting the first of the butterflies and noticing the arrival of the migrants after their long journeys. These are the things that flit through his vision and are then written about.

We know that at some level there is no such thing as season or month or week or even a day. There is just the liquid passage of time flowing across our lives that we chop and segment with these invented names to give it all clarity and structure.

He has distilled these walks into a series of columns that first were published in the Guardian and have now appeared here in a month by month diary. They are reproduced in day order, so the years jump around, but for me, that adds to the charm. You have the sense that these columns show the way that the world is changing too. His subjects vary from badgers to owls, to bees and flowers, as well as trees, climate, weather, bees, deer, fungi, frogs, oh, and bees again.

He doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life; that the hedgerow full of juvenile birds are more than likely to be the next meal for the sparrow hawk that he has just seen, the spiders catching and wrapping wasps and bumblebees and the swifts cutting through the sky eating the insects that are never going to get out of the way in time. But this is about the beauty of his regular haunts too, seeing the first flush of wildflowers, hearing the dawn chorus and the smell of summer rain. He does occasionally venture further afield and there are columns from Greece, Scotland and elsewhere in Norfolk.

This is another wonderful book by Cocker. He has been writing about the natural world for the past fifty years and while he has seen some of the world great creatures, he gets as much pleasure from the exotica that we can find around us if we care to look for it. It is a worthy continuation to his first, Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet, which I can also highly recommend along with this.

Britain has always liked to think of itself as a nation of animal lovers, we spend several billion pounds on our pets each year get outraged when people commit acts of cruelty towards our furry friends. This love of animals drives people who care about wildlife too. It wasn't until 2013 that we finally voted for our own national animal, the hedgehog and there are a couple of million people in organisations such as the RSPB and the various wildlife trusts. The National Trust has now reached five million members. Programmes like Springwatch have made people far more aware of the amazing variety of wildlife in our country, they are more aware of environmental issues, try to put food out for the birds and make their gardens a little more friendly towards wildlife.

Cocker celebrates the achievements of the visionary people who have managed to save a landscape or a species, create some of our national institutions and inspire others to do the same. However, the reality is that our wildlife is suffering; species are going extinct, the whole ecosystem from the bottom up is reaching a critical tipping point that we may never return from. The numbers are pretty horrific, in the past 50 years, we have lost 50% of our biodiversity. That is the past 50 years, not since the industrial revolution. Just in the case of farmland birds, there are 44 million less now than there were in 1970. We only have 1% of our wildflower meadows left now.

So how did we reach the point where green concerns are on the rise just as the creatures people are beginning to care about fall off an actual and metaphorical cliff? In this really radical text, Cocker takes a long hard look at how we have got to this moment, what has caused this, and the people and systems to blame and boy, he does not hold back. He argues that the roots of this reach way back to almost 100 years ago after William invade with his Norman Army. This feudal system that he imposed on the country has shaped our politics and culture ever since. The landed classes manage to avoid almost all tax on their properties and still get large subsidies from the UK government and EU. They have no interest in preserving the fragile ecosystems unless it suits their narrow interests. He is prepared to criticise other organisations too, the Forestry Commission has a scathing attack on the monoculture of trees that they have imposed on regions that are totally unsuitable for them. Again they are another organisation that the elite has used for tax evasion, I mean efficient investments. The NT fairs a little better, but with its focus on maintaining the properties as the previous owners would have wanted and the continuation of their sporting activities, which mostly involves shooting, rather than making an effort to preserve the wildlife that they have on their extensive properties.

There are many other examples that make this essential reading, but as the subtitle says, is it too late? Whilst this is an intense polemic, he still manages to be lyrical, I was delighted by the writing whilst seething reading about the things that have happened. Part of his enthusiasm is driven by a small part of Norfolk that he has purchased and is slowly restoring to become a wildlife haven. Whilst he is doing his own small thing there are lots of people who aren't. We are to blame in part too, for example, we have demanded cheaper food, meaning that agri-business has managed to make farms and fields outdoor factories that wildlife does not play a part at all. But can we make a difference? There are around 8 million of us in the RSPB, National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts, but only a handful are prepared to rattle the doors of the politicians and ask them some very difficult questions. Another problem is the small number of people that own vast swathes of the land, they have no desire to change at the moment and will fit all the way to stop this.

Would also recommend Wild Kingdom: Bringing Back Britain's Wildlife by Stephen Moss and The Running hare by John Lewis-Stempel as must-read books in the same vein. It is not a book that you will like reading, but it demands to be read. Then acted on. Join a wildlife trust and start to make a difference.

This is a collection of previously written articles that have been compiled into a book. Cocker has made it read like a diary with events and observations set over one year, thought they are from a number of different years, and he has also taken the liberty of polishing up some of the original text to help with the time and context. Most of the pieces are set local to him, hence the title of the book, and others from further afield, including Greece.

In the same principle of the finest nature writing that we have, Cocker has immersed himself in his local environment and his frequent haunts and walks to see what is around on that day. His sharp eyes observe the mundane survival of the local wildlife and he writes with a passion about the dramatic events of life and death that he sees.

Normally a bird writer, his book Crow Country is fantastic, in this he sees all manner of other creatures, including mammals birds and insects, especially moths, coupled with his acute observations of the subtle changes and the inexorable turn of the seasons, all of which go to make up the cycle of life and death.

It is written with sparklingly tight prose too, making this a delight to read.

Breathtakingly superb!

A long ellipse of shapes, ragged and playful, strung out across the valley for perhaps half a kilometre, rides the uplift from the north wind directly towards my location. The birds, rooks and jackdaws heading to their evening roost, don't materialise gradually -- a vague blur slowly taking shape -- they tunnel into view as if suddenly breaking through a membrane. One moment they aren't visible. Then they are, and I track their course to the great skirt of stubble flowing down below me ...

A short paragraph from near the beginning of this 'meditation' includes much of what I loved about this book: the prose poetry in the language, the evocation of a moment in time and the willingness to share a worthy obsession. Mark Cocker describes himself as author, naturalist and environmental activist (in that order) but I liked the way he melded all those roles into a seamless whole in producing the eighteen chapters of this book. There's some autobiography here, there's also travel writing, science, historical perspective, literary allusions, potted biographies of contemporaries and predecessors who have laboured in this field. And yet he wears much of this learning and experience lightly, inviting the reader into the warm glow of campfire anecdotes mingling with facts and figures.

Cocker's focus is the Norfolk Broads, in the triangle between Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Beccles, with a bulge extending towards Lowestoft. The rivers Waveney and Yare, which flow together before heading to the sea at Great Yarmouth, have provided the habitat for birds of all descriptions for generations; probably many of these avian creatures have been here since the end of the Ice Age.

The author's obsession with corvids -- rooks in particular -- is hugely satisfied by the presence of significant flocks of these sociable birds. He charts their ebb and flow, both daily from and back to their roosts as well as seasonally between roosts and rookeries where their young are raised. He discusses their habits, how they compare with roosts in Cornwall or Dumfriesshire, any similarity with other corvids such as ravens; he also credits other ornithologists, both professional and amateur, when they've added to the store of knowledge; and he details rook appearances in literature, folklore and popular culture. As an example of folk tradition merging with modern popular culture he even quotes from the lyrics of 'Rook', a song on rock band XTC's 1982 album Nonsuch (a record for which my violist daughter was a session musician): "Rook, rook / Read from your book / Who murders who and where is the treasure hid? ... Rook, rook / Gaze in the brook / If there's a secret can I be part of it?"

One of things that endeared me to this reissue of Crow Country (first published nine years before) was the delightful and classy all-over fold-out cover Vintage Classics had commissioned from the Timorous Beasties studio to a design by Suzanne Dean: as well as a handsome rook it features plant tendrils, flowers and wildlife as could be found in, say, a Victorian naturalist's notebook. But it is what's within the covers that counts, and I for one was enlightened, entertained and enervated by what I read. You may be too.

http://wp.me/s2oNj1-rook

Fabulous book for browsing. Contains all sorts of interesting snippets of information.½

A lovely meditation on one of England's most common birds, highlighting the richness that can come from really paying attention. Enough to have me ready to dust the binoculars off on the weekend and go wandering the Merri Creek.

This is a wonderful book. It is not just a list of all the birds one might see in Britain (although it is). It is not just lavishly illustrated with stunning photographs of each (although it is that, too). It is not just a book of ornithological observations (although they are here, as well). But more than this, it relates the story of each species in its cultural context, in how the people of Britain have thought, wrote and made use of the bird in question. A marvellous book for dipping into and looking up, a treasure hoard to be raided again and again. The only problem is, it's damned heavy.

Part natural history and part cultural study, this book describes and maps the entire spectrum of human engagements with birds, drawing in themes of history, literature, art, cuisine, language, lore, politics, and the environment. Vast in both scope and scale, it draws upon Mark Cocker's 40 years of observing and thinking about birds to celebrate this relationship....

the Middle East dominates our thought and Meinertzhagen was a figure in the events leading to the modern difficulties. I believe he had his moment as regards the battle at Beersheba, and I wanted to know more about him. He seems now a dodgier figure than when this book was written, unless the current Wikipedia article is an undetected hatchet job. But he was interesting, and adds to the WWI picture I am forming.

Strictly for the birds. Beautifully written. But birds.

Crows, rooks, jackdaws and ravens have always fascinated me, and when I saw this book, I could not resist it. Here was somebody else with the same fascination, only he has approached the subject like a scientist and he has written a very interesting and very readable book. I've learned a lot and my fascination has even increased after reading it.

This is a well written and enjoyable book, accessible even for those with no immediate interest in birds. Despite the title, this is largely about rooks, although Cocker does discuss other members of the crow family (ravens, jackdaws, carrion crows etc). It centres on his interest in the roosts and rookeries close to his own home in the Norfolk Broads. Each chapter is largely dedicated to an aspect of corvine behaviour, often providing intriguing pieces of information. However, there is one chapter towards the end which focuses on why he has become obsessed by a single bird species. This includes the accounts of other naturalists whose studies he admires. Whilst there are examples of naturalists studying crows, this chapter does sit oddly with the rest of the book. I merely feels like an apology from Cocker as to why he has written the book in the first place. No apology is needed, the rest of this work stands for itself.½

Purple but good

A wonderful book to dip into and lose yourself in the history of birds, complete with anecdotes about bird behaviour, colloquial bird names from different parts of the British Isles, and glorious photography. Defititely one for the coffee table, though, not the field!

Obviously would be a lot more interesting if I was actually a bird watcher but it was an enjoyable read with a sprinkle of amusing bits.½

Anecdotal style

Bird Study Day