Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood

by Adam Nicolson

On Sale: 06/24/2025

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Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood

by Adam Nicolson

On Sale: 06/24/2025

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Amazon Indigo

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About the Book

‘Bird School is 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. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes.’ Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

Step into the hide for a glorious new encounter with the British wild

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.

This gorgeous book charts his attempt to encounter birds, to engage with a marvellous layer of life he had previously almost ignored. He 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.

Critical Praise

'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

PRAISE FOR ADAM NICOLSON’S LIFE BETWEEN THE TIDES

‘Miraculous … Effortlessly, in deft, sure and delightful prose, he segues through species, science and art to present tidal nature as a microcosm. The result is an utterly fascinating glimpse of a watery world we only thought we knew’

Philip Hoare

‘A beautiful, powerful story of how we understand the unfolding change of the shore.

This is a remarkable and powerful book, the rarest of things, both a call-to-arms and a call-to-pause and truly look. Nicolson is unique as a writer, happy soaked to the skin on the shoreline and happy unweaving skeins of philosophy. I loved it’

Edmund de Waal

‘A fascinating guide to all things littoral: a natural history of the rockpool that teems with life … Endlessly interesting, its wonders unfurl, fractal-like, the more closely you examine it’

Cal Flyn

‘The man who finds wonder in a winkle … Remarkable … In Nicolson’s hands the intertidal zone is shown to be rich and revelatory … It is as lyrical, learned and rambunctiously eccentric as his previous work … For a book so focused on non-human life, it is luminously humane’

The Times

‘Exquisite … A bravura act of writing … This uniquely and terribly moving book is great literature indeed – reaches beyond itself to speak to us of the most profound and essential things’

Alex Preston, Observer

‘One of our finest writers of non-fiction … Nicolson’s overarching theme in this book … goes to the very heart of what ecology is … the great pleasure of this book is that he does not allow the specifics of his enquiries to keep him from probing the big questions’

Philip Marsden, Spectator