Around the world, birds have been struggling to survive. But the tide is turning. This is a story about optimism.
Across the world, scientists, conservationists and ordinary people are involved in groundbreaking work to restore billions of lost birds. Together they’re tackling the hollowing out of the springtime dawn chorus and the withering away of once-great migration multitudes.
From a tiny island off the coast of Maine to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and from a hereditary estate in England to a watery wilderness in Romania where Ukrainian air-raid sirens scream at night, birds’ fortunes are being reversed.
In The Return of the Oystercatcher, renowned natural history writer Scott Weidensaul tells the uplifting story of that success and what it means for us and for our planet, too. Because a world that works for birds, in all their complexity of movement and ecological need, will work for everything else. Including people.
Scott Weidensaul is one of the most respected natural history writers in the US, and the author of nearly thirty books. He is an active field researcher specialising in bird migration, co-director of Project Owlnet and co-directs Project SNOWstorm, studying the migration of snowy owls. He has received numerous awards, including the Audubon Award for Environmental Writing, and has been honoured as a prestigious fellow of the American Ornithological Society. Weidensaul is a highly sought-after speaker at universities, museums and birding festivals. His book Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The Return of the Oystercatcher is his latest book.