Product Description

If we could see it as a whole, if they all arrived in a single flock, say, we would be truly amazed: sixteen million birds. Swallows, martins, swifts, warblers, wagtails, wheatears, cuckoos, chats, nightingales, nightjars, thrushes, pipits and flycatchers pouring into Britain from sub-Saharan Africa.

It is one of the enduring wonders of the natural world. Each bird faces the most daunting of journeys - navigating epic distances, dependent on bodily fuel reserves. Yet none can refuse. Since pterodactyls flew, twice-yearly odysseys have been the lot of migrant birds. 

For us, for millennia, the Great Arrival has been celebrated. From The Song of Solomon, through Keats' Ode To a Nightingale, to our thrill at hearing the first cuckoo call each year, the spring-bringers are timeless heralds of shared seasonal joy.  

Yet, migrant birds are finding it increasingly hard to make the perilous journeys across the African desert. Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo is a moving call to arms by an impassioned expert: get outside, teach your children about these birds, don't let them disappear from our shores and hearts.   

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13892 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 246 pages

Review
‘A beautiful and important book’ (Simon Barnes, author of HOW TO BE A BAD BIRDWATCHER )

‘We owe a debt to a writer like McCarthy, who paints so well the portrait of natural riches we think our birthright ... McCarthy paints a portrait of a magical bird universe’

(Daily Mail )

‘This is a joyful book’

(Daily Express )

'Michael McCarthy is one of the best environmental journalists there is'

(Sunday Telegraph )

'This is a valuable guide to what we’ll soon miss'

(Geographical Magazine )

‘This is the most important book I have read for a long time ... it boils with enthusiasm ... many will greatly enjoy the rich and informative prose ... to not read this book is a crime against conservation and the cost is almost beyond comprehension’

(BBC Countryfile Magazine )

'A stark picture of the fate of migratory birds' (BBC Country File Magazine )

'This book could easily have been a grim litany of despair ... instead Michael McCarthy has taken the opportunity to celebrate our summer migrants ... this book reminds us of what we stand to lose and why we cannot afford to take the cuckoo for granted'

(BBC Wildlife )

'An impassioned hymn to the wonder of the annual display of migrating birds and a robust warning'

(Metro )

‘A rich ornithological tapestry ... buy this book, enjoy it’

(Ian Wallace, British Birds )

‘One of my heroes – writer Mike McCarthy – paints an all too harrowing picture of a landscape robbed of this iconic sound in his new tour de force Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo’

(Sunday Express )

‘McCarthy spent the spring of 2008 following the “spring-bringers” . . . and celebrates them so eloquently here you will never see or hear them in the same way again . . . cherish them now’

(Evening Standard )

'A timely report from the edge of the natural world that is being eroded by ignorance and carelessness'

(The Times )

‘An interesting book . . . Quirky observations, laced with historical and literary references, enliven the text'

(Irish Examiner )

‘The titles sounds like an elegy, but the tone, until near the end, is upbeat and celebratory . . . he tells the story . . . with a light touch and wide open eyes’

(Independent )

‘An environmental warning’

(Terry Sutton, Dover Express & Folkestone Herald )

‘McCarthy builds up the magic ... rightly McCarthy is out to warn’

(The Tablet )

‘This timely book by Michael McCarthy, one of the country’s leading writers on the environment, is a celebration of these migratory birds and a call to arms to help preserve them’

(National Trust Magazine )

‘As well as raising the alarm, Michael McCarthy writes lyrically in praise of the songsters’ (Choice Magazine )

‘Lovely but heart-tugging book ... McCarthy’s theme is twofold: to give us a vivid picture of what we have learned scientifically about birds themselves, but then beautifully to interweave it with the “human response’”

(Spectator )

‘We have been warned’

(Northern Echo )

‘Wake-up call to all those concerned with the UK’s environment, calling for action before it’s too  late’

(Your Birding Monthly )

‘The book does not just raise the alarm about the astonishing declines.  It clebrates the  migrant birds as a group, stressing the enormous cultural resonance they have across Europe’

(Best of British )

‘Courageously, McCarthy’s book is a celebration as much as a warning’

(Tribune )

'Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo is the best book about birds I’ve encountered since Cockers’s Crow Country' (Irish Times )

About the Author

Michael McCarthy is one of Britain's leading writers on the environment. Formerly environment correspondent of The Times, for the last ten years he has been environment editor of the Independent. He has three times been named as Environment Reporter of The Year. In 2007 he was awarded the Medal of the RSPB, for an outstanding contribution to conservation. This was the only occasion in the 100-year history of the RSPB Medal that it has been awarded to a journalist.

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Customer Reviews

A requiem for birdsong?
The real quality of this excellent book comes not from its well written and researched text, or even from the way the saddening, but hardly surprising, conclusion is reached. It comes from the choice of birds the author uses. In all but one example the birds are (were?) to be found in close proximity to humans or play a significant role in folk law. In other words, they are the everyday birds, the familiar birds, the birds of story and for me at least, the birds of a summer childhood : Cuckoos in the hedge across the road, a spotted flycatcher catching a butterfly that I had worn as a living brooch for almost 5 minutes, swifts and swallows.

The book examines a number of species of summer migrants - the so called "spring bringers" and seeks to explain why each species is important - initially not in an ecological sense, but why they are important to us as people. The ecological importance of the birds comes later. Here the famous lines of Ted Hughes are to the fore - the swifts are back, so the worlds still working.

The summer migrants form an important part of the soundscape of the British country side - they form a good part of the river of sound that runs through it. The central question posed by this book is this : What will happen it that river runs dry?

This is an important and highly recommended book. Read it yourself, buy it for others and talk to your friends about it - the songs of our remembered and future summers depend on the birds that fill the pages of this book.

say goodbye to the cuckoo
This is an excellent and thought provoking book taking the reader on a journey revealing the severe reduction in numbers of migrating birds. I was a little disappointed that there were not more illustrations of cuckoos in particular. It took me a while to get into the book but once I did it was difficult to put down.

Fascinating book
Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo

Whether you are an urban or rural dweller, this beautifully written little book highlights the population crashes, particularly since 2007, of many of those birds that we have always taken for granted that migrate from Africa to our country in springtime. Where are they now? Stop, look and listen. Do you hear them; have you seen them recently? Have you heard the cuckoo? Where are the swifts? Well researched and engagingly written. More than a wake up call, the findings are unnerving.Pre-occupied with our electronic world, deafened by our man made noise, we may fail to note what is missing. This book deserves to be widely read.