Product Description

Rooks and jackdaws are both members of the same bird family. To ornithologists the group is known as the corvids, to the layperson they are 'crows'. But to the Mark Cocker these two species have become a fixation and a way of life. When he moved with his family to a rundown cottage in the Norfolk Broads he acquired first a naturalist's perfect home in the countryside, then the keys to a secret landscape. Twice a day flight-lines of rooks and jackdaws pass over the house on their way to a roost in the Yare Valley. Following them down to the river one winter's night, the author discovered a roiling, deafening flock of birds which rises at its peak to 40,000. From the moment he watched the multitudes blossom as a mysterious dark flower above the night woods, these gloriously commonplace birds were unsheathed entirely from their ordinariness.Cocker goes in search of them, journeying from the cavernous, deadened heartland of South England to the hills of Dumfriesshire, experiencing spectacular failures alongside magical successes and epiphanies. Step by step he pieces together the complexities of the birds' inner lives, the historical depth of the British relationship with the rook and the unforeseen richness hidden in that sombre voice, a raucous crow song that he calls 'our landscape made audible'. "Crow Country" is a prose poem in a long tradition of English pastoral writing. It is also a celebration of the Norfolk countryside, of its oceanic flatness, its immense skies and of the human intimacies which have shaped it from generation to generation. Yet, the book is also a powerful restatement of the central importance of nature in human affairs. It asks us to recall that 'Crow Country' is not 'ours'. It's a landscape which we cohabit with thousands of other species and is all the richer for these complex fellowships.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47099 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
`Nature writing at its best ... if nerdishness can breed prose this graceful, many other writers should join the flock'

Review
`A lovely book'

Review
'A book that will make you look differently at something completely common'

Customer Reviews

The Crow Road
Ever since I saw two crows (mother and father I presume) dive-bombing our cats who were near to their young fledgling who was taking his first "flight" from the nest in the tree at the back of our garden, I have been fascinated by their behaviour in particular and by the other crows in the neighbourhood in general. This has proven interesting indeed as the original crows' nest has been used again and again by presumably the same pair, who have raised more babies since the dive bombing incident. Their cawing in the morning has become our dawn chorus and whilst ostensibly a common occurrence, just by paying a bit more interest in these events has increased my enjoyment of our garden.
Now to this book. It is the latest in a recent line of excellent nature based books, which have extolled the hidden beauty of britain and the pleasure to be found in studying the apparently commonplace. This book especially scores because it charts a human journey and joy in an apparently bland landscape and quite frankly just wmakes you want to go out there and see these magnificent birds in action.
This book is shorter than some of it's peers and might have benefitted from some photographs or pictures, but I guess you can get these in any other bird guide so there you go.

a lovely book

Simply glorious
Originally written for the hard back edition, this review has been copied here as Amazon don't seem to have sorted out their links and, to be honest, I wanted to provide some counterbalance to those reviews which take a somewhat different view, and with which I so obviously disagree!

Crow Country isn't just a profile of this very British bird, it's also a philosophy, a biography, an investigation and a wonderfully lyrical description of the British countryside. The subtitle "A meditation on birds, landscape and nature" is a perfect summary of this glorious slim volume: 192 pages of sheer joy. From the wonderful opening chapter where Mark Cocker almost literally paints with words the evening gathering of corvids in his local fields, I was totally wrapped up in this passionate and beautifully written book. The blurb describes this as a "prose poem". Too right. For me, this is one of the all-time great books on British natural history.

Never ignore the commonplace!
I had been aware of this book for some time but only recently obtained a copy. I am so glad that I did because it has opened up a whole new dimension to my passion for natural history. Being a birder myself and doing it seriously for some 30 years I have found myself looking at crows and their behaviour in a way I never have in all that time.
Some reviewers have missed the point with this book I think. This was clearly never intended to be an in depth investigation and it feels more like a conversation "in the pub" about something we all take for granted and often overlook. That's part of the appeal for me.

All birders will identify with Mr Cocker and his descriptions of trips out at dusk in winter, the light and conditions you only seem to get at that time of year, and the simple pleasure of watching the natural world unfold. I think there is much in here for anyone though who appreciates the British landscape and the creatures we share it with.
Since reading this lovely book I have been out and watched two rook and jackdaw spectacles of my own and been just mesmerised.

Get this book and let Mr Cocker awaken you to pleasure in the commonplace.