Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12607 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

The Independent
A thoughtful and brilliantly executed celebration of countryside and the importance of nature in human affairs.

The Times
`It is [Cocker's] own immediate, joyful response to nature that
gives the book its vividness and power.'

The Sunday Times Culture
'It's a book that makes you look differently at something common,
it raises the hope that there is a wisdom and beauty to crows'

Customer Reviews

A very good book with one reservation.
I echo what others have said about the quality of this book. It is indeed a good piece of writing and the only reservation I have - and it is somewhat tentative - is that there is perhaps too much about the writer and not enough about the crows and rooks. Put briefly, next time there could be more Corvids and less Cocker. As an aside I would say you learn as much if not more about rooks and crows in the late Roger Deakin's book, "Wildwood" (2007).

Yes, it really is that good!
I'm not a bird watcher but as an outdoor person I've often been camping around ravens and crows. This book is absolutely fabulous, chronicling Mark Cocker's move to rural Norfolk and his growing fascination with ravens. There are some wonderfully evocative descriptions of landscape and locality. The technical investigation of the crows creeps up on you and you really do find yourself reading some detailed stuff about crows and being completely engrossed by it all.

A fabulous book.

Simply glorious
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.