THE SEABIRD'S CRY

By Adam Nicolson

The Seabird's Cry is an exploration of the lives of eleven of our seabirds (plus one of our departed species). Nicolson is well-placed to write about seabirds, as he inherited the Shiant Isles in the Outer Hebrides (alright for some, eh?).

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It's engaging and insightful. Much of what was covered was fairly introductory, but I suppose you can't expect a particularly deep dive on each bird when you're covering twelve species in under 400 pages.

I loved Nicolson's unflinching accounts of how brutal seabird research was and, to a lesser degree, still is. Anyone who has the courage to point out that ringing birds is loathsome is a champion in my eyes.

I also appreciated Nicolson's views on the individuality of seabirds. He adopts a concept described by Jakob von Uexkull: that every organism has an Umwelt, a subjective world which represents only a small tranche of all available worlds.

Nicolson's poetic language carries the importance of recognising the individuality, intelligences and experiences of different beings throughout.

I had a few niggles that stopped me loving this book. Some chapters are more focused on humans' relationships to the species, and many descriptions are worded in terms of interference, which doesn't sit well with Nicolson's message that we should stop thinking the world revolves around humans (for instance, when describing a puffin's burrow it's 'if you put your hand in there', when describing dead puffins it's 'if you pick one up'). I also thought the final chapter skipped around lots of different studies and ideas and didn't quite hang together as the powerful call to action that it should have been.

The Seabird's Cry is certainly a book I'll come back to. The mix of poetic language, interesting literary references, and the themes of individuality and empathy come together to make a caring, passionate narrative.