In Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood, Adam Nicolson charts his journey to learn more about the natural world surrounding his home of over 30 years in the Sussex Weald. From the vantage point of the shed he built in a forgotten field, he takes the reader with him to ‘bird school’ – an exploration prompted by the sights and sounds of the bird life he encounters. 

Over the course of 13 chapters, he covers a huge amount of information: from individual species such as the Wren with whom he shares his shed for a time, to the broader concepts of migration, rewilding and human intervention. The book closes with a useful chapter on how to attract birds to your garden written by his wife, the horticulturalist Sarah Raven, and a roll-call describing the birds found in his part of Sussex, each with a QR code linking to the appropriate page on the Xeno-canto wildlife sounds website . 

I first encountered Adam Nicolson through his wonderful 2014 publication The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters, and his wide-ranging interests are evident throughout Bird School from classical references to Homer and the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus to quotations from Shakespeare and Wordsworth. However, at the same time this is a well-researched book packed full of ornithological facts, backed up with data including population graphs adapted from BTO’s own Bird Trends Explorer. 

Bird School is a fascinating and easy-to-read book, which contains as much of interest to someone starting out with birds as for those who have been attending ‘bird school’ for some time.

Reviewed by

Lesley Hindley