Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The new volcanic island of Surtsey appeared next to Iceland in 1963, and by 1970, seabirds had begun to nest on its cliffs. Riding the winds and fishing the seas, the seabirds are tied to the land for breeding and exploit the ocean's edges all over the world. These denizens of three realms have fascinated author Nicolson (Why Homer Matters, 2015) since his father took him to see the hundreds of thousands of birds nesting on the Shiants, islets in the Hebrides, when he was eight. As he examines the lives of 10 seabirds, from the extinct great auk to the wandering albatross, and from the gulls to the cormorants, Nicolson quotes from sources as varied as Coleridge and other poets, scientific studies, memoirs, and local folks. He follows the birds around the Atlantic's edges, and as he says of the fulmar, one gets an overwhelming sense of the mastery these birds display. Marveling at lives lived in some of the harshest places on the planet, Nicolson writes lyrically of birds most of us only briefly notice when visiting a rocky shoreline, beings possessing extraordinary forms of understanding we have never shared.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this moving exploration of 10 groups of seabirds, English writer Nicolson (Why Homer Matters) demonstrates that wonder about the natural world can be deepened by increasing one's knowledge of it and that emotional wisdom can be reinforced by the acquisition of practical information. He blends insightful ethological observations with elements of the mythical and peppers his delivery of practical, premodern knowledge with poetic imagery. Nicolson paints the human-bird connection as intimate yet alien, writing of seabirds that their "gothic beauty is beyond touching distance" and a "miracle of otherness." But he also immerses readers in the umwelt, or subjective world, of each bird without resorting to anthropomorphism, as when he describes the "odor landscape" that connects the shearwater to its phytoplankton food. Nicolson's metaphorical language flows gracefully, with hints of the whimsical, and appeals to both the mind and the heart. While he takes ecological concerns seriously, his approach is as much a musing on the future as a call to action, placing humans in the role of participants in the natural world rather than in the roles of controllers or saviors. Nicolson combines a huge amount of scientific information with deeply emotional content and the net effect is moving and quietly profound. Illus. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Nicolson (Why Homer Matters) has written several other books, including ones on Homer, Windsor Castle, and the King James Bible. But what does the author know about seabirds? A great deal. He has researched the literature, worked with experts in the field, and plumbed historical narratives. The result is an astonishing, well-written account of albatrosses, gulls, shearwaters, petrels, auks, penguins, and other birds of the sea. Here, the overexploitation of marine resources, including the slaughters of these phenomenal aquatic species, is given a perceptive analysis. Nicolson incorporates relevant references to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Captain Cook, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, and Alfred Lord Tennyson along with native populations. Worldwide in purview, this work is strongest in its British associations, but most of the species covered here are found on both sides of the Atlantic, with many in the Pacific as well. Others, such as albatrosses and penguins, are Southern Hemisphere denizens. The book is well-illustrated with extensive chapter notes and a worthwhile index. VERDICT An amazing tour de force that is highly recommended for all interested in natural history, conservation, the sea, and maritime history.-Henry T. Armistead, formerly with Free Lib. of Philadelphia © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
At home on sea, land, and in air, seabirds demonstrate grace, power, and amazing ingenuity.Naturalist, essayist, and historian Nicolson (Why Homer Matters, 2014, etc.) offers intimate, engrossing portraits of 10 seabirds, based on abundant scientific research as well as firsthand observation in the birds' natural habitats: the Shiants islands in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney, the Faeroes, Iceland, Norway, the coasts of Maine and Ireland, the Falklands, South Georgia, the Canaries, and the Azores. Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and Ondaatje Prize, among other accolades, the author conveys with grace and precision the birds' "life-habits and body-shapes, their various forms of adaptation, their ways of conquest and triumph." Seabirds are ancient: fossil evidence dates some nesting sites at 44,000 years old. "The great cave paintings of the paleolithic are not as old" as a snow petrel's fossilized stomach oil; penguins "were doing what they do now well before humankind was in Europe or the Americas." Their survival strategies are astonishing. To feed their chicks, for example, puffins fly hundreds of miles to capture high-energy oily fish, each diving between 600 and 1,150 times daily to provide 8 to 10 feeds. A herring gull, noticing that humans were tossing bread to ducks in a pond, grabbed a piece, broke the bread into small pieces, and caught the goldfish that came up to nibble on the crumbs. Gulls, Nicolson observes, "are opportunistic omnivores," but this one seemed uncommonly clever, although not as clever as crows, ravens, and parrots. Nurturing chicks does not always result in benevolence. Nicolson reminds readers of the "rawness" of animals, such as the "extraordinarily aggressive" gannet the Nazca booby, which lays two eggs a few weeks apart. If both hatch, the elder chick pushes its sibling out of the nest to its death by starvation or dehydration. Despite their resilience and adaptability, seabirds are vulnerable to climate change and pollution, such as rubbish and plastics, which shearwaters, fulmars, petrels, and albatrosses often mistake for food.A buoyant celebration of seabirds that serves as an important reminder of nature's fragility. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
