Sweet, Wild Note

A Guardian ‘Readers’ Choice’ Best Book of 2017

Birdsong is the soundtrack to our world. We have tried to capture its fleeting, ephemeral beauty, and the feelings it inspires, for millennia.

In this captivating and lively account, Richard Smyth explores science, music, literature, landscape and the thousand different ways in which birdsong has moved us. A bright song on a lonely street can lift our mood, bringing comfort, wonder or joy. But can we learn to listen, really listen, to what the birds are saying? Or do they just tell us back our own tales?