When it comes to spectator sports, birding ranks somewhere in between bass fishing and reading. For while the watching and tallying of birds can be enjoyable, relaxing, invigorating, and even emotionally and spiritually restorative, the watching of others watching birds is anything but. Which is quite likely why, despite birding being the preferred hobby of […]
Ordinarily, I tend to avoid birding memoirs with approximately the same effort as I avoid elective root canals. For while I am an avid bird watcher myself, I have never quite found it all that interesting to read about other people’s birding adventures – particularly when they’re trying to break some sort of record. So when an advance reading copy of Neil Hayward’s Lost Among the Birds; Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year recently arrived on my desk from Bloomsbury, as you might imagine, I was less than excited about it.