The Life Affirming Magic of Birds: and the extraordinary things they can teach us

Everyone has a bird story. It may just be a brief encounter with a friendly Robin, a Wood pigeon sitting on your windowsill, or a rare vagrant species spotted in an unexpected place. Join Charlie Bingham as she travels the length and breadth of the UK from rolling countryside to busy city centres searching for Oystercatchers on rooftops and Peregrines on cathedral spires. In sharing her bird stories, she will help you to discover yours. Charlie Bingham will show you how birds from far-flung parts of the globe use the UK as their meeting point, allowing you to experience the sights and sounds that have touched every corner of the globe and are now available to you on your doorstep, whether that be a busy city centre or a coastal cliff. Birds are a way to engage with nature that is accessible to all who want to experience it. If you can use any of your senses (apart from taste—you can’t just lick a bird), then you can be ‘a birder.’ If you can hear the beatboxing starling from the tree outside your garden, you can be a birder. If you can see the flash of navy plumage as a swallow swoops above you as you lay on the grass, you can be a birder. If you can feel the branches of the hedgerows that open their doors to the roosting flock of sparrows each night, then you can be a birder. The Life-Affirming Magic of Birds will show you an alternative way to appreciate nature and, through the twelve lessons, you will see the power that nature has to help us through turbulence. For years, we have been told to look down at our feet on the earth in order to calm and ground ourselves, but for Charlie, it’s quite the opposite. Whether you’re experiencing grief, struggling with mental health, or if you’ve ever struggled to find the motivation to get through the daily grind, this book reveals how birds, and the simple act of noticing nature, can guide us through the most challenging times. This is a book that will make you look up.