The Verb to Bird: Sightings of an Avid Birder

All around the world, birds are a subject of intense and even spiritual fascination, but relatively few people see the word ‘bird’ as a verb. Peter Cashwell is one who does. This is a whimsical and critical book about his many obsessions, including birds, birders, language, literature, and pop culture. It begins with an irreverent examination of birding as a historical, cultural, and even religious phenomenon and describes how a 30-something student of academic and popular culture ends up an active participant in organised bird counts. Birding alone is compared to birding in company, and the pleasures of feeding birds outside are contrasted with the irrational terror of encountering them indoors. It also includes a birder’s travelogue in which the author recounts the high (and low) points of trips all around the nation: from Virginia, where geese of unusual size appear out of nowhere, to South Carolina’s Low Country, home to some of America’s most beautiful birds and most ravenous biting insects; from Long Island, where, against all odds, nature still exists, to the river, city, and state of Iowa, where nomenclature is in short supply.