The as yet untitled book will be about 300,000 words long and contain 400-500 colour photographs, depicting not only some of the most important species, but also examples of art and other cultural artefacts that have been inspired by birds. The text will examine the cultural importance of 500-1000 species, all of which play a key role in the life of local communities around the globe. Very often a single species or family has cultural significance for people right across a whole continent, and even worldwide. Owls are a good example. In Europe and North America owls are hugely popular and are often selected to stand as emblems for entire environmental campaigns, such as the Spotted Owl, in the drive to protect old-growth conifer forests of north-west USA, or the Snowy Owl in the UK, used to highlight the threat from climate change. For many cultures, however, owls often have deeply negative associations with the night, darkness, bad luck and  even witchcraft. The aim is to tease out a bird’s many meanings for different societies.

The texts on all the birds will be arranged taxonomically so that the various and often contrasting cultural responses in different places by different peoples can be juxtaposed in a single account. To take a single example. Cranes have been cherished, hunted, exploited, used as symbols and provided artistic inspiration wherever they occur. In Asia they are metaphors for longevity and devotional love, an ancient response that has very modern connotations in a place like Rajasthan, India, where wealthy merchants vie with one another to provide thousands of kilos of cereal feeds every year for large flocks of over-wintering Demoiselle Cranes. In Western Asia or Europe huge flocks of migrant Common Cranes provide one of the most compelling natural spectacles in their respective regions. Places like Hula in Israel, Extremadura in Spain or the Hortobagy in Hungary attract tens of thousands of sightseers, often people who might not otherwise look at birds. The captive breeding programme aimed at saving the Siberian crane involved close collaboration between the Crane Foundation of Wisconsin USA, and Soviet conservationists. It was one of the finest examples of environmental teamwork by countries that were otherwise separated by deep political differences.

This one avian family demonstrates both the cranes’ own transcontinental range but also the ways in which they break down arbitrary human barriers, such as national frontiers or separate cultures. Like so many other birds, cranes are bridge-builders, enabling us to see the Earth as a single unified entity, and also to recognise how our own varied responses reflect a common impulse.

Some of the themes developed in Birds and People draw on an earlier book by Mark Cocker called Birds Britannica (2005). It explored the cultural importance of birds in a single country, the United Kingdom. If you wish to get a clearer understanding of how the new book will be structured and arranged, then we have provided some specimen texts from this earlier work on three very wide-ranging birds.



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