Every fall, thousands of bird lovers stand far above Lake Superior, on Duluth’s Hawk Ridge, and watch as thousands of raptors soar overhead on their way south.
But for all of their abundance, even majestic osprey, hawks, eagles and falcons are affected by the steep declines in bird populations across the western hemisphere.
In his gorgeous new book, naturalist and conservationist Robert Macfarlane asks, “What is lost when birds are lost? Above all, the creatures themselves, in their own splendor and right. And for humans — language, story, beauty, possibility, imagination, lifts of the spirit, ways of being otherwise. Birds are our place-makers, memory-keepers, calendars and clocks. They stitch the world’s parts together: earth to sky, river to woodland, mountain to sea, country to country, hemisphere to hemisphere.”
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Macfarlane’s new book, “The Book of Birds,” finds him collaborating once again with artist Jackie Morris for a beautifully illustrated ode to birds. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Macfarlane joins Kerri Miller to talk about the birds he loves — even though he says he’s not really a birder — and lament the disappearance of so many birds from our planet. His hope is that “The Book of Birds” will reignite a sense of wonder because “we will not save what we do not love.”
Guest:
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