Beauty of Birds

Spring returns and with it the birds. But it also brings throngs of birders who emerge, binoculars in hand, to catch a glimpse of a rare or previously unseen species or to simply lay eyes on a particularly fine specimen of a familiar type. In a delightful meditation that unexpectedly ranges from the Volga Delta to Central Park and from Charles Dickens's Hard Times to a 1940s London burlesque show, Jeremy Mynott ponders what makes birds so beautiful and alluring to so many people.
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Jeremy Mynott has been watching, listening to, and thinking about birds--and birders--for much of his life. He is the former chief executive of Cambridge University Press and is a fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.