The Birds and the Bees series was designed for Vintage Classics by Timorous Beasties, the Scottish studio famous for their designs inspired by the natural world. Books in this series are beautifully designed reissues of the finest British nature writing.
Originally published in 2007. One night Mark Cocker followed the roiling, deafening flock of rooks and jackdaws which regularly passed over his Norfolk home on their way to roost in the Yare valley. From the moment he watched the multitudes blossom as a mysterious dark flower above the woods, these gloriously commonplace birds were unsheathed entirely from their ordinariness. They became for Cocker a fixation and a way of life. Journeying across Britain, experiencing spectacular failures alongside magical successes and epiphanies, Cocker uncovers the mysteries of these birds' inner lives. It was shortlisted for the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize.
Mark Cocker is one of Britain's foremost writers on nature and contributes regularly to the Guardian and other publications. All of his seven books, including the universally acclaimed Birds Britannica, deal with modern responses to wilderness, whether found in landscape, human societies or in other species. Crow Country was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008 and won the New Angle Prize for Literature 2009. He has worked with the photographer David Tipling on their joint magnum opus, Birds and People. He lives deep in the Norfolk countryside with his wife Mary Muir and their two daughters.