WAITING FOR THE ALBINO DUNNOCK

by Rosamond Richardson

(W&N £9.99) AT A crossroads in her life, Rosamond Richardson was ‘lost and uncertain which way to go’ when a chance encounter with a fellow traveller in Greece opened a door to a new world.

Her companion, James, suggested a tortoisehunting expedition among the ruins at Mycenae.

They found no tortoises, but James proved to be a skilled and knowledgeable birdwatcher.

When the walk was over, Rosamond felt ‘radiant with happiness . . . as if I’d fallen in love again. I had: with a new love, of the avian variety.’

Her lyrical memoir of a year of birdwatching in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Greece is a lifeenhancing record of birds (and books).

One of the joys of watching birds, she writes, is that it has ‘taught me new ways of looking and seeing. I have come to trust the randomness of life, the certainty of uncertainty’.