VESPER FLIGHTS
By Helen Macdonald
To many birds, the Empire State Building is a curious construction. Some interpret it as a cliff: peregrine falcons use the behemoth as a convenient perch during high-flying hunts. Migrating birds such as yellow-backed warblers and black-crowned night herons have to rise a little higher to clear it annually. Others are more unlucky: hundreds of songbirds die each year by clattering into it. For a select group of birdwatchers, the building offers an excellent perch from which to watch annual migrations. And, for Helen Macdonald, scenes such as these are a lens through which to explore the interface between humans and nature. Her latest book, Vesper Flights, dives right to the core of a fractious but often elevating relationship. Do these passionate birdwatchers best define humanity’s relationship with nature? Or, is it better represented by the answering machines of the city’s pest controllers, inundated with requests to remove songbirds from high-rise balconies?
In Vesper Flights, Macdonald exercises the same eye that saw H is for Hawk become a classic of nature writing. In the latter, she set about fulfilling a childhood dream of training her own goshawk, this intimate connection becoming caught up in the deep grief she felt after the death of her father. In the former, nature is once again tied up with human emotions. She sees the natural world as a limitless source of intrigue – a compendium of insight that shapes her perceptions of humanity and society. Her own fear of oncoming migraines becomes a metaphor for climate change denial; starling murmurations reflect the voyages of refugees; and the supernal warp of light from a solar eclipse becomes a tool to unify society through transcendence. To Macdonald, the natural world can be a levelling influence at a time when we need it most.
The horror of WWF’s Living Planet Report, which pointed to a 68 per cent decline in global vertebrate species populations between 1970 and 2016, struck a deep chord, felt across generations. Although conservation programmes across the world are becoming more datadriven and objective, our willingness to let nature truly thrive will be drawn from a more primal appreciation of its wonder. Macdonald’s work opens eyes to this side of the debate.