Return of the Oystercatcher, The

Survival for migratory birds is a challenge, but the tide is turning. This is a book about optimism.

Across the world, scientists, conservationists and ordinary people are involved in groundbreaking work to restore billions of lost birds. Together they’re tackling the hollowing out of the springtime dawn chorus and the withering away of once-great migration multitudes.

From a tiny island off the coast of Maine to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to a hereditary estate in England to the deep Carpathian Mountains in Romania and a watery wilderness in Ukraine where air-raid sirens scream at night, birds’ fortunes are being reversed.

In The Return of the Oystercatcher, renowned natural history writer Scott Weidensaul tells the uplifting story of that success and what it means for us and for our planet, too. Because a world that works for birds, in all their complexity of movement and ecological need, will work for everything else. Including people.