We tend to take birds for granted, in the landscape or in our neighbourhoods. The presence of birds communicates the health of a place. When they're gone, it's as though there's a hole in the sky, in the air, an absence of beauty and grace, and vivid chatter or haunting cries are replaced with eerie silence. As an amateur naturalist and nature lover, Janine Burke has spent a lifetime observing birds. Nest: The Art of Birds is the story of her obsession, a personal, wide-ranging, intimate book - part natural history, part folklore, part exploration of art and aesthetics, part memoir - that will appeal to all those who love birds, literature and art. What are nests if not art created by nature? If we argue that they are not art, how then can we explain those intricately constructed creations that are decorated, woven through with feathers, or studded with objects of a particular colour or sheen? And what is art anyway? Like Longitude, Cod or The Cello Suites, this book will be a short education that is celebration and theory, investigation and memoir: both familiar and revelatory.
It will be a perfect Mother's Day book, a present to buy for others and for yourself, and a beautiful object that will be as hard to resist as any beautiful, intricately constructed nest. | 
