Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood, By Adam Nicolson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Publication date: September 16, 2025
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ADAM NICOLSON
The author of acclaimed works on history, landscape, and great literature, Adam Nicolson is also a preeminent naturalist. He is the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, the W. H. Heinemann Award, and the Ondaatje Prize. Birders may know him from The Seabirds Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet’s Great Ocean Voyagers. His other books include Life Between the Tides and Why Homer Matters.
CARA GIAIMO
Cara Giaimo is a science journalist who loves writing about our fellow species. You can find her work in the New York Times, Atlas Obscura, WIRED, and elsewhere. Cara lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Co-author of Atlas Obscura Wild Life, her most recent book is Leaving the Ocean Was a Mistake: Life Lessons from Sixty Sea Creatures.
To learn the birds, the writer Adam Nicolson built an elevated shed as his own personal school, a man-sized birdhouse he calls an “absorbatory,” not an observatory, sited where an English garden and farm, birds and humans, pasts and presents blur together at the wild wood edge.
This is the spongy “rough ground” of Adam Nicolson’s recent book, Bird School: A Beginner In the Wood.
In his bird school classroom, Nicolson approaches the task of learning the birds with whatever tools he has on hand—philosophy, environmental science, poetry, music, history and more. His inventiveness and delight in discovery contributes to this book’s charm. But he is also on a mission to be “in the world with as little conceptualization of it as the animals or maybe even the stones.”
“Every wood is a bird cosmopolis,” Nicolson writes from his classroom. “Every blink of life outside the birdhouse window is a planetary phenomenon.”
Running throughout Bird School is an undercurrent of nature in crisis—declining species, vanishing habitat, ecological unraveling, a warming climate, and changing ground—along with an insistence on engaging these challenges in new and creative ways. Drawing on everything from biblical prophets and Mesopotamian farming practices, to Beethoven and the Merlin app, Nicolson invites readers to imagine a more porous fabric of being—one with softer lines between birds and humans, where life is not “shrink-wrapped” in plastic into tidy categories.
The Boston Birding Festival, together with the Brookline Bird Club and the Association of Massachusetts Bird Club, is delighted to host Adam Nicolson for this online conversation, presented live from his farm in Sussex. He will be joined by local science journalist and author Cara Giaimo for a wide-ranging discussion of Bird School, science and nature writing, and birds.
Birders and the bird-curious and anyone who enjoys exceptional nature writing is welcome and encouraged to attend.
This event is free. Registration in advance is required.
“Wrens, robins, buzzards, blackbirds and tits come to bird school to teach lessons about themselves alone: how they breed, fly, navigate, why they sing. Nicolson is a good student―a fine observer of the natural world―and for a while, he lives a bird lover’s dream.” ―Charlie Gilmour, The Guardian
“In addition to a wealth of facts about bird behavior, Nicolson has access to an endless fount of lyrical descriptions to make birds come alive on the page . . . An evocative ode to English birds that invites readers to look more closely at the world around them.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“In this revelatory narrative, Ondaatje Prize winner Nicolson shares his experience observing birds near his home in Sussex . . . Nicolson is especially good at illuminating what goes unseen (or unheard) . . . He also draws attention to the ways human activity, like intensive farming, has caused bird populations to plummet in recent decades. This is a beautiful love letter to the avian world.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Nicolson’s observations ramble with curiosity and delight in his local environment. Highly recommended for readers interested and soothed by reading about the natural world.”
—Catherine Lantz, Library Journal
“Wonderfully interspersed with his observations are quotes from poets, historical tidbits both national and local, ideas from proponents of the rewilding movement, and intimate moments with the local birds. This meditative, poetic work will find a niche in the hearts of nature and bird lovers on both sides of the pond.”
—Nancy Bent, Booklist
ABOUT THE BROOKLINE BIRD CLUB
The Brookline Bird Club (BBC) is the largest, and one of the oldest and most active bird clubs in the US. Membership is open to all who are interested in birds and nature. We sponsor an active program of year-round field trips, covering the entire state of Massachusetts from the Berkshires to Stellwagen Bank, New England and beyond. During the peak of spring migration, walks are scheduled for every day of the week. Guests are welcome on Club walks and at our three annual in-person Club meetings. WEBSITE
ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS BIRD CLUBS
The Association of Massachusetts Bird Clubs brings together the state’s many diverse bird and nature clubs to support birding and conservation and to encourage appreciation for the natural world.
Founded in 2016, the AMBC provides a forum for member clubs to share skills and resources related to club management and increase nature access and nature programs in our communities. We also work together on mobilizing support for birds and habitat in New England and collaborate with conservation, environmental justice, and nature education leaders to improve wild places and green spaces, strengthen our communities, and protect biodiversity. WEBSITE • EMAIL