Ordinarily, I tend to avoid birding memoirs with approximately the same effort as I avoid elective root canals. For while I am an avid bird watcher myself, I have never quite found it all that interesting to read about other people’s birding adventures – particularly when they’re trying to break some sort of record. So when an advance reading copy of Neil Hayward’s Lost Among the Birds; Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year recently arrived on my desk from Bloomsbury, as you might imagine, I was less than excited about it.
But as it so happened, as I was about to leave for yet another recent medical appointment, I realized I’d want a book to read while waiting at the clinic. Being a bit stressed about why I was going there in the first place, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to focus on the rather complex book I had been reading, so I looked through the unsorted stack of recent arrivals and grabbed Hayward’s book thinking “at least it will be light.”
Now a couple chapters in to it, I am surprised to be reporting that I am finding it absolutely delightful. Not only does Hayward have a charming sense of humor about his activities, he also has a writing style that is a genuine pleasure to read. Indeed, Hayward proves to have maintained the quality of the first few chapters throughout the entire book, I just may need to change my attitude toward birding memoirs as a genre.
