Gods of the Morning

by John Lister-Kaye

Overview

Gods of the Morning follows the year through the turning of the seasons at Aigas, the Highlands estate John Lister-Kaye has transformed into a world-renowned wildlife center. John's affection, wisdom and lyricism sings off every page, bringing the natural world around him to life: from the rookery filled with twenty-nine nests and distinct bird calls to descriptions of the winter morning light, from the wood mice and the squirrels preparing for winter to tracking a fox's path through the snow. In particular it brings John's lifelong love of birds—his gods of the morning—to the fore.In the Highland glens, bird numbers plummet as their food supplies —natural fruits and every kind of creeping, crawling, slithering or flying bug—begin to disappear. By the first frosts the hills will have emptied down to a few hardy stalwarts such as the golden eagles, the raven and the irrepressible hooded crows. Silence settles across the land. The few species that are left frequent a changed world. Soon only the buzzards and wood pigeons will hang on in the woods and the coniferous forests will be host to flocks of chaffinches, tits, siskins, and crossbills passing through.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605987972
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	08/15/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	585 KB

About the Author

John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's foremost naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of eight books on wildlife and the environment and has lectured on three continents. His last book At the Water's Edge was published by Canongate in 2010 to excellent reviews. He has served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world-famous Aigas Field Centre.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

1 Blackcap 5

2 That Time of Year 11

3 So Great a Cloud of Witnesses 31

4 And Then There Were Rooks 43

5 Prints in the Snow 61

6 A Swan for Christmas 77

7 The Day the Sun Stands Still 87

8 The Gods of High Places IOI

9 A Dog's Life 115

10 The Memory of Owls 135

11 The Long Wait 159

12 The Suns Rough Kiss 173

13 Buzzard 189

14 Comings and Goings 203

15 Nesting 215

16 Summer Night 235

17 A Day of Spiders 249

18 Gods of the Morning 261

19 Arthur and the Treecreeper 279

Acknowledgements 293

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2015
British conservationist Lister-Kaye (At the Water’s Edge) writes of birds and bees, and of flowers and trees, in this earnest and impassioned meditation on the natural environment. From the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the Aigas Field Centre, “a place cradled by the hills above Strathglass,” he offers an insightful look at the land he has lived and worked upon for almost four decades. Lister-Kaye chronicles a year in his life, charting the changing seasons and the birds that accompany them. He welcomes, for example, the arrival of blackcaps every May and mourns “their sudden absence every autumn,” and describes the rooks that show up in November, likening their “usual boisterous personalities” to “youths: racketing, arguing, bossing, coming and going, flapping, cawing loudly, and generally carrying on.” The comparison hints at the author’s wit and particular perspective. Lister-Kaye will endear himself further to readers in recalling the death, “swiftly and painlessly,” of his yellow Labrador, Max: “I mourned him then and I mourn him now.” Whether dealing with small birds or larger animals, Lister-Kaye reminds readers of the connections humans forge every day with other creatures—and the emotions that result are unquestionably real and significant. Agent: Catherine Clarke, Felicity Bryan Associates. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Exquisitely observed and deeply evocative, Gods of the Morning is a joyful affirmation of the changing seasons, the wonders of wildlife, and the value of living close to nature. Generous, poetic, and wise.

Patrick Barkham

With an untameable enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, Lister-Kaye translates those languages into a kind of inter-species friendship.

Jay Griffiths

I love this book. No one writes more movingly, or with such transporting poetic skill, about encounters with wild creatures.

Helen Macdonald

To read Gods of the Morning is to sink back into the grass, slip away from rush-hour traffic and conference calls, and notice once again the bugs circling in the dirt and that first hint of fall in the air. Lister-Kaye, who time and again homes in on familiar subjects, stripping away pretensions and introducing the vigor and realism that’s often missing from nature writing. After all, what is nature writing if not a tacit endorsement for bucking the trail? Gods of the Morning is a book you’ll want to put down, not because you’ve lost your interest, but precisely because you’ve found it—in the birds outside your window, in the grass beneath your feet, in the moonlight between the trees.

Audobon

Lister-Kaye is a gifted writer, braiding memories of childhood and wide-ranging journeys as a naturalist with the rhythms of life at Aigas, a lace he knows intimately. Aigas, however, is becoming less familiar...he knows too much to settle for simple answers. Gods of the Morning perfectly encapsulates the paradoxical relations human beings have to the natural world. The sense of personal stewardship and individual responsibility that Lister-Kaye embodies is a vital element of conservation, as important as the understanding that wildlife belongs to nobody, and to everybody. We are all lords of the manor; the only question is how well we will do our jobs.

The Wall Street Journal

Though Lister-Kaye warns of the damage caused by humankind, and sometimes strikes an elegiac note, he sings full-throatedly in praise of the persistence of nature.

The Times (London)

Compelling. A tour de force of forensic observation and imaginative reconstruction. The prose carries a deep, rich polish.

The Spectator

Lister-Kaye's writing hums with enthusiasm, and his observations are acute.

Country Life

A triumph in nature writing.

Tristan Gooley

A quiet but rousing call to action for anyone who loves the natural world and wants to help preserve it.

Sunday Telegraph

A quiet but rousing call to action for anyone who loves the natural world and wants to help preserve it.

Sunday Telegraph

2015-06-03
A distinguished British naturalist reflects on his encounters with the birds of the Scottish Highlands and how global warming has impacted these populations. Set in the Highlands hamlet of Aigas, the 19 essays in the book illuminate the way birds not only "respond quickly to shifts in climate and human behavior," but also serve as living barometers of "the success or failure of other wildlife." Lister-Kaye (At the Water's Edge: A Personal Quest for Wildness, 2010, etc.) notes that minute shifts in light and weather conditions—things that humans often do not notice—can severely affect not only migration patterns of seasonal birds like geese, but also the nesting patterns of other, nonmigratory birds like rooks. Temperature extremes also inevitably take their toll on bird populations. During a three-month subzero period in the winter of 2009-2010, the hardy barn owls of Aigas (where Lister-Kaye established Scotland's first field studies station in 1976) starved for want of access to the mice and voles that had taken refuge underground. The author also shows how human interventions on the landscape—e.g., electricity distribution lines—impact birds like the whooper swan, which collide with the lines and die slow, agonizing deaths. With its use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanized equipment, farming also impacts birds by killing off the bugs, beetles, and flies that feed them. Lister-Kaye's lyrical descriptions of Aigas and the animal denizens he so clearly loves offer a poignant counterpoint to the destruction he observes. Yet for all the sadness he expresses at the way people have treated the natural world, he still offers hope that humans can work with nature by adopting the kinds of green measures—installing biomass boilers and solar collectors and "preach[ing] sustainability" to school children—that Aigas employs. In so doing, they can restore some semblance of balance in the earthly kingdom overseen by his winged "gods of the morning." An evocative and heartfelt examination of a beautiful landscape and its fauna.

Kirkus Reviews