Poetry and precision

Mark Cocker's Crow Country is an outstanding book; and what a revelation that a work of natural history is better written than many of the works of fiction I've read in the last year or so.

A book about the corvid genus of birds (rooks, jackdaws and crows) might sound a touch limited, but Cocker ranges over history, literature, personal observations as well as of earlier natural histories and brings it all together with fabulous writing.  I think it's the precision of his observation that really strikes me.  He can look at a flat Norfolk landscape and see so much that an untrained observer would simply miss: birds, the history of the landscape, its geology, how man and nature have worked together or against one another.  Best of all are his descriptions of literally thousands of rooks and jackdaws congregating at dusk to roost, then rising up almost as a single entity, a swirl of black in the sky, their harsh cries becoming almost melodious through sheer numbers.

Here's a quick example of the quality of his writing:

"Yet the sheer emptiness of the place can intensify feelings of intimacy with those things that are close.  In autumn as I walk the long road bisecting Haddiscoe, the air is filled with dragonflies and occasionally a hunting individual will fly almost at my face.  The chitin snapping together as it manoeuvres is like the crackle of electricity, or a firework fizzing before its explosion.  Then it settles on the concrete wall, its weightlessness poised on the needle-tip of its six hair-thin legs.  In a few days, weeks at most, you know its life will end.  Yet here it is, a scarlet cruciform filling itself with autumn sunlight, savouring the immensity of its existence."