The Return of the Oystercatcher

Survival for migratory birds is a challenge, but the tide is turning.

This is a book about optimism.

Across the world, scientists, conservationists and ordinary people are involved in groundbreaking, wide-reaching work to restore billions of lost birds – tackling the hollowing out of the springtime dawn chorus, and the withering away of once-great migration multitudes.

From a tiny island off the coast of Maine to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, from a hereditary estate in England to the deep Carpathian Mountains in Romania, from the middle of the Canadian boreal forest to a watery wilderness where you can hear the air-raid sirens in Ukraine screaming at night, birds’ fortunes are being reversed. Threatened bird such as herons and ospreys, peregrine falcons and bald eagles are replenishing at rates previously thought impossible.

From renowned natural history writer Scott Weidensaul, The Return of the Oystercatchers is the uplifting story of how that success means that all those involved are making progress for us and our planet, too. Because a world that works for birds, in all their complexity of movement and ecological need, will work for everything else. Including people.