* This is the first engaging and accessible history of how birdsong has become a part of us, our culture and our landscape.; * Declining songbird populations make this an urgent and pressing media topic.; * Richard Smyth is an up-and-coming voice in nature writing - a historian and commentator with deep knowledge and insight into the natural world.; * For readers of Tweet of the Day, Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to British Birds, The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman.; * For all of those interested in nature, culture and the arts.

A Guardian `Readers’ Choice’ Best Book of 2017; Birdsong is the soundtrack to our world. We have tried to capture its fleeting, ephemeral beauty, and the feelings it inspires, for millennia.; In this captivating and lively account, Richard Smyth explores science, music, literature, landscape and the thousand different ways in which birdsong has moved us. A bright song on a lonely street can lift our mood, bringing comfort, wonder or joy. But can we learn to listen, really listen, to what the birds are saying? Or do they just tell us back our own tales?