Reading about birds

My reading programme tends to be pretty arbitrary, made up from a series of random prompts, most centred around book reviews in the Guardian and Observer, but reinforced by occasional purchases from second-hand bookshops. which lands me with a gorgeous co-incidence. In bed I’m reading a book from the library, Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, a beautifully written account of her grieving for he father. This involves her following two parallel paths -tracking T.H. White’s account of training a goshawk, and doing the same thing herself, with the gloriously named Mabel. Meanwhile, downstairs I’m reading The Poetry of Birds (edited by Simon Armitage and Tim  Dee) which was in our local second-hand bookshop. there’s tons of poems in there i already knew but am glad to see again, but I’m specially struck by Thom Gunn’s Tamer and Hawk, which collides with Helen M in a blaze of light. Normally I know nothing and care appallingly little about birds, but these two have been a delight.