The Natural History of a Yard by Leonard Dubkin

In The Natural History of a Yard Leonard Dubkin provides his observations on the natural life of his yard in Chicago over the course of three summers. Dubkin describes the yard thus:

…a little plot of grass bordered by a privet hedge. A high iron fence separates the yard from Sheridan Road… Just behind the iron fence on either side of the driveway is a forsythia bush, and in the rear of the yard, before the entrance to the hotel, is a tall, stately elm tree. That is really all there is to it.

IMG_20160710_085054 — The book is beautifully illustrated by Carl Kock

However, through Dubkin’s probing and close attention, we are shown that there is in fact much more to the yard than that. We meet a whole cast of characters – Dubkin’s daughter Pauline, Emil the gardener, Nutsy the squirrel, families of robins and screech owls, flocks of pigeons and sparrows, and a colony of carpenter ants – as well as various other insects and plants. Dubkin brings the yard to life with his stories about these animals (human and non-human) and plants. He is often ignorant (he readily admits to not being able to name most of the insects in the yard) and always curious, and his spirit of inquiry is infectious.

The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay

The World My Wilderness is set in 1946 and tells the story of 17 year-old Barbary Deniston, who has been living in Provence with her mother, Helen Michel, for the last seven years. Helen left her husband, Sir Gulliver, and son, Ritchie, in London. She later divorced her husband and married a Frenchman, who was accused of being a conspirator with the Nazis and killed by the French Resistance. The novel begins with Barbary moving to London, at the request of her father, to live with him and his new wife, Pamela, and to study painting at the Slade. Barbary’s stepbrother, Raoul, also moves to London to live with his uncle.

Adventure Lit Their Star: The Story of an Immigrant Bird by Kenneth Allsop

IMG_20160411_113314 — I love the cover on my edition of the book.

Adventure Lit Their Star: The Story of an Immigrant Bird tells the story of the little ringed plover[1], and one little ringer plover in particular, as the species attempts to breed in England for the first time. The first pair known to breed in England arrived in 1938. They bred at a reservoir on the border of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. But it was from 1944 onwards that their numbers began to rise. Kenneth Allsop was a keen ornithologist and first sought out the little ringed plover in 1947. He found two nesting pairs, one in Wraysbury and one at a reservoir in Staines. Of these birds he writes in the book’s Foreword:

I was immediately arrested by the dramatic circumstances within this crowded and dingy stage-set, and gradually there grew upon me the urge to write the story of these pioneers. This I have tried to do. The result is a combination of personal observation, recorded data and imagination. Imagination was sparingly used, for I wanted the account to be truthful and factual, wild life as seen through binoculars’ lenses.[2]

Birds in London by W.H. Hudson

W.H. Hudson’s The Shepherd’s Life has been on my ‘to read’ list for a while, so I wasn’t expecting my first foray into Hudson’s work to be a book about London’s birds. The stated aim of Birds in London is to furnish an account of the London wild bird life. The book begins with an overview of various birds in London, including chapters on London’s corvids (crows, jackdaws, and rooks), recent colonists (wood-pigeons, moorhens, and little grebes) and London’s small birds (including sparrows, blackbirds, and robins). Hudson then goes on to give a detailed overview of London’s parks and their wild bird life. Lastly, there are chapters on how London’s parks could be improved to increase the number of birds breeding in them.

I found the many passages about London’s sparrows particularly poignant. As I mentioned in my previous post in this series, London’s sparrows have declined dramatically over the last few decades. But the London that Hudson inhabits is still one of abundant sparrows.

So common are the sparrows that Hudson imagines them to be his accomplices in writing the book:

At times the fanciful idea would occur to me that I was on a commission appointed to inquire into the state of the wild bird life of London, or some such subject, and that my fellow commissioners were sparrows, so incessantly were they with me, though in greatly varying numbers, during my perambulations.[1]

London’s Natural History by R.S.R. Fitter

London’s Natural History charts the natural history of London from its pre-historic, geological formation, through the Romans, the medieval period (when kites were a common London bird), the expansion of the city from the fifteenth century onwards, and on to its final bursting point in the mid-nineteenth century. It then looks at the various human impacts on the city’s flora and fauna in the present day (the present day being 1945), including the influence of traffic, refuse disposal, agriculture and the recent war. Whilst the history of London is interesting, it is the snapshot of London in 1945 that I find the most fascinating. For example, Fitter mentions the abundance of sparrows in London, according to Fitter they are the only London bird considered to be a Cockney. Since then the number of sparrows in London has drastically declined – by 60% between 1994 and 2004 according to the RSPB. On the other hand, he mentions the recent increase in the number of gulls in London, a bird that is still increasing in urban areas.

Nature Near London by Richard Jefferies

Although Nature Near London is maybe more accurately classified as suburban nature writing, the ‘near’ in the title giving it away, it would feel remiss to begin this series with any other book. After all, a genre doesn’t spring up fully formed over night and part of the aim of this series of blog posts is to explore the evolution of urban nature writing as a sub-species distinct from nature writing (and if, indeed, it is possible to define the genre at all). With Nature Near London the seed of an idea was being sown – the idea that it is not necessary to turn ones back on the city to find nature. I also include Jefferies’ book because the city, London, looms large; it is a presence that forms a counter-point to the places Jefferies explores. It also loomed large in Jefferies’ own mind, and magnetised him even as he sought to escape it.