Bird Note presents.

One of the first books, pieces of literature anyway that I read as a child was this book by an author named Fred Bodsworth called The Last of the Curlews.

And it was this beautiful story about the last of a bird that's now extinct, the Eskimo Curlou.

And I remember reading that book.

And then I saw an ABC after school special that like set me on fire, right?

Because I was like, oh, wow, this bird is gone.

And in my mind, though, I was like, oh, wow, this bird is gone. And in my mind, though, I was like, maybe it's not gone.

Maybe it's there, but, you know, as the writer had written this story from the point of view of a bird,

it's like he had become this bird in a way.

And so I went on to read other writers that were writing about nature,

sometimes writing specifically about birds.

And that was sort of the genesis for me that maybe while I was stealing the egg somewhat,

that was singing to me in a way that said,

okay, when you hatch,

you get to write about birds yourself.

From Bird Note, this is Words in Flight, a celebration of contemporary poetry about birds.

I'm Mark Bramhill.

There's something about writers and birds.

Take Emily Dickinson's hope is the thing with feathers.

Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven or John Keats owed to a nightingale.

I mean, Shakespeare's works mention birds more than 600 times.

There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

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