The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes (Hardcover)

If she read this wonderful book, it's quite possible she would experience a conversion within the first few chapters. This is anything but a birdspotters' manual, though birdspotters will love it. As someone who struggles to tell heron apart from stork or buzzard from kestrel I can vouch for its non-specialist appeal. In fact, I was only vaguely aware of what a crane might look like before I was swept along on Matthiessen's fantastic journey across five continents. The experience is rich, varied and mesmerising, as well as enlightening.

Matthiessen combines natural history, ecology, geography, politics and travel writing in such a personal, effortless way that the many lessons he offers never feel like lessons at all but jewels of wisdom he wants to share. It's not false modesty when he insists he is an enthusiast rather than an expert. One of his great strengths is the ability to convey his own sense of discovery and awe alongside a deep concern for the survival of species and habitats.

In The Tree Where Man Was Born, published 30 years ago and still considered a classic, Matthiessen focused on East Africa. He has written widely on other regions and animals too but Birds of Heaven, describing his expeditions over the course of more than a decade in search of the 15 remaining species of crane, must be his most wide-ranging effort so far. Starting on the mighty Amur river in Siberia he travels gradually west and south across Asia, through Australia, Africa and Europe, finishing on Florida's Gulf coast. There he gets up close to the steadily recovering whooping crane (Grus americana), whose comeback from virtual extinction 40 years ago shows how conservation can work.

Entirely lacking the self-aggrandising tendencies of many travel writers, Matthiessen reserves his admiration for others - the conservationists, scientists and enthusiasts with whom he strikes up friendships all over the world to further his understanding of these extraordinary birds. Once regarded as messengers from heaven, cranes feature in the ancient myth and legend of many cultures, presaging longevity and good fortune (they have been known to live to 80 themselves). They are the largest, most ancient flying birds in the world and on their epic migrations sometimes reach altitudes of three miles above sea level.

Yet superlatives and facts alone would hardly do the birds justice. Matthiessen himself touches the heights, helped by the beautiful paintings and drawings of Robert Bateman. Between them the pair strive for the common essence as well as the distinguishing traits of all 15 crane species from the Siberian to the sandhill, the black-necked to the whooping, and, perhaps his favourite, the red-crowned (Grus japonensis): "In this brilliant winter light, against black tree trunks and white snow, the red jewel moves and turns like the quick heart of life..."

To give a flavour of the semi-mystical power cranes still exert, Matthiessen describes the reverence felt by one Ivan Dyachovsky, a member of the Yakut ethnic minority in Russia's frozen north-east. As a boy of eight he injured his back in a fall and could no longer walk. One day his father took him to a place in southern Yakutia to watch Siberian cranes in their courtship dances. "Who sees this crane is happy, and who sees it dance is doubly happy," Ivan says. The crane healed him, he believes, by inspiring him to learn to walk again and now he fights to protect their nesting areas from poisonous mercury mines.

Exploitation of natural resources is a widespread threat to cranes, and with it air and water pollution. Rapid industrialisation, particularly the vast damming schemes already under way on the Yangtze and planned for the Amur and elsewhere, is disastrous. But Matthiessen shows as much interest in people as he does in creatures and places, and he has found reasons to be hopeful too. His own contribution is immense.
ENDS

This hardback book was one I really enjoyed. The author sets everything in its place whether it is the wide open skies and landscapes of the Outer Mongolian steppe or the crowded farmlands of northern India. He discusses the 14 species of Crane extant today, putting them in their historical and cultural context. The place of Cranes in Asian iconography and mythology features strongly in the early chapters and this is a particularly strong part of the book. At the same time he discusses the taxonomy and phylogeny of the Gruidae in terms which are easily accessible for the non specialist, opening up the reader's thoughts to how and why speciation occurs.

The book also discusses the conservation of cranes from the hopeful, in the Whooping Crane programmes in the US, to the pessimistic, cranes in Asia. He ties the conservation of cranes into the conservation of whole ecosystems, emphasisng the cranes' requirements for huge, undisturbed territories. Matthiesen communicates the wonder of the far flung wild places he goes in search of Cranes, describing the landscape and the other wild species found within them. He also describes the reactions of the local people to the conservationists and the cranes, as well as giving pictures of different personalities working to conserve Cranes. He even manages to visit Norfolk and see Common Cranes and discusses this species in its British context.

The book is beautifully illustrated by the Canadian artist Robert Bateman with plates and line drawings which complement the text. This book is really a travel book but it is also a bird book, and one which I would thoroughly recommend. Reading this on the bus to work each day transported me to many places but, unfortunately, the bus always ended up in Edinburgh.