Crow Country by Mark Cocker

At its fullest, studying the life of another living creature is a way of engaging all of your faculties. In short, it’s a way of being intensely alive, and recognising that you are so. At the same time it is a form of valuing life and of appreciating the fundamental tenant of all ecology: that every thing is connected to everything else.

Crow Country is a difficult book to classify. Mark Cocker calls it “a meditation on birds, landscape and nature”. It’s about Corvids, particularly rooks, and it’s part natural history and part memoir. The author writes about the birds that are the object of his fascination, but also about his fascination itself—he questions it, he tries to map its origins, to make sense of it.

So: Corvids. The Corvidae family includes crows, ravens, magpies, jays, jackdaws, rooks, etc. Crow Country taught me a lot about them. They are very smart birds. Rooks in particular are very social animals. And they’re fascinating to read about. Mark Cocker points out that even though they’re birds most people are very familiar with, we don’t actually known all that much about them. They have a bit of an aura of mystery.


A Blue Jay

One of my favourite chapters was the one on crow lore, where Cocker writes about the “inner rook”, the one that populates our imagination. He retells an anecdote he heard when he was a little boy: a friend of his father claimed to have seen a “rook parliament” on the road from Buxton to Manchester. The rooks gathered around one of their own, apparently to decide its fate. When his father’s friend travelled back to Buxton, the rebel rook had been executed. I know I’ve come across this particular bit of lore before, and I’m almost sure it was in a Neil Gaiman book. American Gods? Sandman? Does anyone remember?


A Rook

There was a lot I liked about Crow Country, but unfortunately I didn’t love it quite as much as I was hoping to. There were two reasons why: first, the writing. It’s funny, because one of the reasons why I got this book was because I’d heard a lot about how great Mark Cockner’s writing was. And I can see why people appreciate it, but it doesn’t always work for me. His descriptions of natural landscapes in particular are a bit…hazy? He uses a lot of imagery and metaphor, but I find that he uses them a little too much, and as a result they make the scenery he’s describing more difficult to visualize, rather than easier. But again, this is me. I imagine that not everyone would have this reaction to his use of language.


A Carrion Crow
The second reason was the fact that I was expecting the book to have mostly natural history bits, with a personal musing here and there, but if anything the balance is in the opposite direction. Again, this will not be a problem for everyone. And I was interested in some of his more personal mediations. But not in all of them, I’m afraid. I’ll tell you about one I did love, though. He writes about how some people, some of his friends even, find the fact that he’s so passionate about birds somehow pitiful. He says:

But why is it that people who are absorbed by something are seen as sad? And what licenses that particular remark? What strange presumption fortifies the unengaged and the dispassionate to express this scorn for the enthusiast?
(…)
I can’t explain it, but for me the reverse state of affairs is true. To be engaged is to be a part, to be absorbed and fulfilled. To be cool, to be detached from things and have no passionate feeling is the real sadness. At the heart of depression, that quintessentially modern malaise, is a deep sense of separation from the rest of life.

I don’t really understand this either. Why are passion and enthusiasm considered vaguely embarrassing or sad? Some people act as if loving things is a poor replacement for “real life”. But what are our “real lives” if not the sum of the things we love, whatever those things are? Have you ever felt this yourself? Do you find that people tend to look down on those who show a lot of enthusiasm?


A Jackdaw

But back to the book: although I didn’t love Crow Country, I did enjoy it. I learned a lot of interesting things, and I was left with a desire to read more about birds, any birds. I have a slight case of bird phobia, I confess, but they fascinate me as much as they frighten me. One thing I’d love to read is a good book on general bird lore. I know that knowing the stories that are told about particular birds would make spotting them even more fun. That’s one of the reasons why I love lore, myths and legends. Knowing all those hidden stories makes me see more when I look around. They're not real, but they make the world more interesting. And actually, I want a good science book on birds for the exact same reasons. Knowing real facts makes the world more interesting too.


A Magpie

Two more notable passages:

The naming of the thing gives you the wonderfully reassuring illusion that you know it. You don’t. Sometimes all you have is a single datum. The name. In a bizarre way, the process of recognition can actually be a barrier rather than a doorway to genuine appreciation.

Yet perhaps they [our ancestors] too found the landscape steeped in familial memories, rich in their own ancestors’ oral tales, which were passed down round the camp-fire generation to generation. No matter what the age, we all feel—we relish it, perhaps, like a great enveloping overcoat—the great weight of history in a landscape, and sense ourselves to be at the end of a long process.

I'll leave you with a link to this lovely review by Terri Windling, which was the reason why I got this book.

(Have you also reviewed this book? Leave me your link and I'll add it here.)