In Praise of Birds - making a postcard for World Book Night 2024

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WBN is organised by Sarah Bodman and Linda Parr and for this years theme, In Praise of Birds, we’re invited to read a text or book about birds and to make a postcard in response. 

Reading about the endangered status of curlews online, in books like Red Sixty Seven, and noticing how these days I only see curlews in ones and twos on my local Eastern UK shoreline I’ve begun to wonder if my memories of them in flocks are only my imagination . . .

My postcard for WBN2024 shows a curlew flying out of the frame accompanied by a couple of lines from the poem Curlew Wind, by Steuart Allin, reflecting the distinct possibility that falling numbers may mean we loose them forever.

The book Red Sixty Seven is a collection of words and art inspired by Britain’s most vulnerable birds, put together by Kit Jewitt from an idea he originally shared on Twitter.

If you’d like to find out more about this fabulous bird (and more) visit curlewaction.org

And check-out this beautiful performance

The Seven Whistlers. A video of the song 'The Seven Whistlers' by Sarah Deere-Jones, written to highlight the loss of Curlew and other birdsong.

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