by Esther WoolfsonHouse of Anansi Press
~ Review in Halifax Herald, March 2010
Corvids, crows in particular, have had a bad rap over the centuries. Their carrion role during the Black Plague gave them a distinctly ghoulish reputation, and Alfred Hitchcock, in his acclaimed movie, The Birds, didn’t help matters any. And yet, “as with us all, human or bird, history has formed what corvids are.”
Esther Woolfson’s new book, Corvus: A Life with Birds details her lifelong love affair with birds in general and corvids in particular. It all began when her daughter rescued Chicken, a fledging rook, who moved into the house and took over. She did, however, allow Woolfson to continue to use a corner of her study by the window.
Woolfson’s house becomes a sort of aviary. Spike the magpie, Ziki the crow, Bardie, Marley the parrot, budgies, and cockatiels roam the rooms. Her tales of their comic and oh! so human behaviour is written with love and affection, and her view on birds’ rights conveniently rationalizes her complete failure to even marginally house-train just one of her avian companions.
“Nothing, we discovered, is as gracious as a corvid. ... rituals worthy of Japanese life, On meeting in the hall of a morning, we bow. She caws and I greet her. We bow again. She caws. I bow. She bows. I ask after her health. She caws. Eventually, we reach the kitchen.”
Studies by Dr Louis Lefebvre (McGill University) show corvids to be the cleverest of birds, followed by falcons, hawks and woodpeckers. This merely underscores what Woolfson already knows. They respond to humour, fear, love and music. Chicken has a distinct dislike for the works of Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messaien and, to a lesser degree, the Pogues. She does, however, like Bach.”
“Was Chicken “once a dinosaur? A small dinosaur, a maniraptor, but a dinosaur none the less?” The disagreement about the lineage of birds continues, and Woolfson leaps into the fray. She has a keen eye for detail, and her writing carries a magical humour, whether relating the anecdotal or carefully teaching the evolution of birds and the mechanics of flight. It is in her ability to blend this science, the natural history and the household stories that makes Corvus very very hard to put down.
Esther Woolfson was brought up in Glasgow and studied Chinese at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Edinburgh University. She has won prizes for her nature writing, and her short stories have appeared in many anthologies. She lives in Scotland.
