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Best Bird Book of the Year 2022

The Extraordinary Growth of Low-Carbon Birding

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As a young birder, I was always extremely keen to see which book would win the prestigious Best Bird Book of the Year award. Like many of you reading this, I expect, I have several previous winners of the award on my bookshelves and have spent many long hours studying them. Never did I imagine that I would end up contributing to a winning publication and helping to grow a vitally important grassroots conservation and sociopolitical movement. However, the world has changed, and back then I never imagined we would be facing the predicament of a climate emergency and its catastrophic consequences for the planet. Throw in governments’ pursuit of endless growth and their blind adherence to economic systems that are plainly and demonstrably unsustainable and it quickly becomes apparent that we need to see some very rapid and very major changes to the way we live our lives.

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I had thought for several years that we were running headlong into disaster and as a result I had made several changes in my own life and my birding. These included not flying, eating a plant-based diet, minimising travel, birding by cycle as much as possible and growing my own vegetables. This was a lifestyle I greatly enjoyed for several years, 'doing my bit' as I saw it, but around five years ago I began to notice tweets from Javier Caletrio as @BirdingClimate. These related to how we could reduce the deleterious effects of our birdwatching on the climate and spread that message to others. They immediately struck a chord with me and I began retweeting them as often as I saw them. I enjoyed several online conversations with Javier and contributed a piece on my local patch to his website https://lowcarbonbirding.net/. I was in full accordance with his views but was sceptical about how far the message could travel in the notoriously intransigent birding community, where seeing birds mattered a lot more to many people than making personal changes to help spread the message about climate change.

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More and more people were finding the adoption of low-carbon birding to be a change that enriched their birding, and their wider lives. Javier then contacted a few of us early adopters with the proposition of writing chapters for a book. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance, as many others obviously did! The resulting book was published in 2022 to very good reviews and it was wonderful to hear that it had won the Bird Book of the Year award. The book has been talked about in many places so I won’t go over it again here but links to reviews are to be found below.

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It can’t have been easy for many in the birding establishment to so rapidly embrace a new way of doing things but it happened. British Birds, Birdwatch magazine and the BTO were all quick to engage and publicise the movement and all those involved deserve a huge amount of credit. There was some kickback, of course, with the BirdFair being particularly hard to reach given its reliance on overseas travel and a couple of downright strange pieces criticising low-carbon birders. Still, they were few and far between and came across like the dying throes of the old ways of doing things. Change will come to them too. There is no alternative.

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Low-carbon birding is here to stay. It is a necessary part of our struggle as a society to encourage change in our fellow birders and to pressure our governments to act in a meaningful way. Individual actions are small, but together they can have an impact. We can change minds. We can talk to friends, families and work colleagues about the climate emergency. We have agency and we CAN make a difference.

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And lastly, massive thanks to Javier Caletrio, as without him none of this great stuff would have happened. He has created something that has grown from a real grassroots assemblage of like-minded, highly concerned people who just happened to be birdwatchers, to a movement now enjoying popularity in several countries, and seemingly growing by the day.

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If you are not yet convinced of the benefits of making some changes to your birding to reduce your carbon emissions and help spread the word on the dangers we face, then get a copy of the book and see if you can find inspiration within its pages from the accounts of some very different approaches to low-carbon birding that it contains. If you have made changes, then well done - you are already a low-carbon birder and a climate hero! Respect to you. 

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Links to a some reviews of the book and a few quotes from these and other reviews:

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https://www.birdguides.com/reviews/books/low-carbon-birding/

https://britishbirds.co.uk/content/low-carbon-birding

https://www.summerfieldbooks.com/product/low-carbon-birding-2/

https://fatbirder.com/reviews/low-carbon-birding/

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• This is a pioneering collection that asks difficult questions of the contemporary culture of high carbon birding. It presses all birders to reimagine their hobby in an era of climate emergency, travelling less and travelling differently. In doing so, the collection offers the prospect of new ways of enjoying birds and the new pleasures that can come from low-carbon ornithology.
  —Professor Sean Nixon, author of Passions for Birds: Science, Sentiment and Sport

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• These thought-provoking and fascinating personal stories offer inspiration for how we can all stay local to enjoy birds.
  —Ed Drewitt, author of Raptor Prey Remains and Urban Peregrines

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• This book will be contentious for some, but future birders may wonder why it took until 2022 for it to be written. Highly recommended.
  —Ian Carter, Author of Human, Nature and Rhythms of Nature

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• Adapting our way of life in response to the climate crisis is now a responsibility, not a choice. This readable and inspirational title shows that, with just a few changes to the way we go birding, from local patching to taking the train for holidays abroad, it’s possible to continue enjoying the hobby that we love in a carbon-responsible manner.
  —Stephen Menzie, Editor of British Birds

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• It is inescapable that all of us must now search for ways to rapidly reduce our carbon footprint. This plays especially on the conscience of nature-lovers, who are already seeing the effects of a rapidly changing climate on the natural world around us. Javier Caletrio is mild-mannered yet persuasive in his promotion of low-carbon birding and, as this collection of inspirational chapters proves, the example he sets is spreading fast among birders determined to do better for the planet.
  —Josh Jones, Birdwatch magazine and BirdGuides.com

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• A wonderfully diverse collection of first-hand views and experiences of low-carbon birding that encourages all of us to rethink how we value and engage with the world around us.
  —Professor Juliet Vickery, CEO British Trust for Ornithology

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• This is a welcome book, dealing, as it does, with an important issue for those of us who are birders... Things are certainly changing and I am confident that they will change ever more quickly. This book is an important contribution to that change.
  —Mark Avery, author and environmental campaigner

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• This book, for the most part gently, encourages us to look at all we do and find ways to reduce our carbon footprint, especially when it comes to indulging our avian pleasures. There is much here to enjoy, follow and learn from.
  —Fatbirder

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• ...this is an excellent book – controversial, engaging and deserving of the widest possible readership.
  —James Wright, RSPB Book Club review

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• The book is a collection of essays from a variety of writers, many of whom will be familiar to Birdwatch readers… they represent what people ‘on the ground’ are doing to lessen their own carbon footprint and by doing so give us all workable ideas for doing the same.
  —Rebecca Armstrong, Birdwatch

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• The book makes an interesting and thought-provoking read.
  —John Miles, birdwatching.co.uk

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• If ever there was a book for our time, this is it. Javier Caletrío has called out the practice of fossil-fuelled, high mileage birding for what it is; a gross hypocrisy... The fact is, the birds we travel to see won’t be there unless we act now. Read this book, and then talk to your friends about the issues it so eloquently raises.
  —Simon Bates, British Ecological Society

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• The title does not shy away from the harsh reality of climate change and the challenges faced; there is a sense of urgency with the topics addressed in this book. But there is not a sense of despair. Within its 31 chapters, there can be few people who won’t find something positive to inspire them in their birding – and their life in general.
  —British Birds

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• With so many contributors sharing their real stories of transformation, Low-Carbon Birding is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in reducing their carbon emissions.
  —Jenny McKee, Audubon