Writing
How I wrote.
I worked mainly in the early morning, especially in the summer, before going to work. The most productive time however, was always on holiday and in particular in the white mountain village of Gaucin in Andalusia. The house we rented has the most wonderful views; green mountain slopes rolling down to the coast, past `the Rock´ and across the sea to the high misty mountains of North Africa. There used to be a tiny, old hotel in the village where we ate on a regular basis, and where in the 1770s the British Garrison stayed en route to Gibraltar, and I liked to image John White, chaplain to the garrison, making observations of migrating birds and sending his descriptions home to his brother Gilbert.
Getting up before the sun and seeing the Victor Pasmore colours of the sky each morning was inspirational. With no e-mail tugging at my sleeve, the solitude of these mornings was perfect and made even better by the fact that the rest of the family slept until 11.00 am. I wrote for several hours each morning using my Mac computer as an extension of my brain. The only interruptions were migrant birds passing over the house. Five years later towards the end of the writing, the Gaucin house was no longer available and instead I took my daughters to Sardinia. It was a cold, late spring and it rained, day after sodden day for two weeks. For me, it was a gift and I was able to spend 12 or 14 hours each day, writing, checking and re-writing. Wrapped in blankets and curled up on the sofa, my daughters read, and bore it all with stunning stoicism. Later that year we were back in the Gaucin house where I finished writing, inspired by the sun and hoards of screaming swifts and circling eagles.
Writing was only one part of The Wisdom of Birds; the other interesting but time-consuming tasks was locating the numerous colour images. The key to this was finding librarians that would allow me to browse their collections. Some libraries allow you to look only at specific items, which means that you have to know what you want beforehand and hardly conducive to finding appropriate images. Browsing was essential because most early books are arranged in no specific order – eagles can follow or precede hummingbirds – depending on the author´s whim; and there is often no index. Portraits of particular species were generally straightforward, although I always tried to obtain aesthetically interesting images or ones with a special relevance to the text. More specific images were often difficult. In writing about reproduction for example, I needed a beautiful, clear, colour illustration of a female bird´s reproductive system. Such images are few and far between. Eventually, I found one in the Blacker-Wood Ornithological Library at McGill University in Canada – but only because the librarian there generously allowed me to browse. Similarly, after relating (in chapter 2) William Harvey´s (1651) wonderful description of the male ostrich´s `vibrant yard´ I felt sure someone must have illustrated this remarkable structure, but it wasn´t until the few weeks before getting everything together for the publisher that I finally came across the perfect image while browsing in a private library.
