Orison for a Curlew

The Slender-billed curlew is one of the world's rarest birds. A beautiful, fragile creature, it bredin Siberia and wintered in the Mediterraneanbasin, passing through the wetlands and estuariesof Italy, Greece, the Balkans and cental Asiatwice a year. Then, for mysterious reasons, thepopulation cras [...]
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The Slender-billed curlew is one of the world's rarest birds. A beautiful, fragile creature, it bredin Siberia and wintered in the Mediterraneanbasin, passing through the wetlands and estuariesof Italy, Greece, the Balkans and cental Asiatwice a year. Then, for mysterious reasons, thepopulation crashed. The Slender-billed curlewnow exists as rumour, hope, unconfirmedsightings and speculation. The only certaintyof its story is that it now stands at the brink ofextinction.Birds are key environmental indicators - theirhealth or hardship has a message for us about theplanet, and our future. But we do not know what the fate of the Slender-billedcurlew means for us, or what happened to it, or why.Orison for a Curlew is the story of a journey into that mystery. Following the bird'smigratory path takes the award-winning writer Horatio Clare on an odysseythrough a fractured Europe, to the edges of the land, and into the lives of themen and women who have fought to save and preserve the worlds to which thebird belonged.We travel with soldiers, beggars, students and green superheroes, includingthe father of ornithology in Greece, an extinction myth-buster in Romania, aHungarian who invented the Danube delta biosphere reserve, and a birdwatcherwho drew the preservation map of Bulgaria.This is a story of beauty, triumph,mystery and struggle, and a homage to a creature that may never be seen again.