An anthology of over 150 diverse works of prose and poetry, creating both harsh and lyrical, tender and sad atmospheres, while reflecting the various modes in which birds have been portrayed by poets and writers from the myths of the earliest centuries until the works of present day writers.

Blodeugerdd o dros 150 o ddarnau barddoniaeth a rhyddiaith amrywiol, yn creu awyrgylch sy'n arw a thelynegol, tyner a thrist, gan adlewyrchu'r amrywiol ffyrdd y portreadwyd adar gan feirdd a llenorion o gyfnod cynnar y chwedlau hyd at weithiau awduron y presennol.

There seems to be no let-up in the industry of the anthologist Dewi Roberts. He has compiled so many selections from the work of Welsh writers in English that all that’s left for him to do now is put together a Welsh version of The Stuffed Owl, which would include excerpts from some of our worst writers. Such an undertaking, if that’s the right word, would entail a good deal of reading, but Dewi Roberts has clearly shown he is up to it. All he lacks by way of qualification is a knowledge of literature in Welsh, which gets only short shrift in his books.

The owl has a good section in Birdsong, from Blodeuwedd in the Mabinogion to the barn owls of R.S. Thomas and Leslie Norris. He has even managed to find a funny passage in Kilvert’s Diary about an owl named Ruth which two elderly ladies took to their room in a London hotel, only to find it hooted all night and had to be fed mice to shut it up.

The rest of the book is divided into sections: birds of prey, sea birds, the nightingale of course, garden birds, game and farm birds, the crow family, larks again of course, cage birds, and birds of lake and river.

Poems and prose passages by long-dead writers (in the interests of copyright) and the living are nicely balanced, with Emyr Humphreys, John Davies, Tony Curtis, Ruth Bidgood, Christopher Meredith and Anna Wigley among those in the land of the living and still, happily, chirping. R. M.Lockley and William Condry, our two most distinguished naturalists, are also well represented.

I have only one complaint: if the reader wants to know who translated a poem by, say, Euros Bowen or Dafydd ap Gwilym, he or she has to plough through the acknowledgements at the end of the book; why not print the translators’ names under the poems? Oh, and the typos: on the contents page alone I found two: Alun Llwyd (recte, Alan) and Syfaddon Lake (recte Syfaddan), and there others in the body of the work.

That said, this is a book full of good things. It will please the general reader, the teacher looking for suitable texts, and the twitcher who will compare the writers’ words with what he observes in the field, on the hill or by the sea shore.

Meic Stephens

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

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