The Seabird's Cry

The Lives and Loves of the Planet's Great Ocean Voyagers

By: Adam Nicolson

Narrated by: Dugald Bruce-Lockhart

Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Life itself could never have been sustainable without seabirds. As Adam Nicolson writes: "They are bringers of fertility, the deliverers of life from ocean to land."

A global tragedy is unfolding. Even as we are coming to understand them, the number of seabirds on our planet is in free fall, dropping by nearly 70% in the last 60 years, a billion fewer now than there were in 1950. Of the 10 birds in this audiobook, seven are in decline, at least in part of their range. Extinction stalks the ocean and there is a danger that the grand cry of the seabird colony, rolling around the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become little but a memory.

Seabirds have always entranced the human imagination and New York Times best-selling author Adam Nicolson has been in love with them all his life: for their mastery of wind and ocean, their aerial beauty and the unmatched wildness of the coasts and islands where every summer they return to breed. The seabird’s cry comes from an elemental layer in the story of the world.

Over the last couple of decades, modern science has begun to understand their epic voyages, their astonishing abilities to navigate for tens of thousands of miles on featureless seas, their ability to smell their way towards fish and home. Only the poets in the past would have thought of seabirds as creatures riding the ripples and currents of the entire planet, but that is what the scientists are seeing now today.

©2018 Adam Nicolson (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Sounding appropriately David Attenborough-esque, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart narrates this in-depth look at the lives of 10 species of seabirds." (AudioFile Magazine)

Seabirdsnfor a none bird person

As unnecessary context I’m currently part of an NGO dedicated to bird conservation (I do GIS) and while I didn’t know much about their behavior.this was a nice way to get into many of their behavior, while at the same time having good story telling.
Gulls still the devil tho

fantastic, poignant, a must-read

This book changed my entire view of bird life. I fell in love with seabirds, particularly albatrosses, about whom I knew nothing prior to listening to this wonderful book. Adam Nicolson has done a huge service to the world of seabirds by so beautifully describing how they live, and what kinds of dangers they face due to colony collapse, the changing ocean, and climate change. Although I was devastated by some of the information I learned in this book, the net result of listening was nonetheless extremely uplifting.

The reader was so annoying i could not finish the audio book

Beautifully written book loved everything about it but I could not listen to this reader anymore. He starts out every sentence speaking very loudly and then fades off at the end making the end of the sentence inaudible. I would turn up the volume so I could hear the end of the sentences and then my ears would be assaulted by the beginning of the next sentence. What a shame. This is not how an audiobook should be read.