Call of the Kingfisher

Key Sales Points . Includes access to a number of high-quality birdsong recordings, made locally . The first full-length book of nature writing about kingfishers About Bradt Travel Guides . Founded in 1974, Bradt is now the largest independent guidebook publisher in the UK with over 200 titles in print . Serial winner of the Gold award for Best Guidebook Series in the Wanderlust Reader Travel Awards . Bradt guides are written by authors who really know their destinations. Many are resident there, or have been visiting regularly over a number of years . Each new Bradt guide is backed by a dedicated press and social media campaign

Call of the Kingfisher - an enchanting nature-writing debut. This love letter to River Nene and the wild things that live there, especially kingfishers, celebrates a year's worth of Northamptonshire riverbank walks. Written with a musician's ear, the book includes access to a number of high-quality birdsong recordings made where the book is set.Call of the Kingfisher is the enchanting debut from composer and wildlife recordist, Nick Penny. This love letter to a short stretch of Northamptonshire's River Nene celebrates all the wild things that live there, especially the kingfishers. Uniquely, it comes with bonus audio content to complement the text, accessed via QR codes. Nick has walked beside the river at Oundle for four decades. But for a whole year he gave the waterway all the time it asked for. The more attention he gave it, the more he saw the kingfishers and heard their high whistling calls. Set in a lovely but little-known part of England, Call of the Kingfisher relates a year by the river, the author's experiences there and the different people he meets. Other strands are woven around the elusive feathered protagonist: explorations of local history and landscape, from Roman and Bronze Age sites to watermills and centuries-old stone churches; visits at different times and to different places in the valley; homages to naturalists who lived nearby; forest dawns and dusks listening to the precious song of nightingales. But the background tapestry is the sights and sounds, and greens and browns, of the riverbank, shot through with the blue and orange threads of a kingfisher's glowing feathers. As a composer and wildlife recordist, Nick has a deep interest in sounds in the natural environment. He both uses the local landscape and wildlife sounds as inspiration, and brings fresh insights into the sounds of the countryside. The book includes access to a number of high-quality birdsong recordings made alongside the River Nene - audio soundbites of nature's riches, from kingfishers and nightingales to owls and cuckoos. This is a book about the things that can be seen and heard when we approach nature with patience and curiosity. It celebrates people who have used that focus to help preserve wildlife and pass on their knowledge to future generations. Above all, Call of...