Book Launch of "Jackdaws and Other Friends"

October 23rd 2022
Ticket details on Eventbrite

Join us for a walk with the authors around the very grounds that inspired the book "Jackdaws and Other Friends" by Andrew Murray Threipland, in which he guides the reader on a tour of Fingask in the company of ornithologist/composer Peter Cowdrey, telling how a dawn birdsong walk during lockdown led to unexpected discoveries about Fingask's landscape and history. The book is Illustrated with previously unpublished ornithological sketches by the great Scottish artist Donald Watson. The book also includes poems about birds illustrated by Katya Gerasimova Bosky, Allan Goodwillie, Xenia Kravchenko, Lizzie McDougall, Sasha Mizikova and Eugenie Vronskaya.

This delightful A5 volume will be an essential companion for walks around Fingask, and also an engaging journey into what lies behind the landscape of a small Scottish estate. Profits from sales will go to two charities- Watson Birds (watsonbirds.org) and Planet Birdsong (www.planetbirdsong.org)

After the guided walk you will have the opportunity to enjoy our pop-up Birdsong Studio. Be the bird of your choice. Hear yourself singing like a blackbird or a wren. Participants sing various sounds whilst following spectrographs, or graphic images of sounds, and hearing them slowed down. It is a kind of karaoke which makes birdsong more accessible to the human ear and timeframe. This is filmed and then sped up to the speed of the bird, and a video clip will be sent to each participant (click here to have a look).