Earlier in the summer I was fortunate to meet one of the UK's best young birdwatchers and campaigners. Mya-Rose Craig has been birdwatching all her life - she was taken on her first twitch at just nine days old - and has already managed to spot more than half of the world's bird species, but that only tells a small part of her story.
Birdgirl is much more than a tale of Mya-Rose's birding adventures with her family, though these do, of course, form the glue that binds the story together. Indeed, at times, it's obvious that a shared loved of birds, and the thrill of the chase, are what keeps the family together, as Mya-Rose emphasises whenever she refers to the Craig Family Harmony Index.
In Birdgirl Mya-Rose talks very openly and candidly about mental health throughout the book: about her mum's struggles with bipolar and its impact on the entire family. It will come as no surprise that birdwatching was often a key part of the cure.
At the same time, Mya-Rose admits that she was frequently embarrassed to talk about birdwatching with her school friends, and throughout the book she weaves through the struggles of growing up as a teenager in Somerset.
Mya-Rose's love of birds has developed into a passion for environmental and diversity campaigning, driven in part by her Bangladeshi heritage. As she points out, Visible Minority Ethnic birdwatchers are few and far between - Mya-Rose and her mum were often the only non-white birdwatchers present - and this has led her to campaign for better inclusivity throughout the environmental sector. As a teenager she founded Black2Nature and established nature camps in Somerset to help to address this imbalance, and frequently campaigned on a variety of local and global conservation issues. Of course, campaigning has always been at the heart of the RSPB's work, ever since we were founded by ladies campaigning against the use of feathers in hats, but as Mya-Rose points out, the RSPB, too, needs to be more inclusive with respect to connecting ethnic minorities with nature, and this book certainly helps to raise the profile of this important issue.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Birdgirl and recommend it to everyone with an interest in nature, mental health and/or diversity. It's one of the few books that I've found difficult to put down. Mya-Rose's tales of her birding adventures are a joy to read, being peppered with many anecdotes, both amusing and poignant. Each chapter is themed around one particular special bird, including some of my own dream birds: California condor (about which I wrote a story at primary school), black-browed albatross (which I've even seen in the UK this year, at RSPB Bempton Cliffs - photo below), and the impressive harpy eagle (as featured on the book cover). The latter proved particularly difficult for the Craig's to spot, but I won't spoil the story by giving away the details. Perhaps my favourite line in the book is a quote from their guide in Uganda, used as the title of one chapter: "Don't mention the chimps." You'll have to read the book to find out why!
If you haven't bought your copy yet, why not pop into the Minsmere shop and pick up your signed copy. Enjoy the read.
Just ordered my paperback.... published JUNE 2023. I hope I remember why I ordered it.