The Slender-billed curlew is one of the world`s rarest birds. A beautiful, fragile creature, it bredin Siberia & wintered in the Mediterraneanbasin, passing through the wetlands & estuariesof Italy, Greece, the Balkans & cental Asiatwice a year. Then, for mysterious reasons, thepopulation crashed. The Slender-billed curlewnow exists as rumour, hope, unconfirmedsightings & speculation. The only certainty of its story is that it now stands at the brink of extinction. Birds are key environmental indicators
- their health or hardship has a message for us about theplanet, & our future. But we do not know what the fate of the Slender-billed curlew means for us, or what happened to it, or why. Orison for a Curlew is the story of a journey into that mystery. Following the bird`s migratory path takes the award-winning writer Horatio Clare on an odyssey through a fractured Europe, to the edges of the l&, & into the lives of the men & women who have fought to save & preserve the worlds to which the bird belonged. We travel with soldiers, beggars, students & green superheroes, including the father of ornithology in Greece, an extinction myth-buster in Romania, a Hungarian who invented the Danube delta biosphere reserve, & a bird watcher who drew the preservation map of Bulgaria. This is a story of beauty, triumph, mystery & struggle, & a homage to a creature that may never be seen again.