A delightful, idiosyncratic and fascinating book about the place of bird song in our lives. Smyth is a wry, self-deprecating writer who draws not only on his own experience, but on music - all kinds of music from every period, on literature, on social history, on science, on previous students and lovers of birds, on landscape, to develop this entertaining yet well-researched read. I finished it resolving ti be more attentive to birdsong, an important if ephemeral backdrop to our daily lives. ( )

Can you imagine a world without birdsong? The very thought makes me shudder, but in the noise created by modern city life, the warbling is relegated to a footnote in the modern din. Whilst you will hear more birdsong in the countryside, the wholesale devastation of birds and invertebrates by modern industrial farming mean that you do hear it as often as you once would have.

It is a tragedy of the modern age.

Thankfully you can still hear birdsong and at its best it is a wonderful natural musical background to our world. It has had a profound effect on artists, musicians and has influenced elements of our culture and sciences for hundreds of years. For Smyth though, it was a small part of his world, like an electronic gadget, but it was something that he really didn’t understand or have any concept of. He was not alone, lots of people have tried to fathom out the whys and wherefores of birdsong and have never really got to the bottom of it. Some of the songs are territorial, some are to attract mates and other songs just seem to be for the hell of it. What we hear is not what the birds hear

Realising how little he knows, Smyth sets out on a journey to discover how much, or little, everyone knows about this phenomena. On this he will discover the syrinx that allows them to sing two notes at once, the live recording of cellist, Beatrice Harrison, with a nightingale in a Surrey garden, how poets respond to the notes they are hearing and how birdsong made the soldiers on the battlefields of World War 1 feel homesick. It is quite a journey too; he meets birders, linguists, twitchers, data analysts and musicians. All of these add to his understanding of what happens, but the only way to gain the emotional response is to head into the nearest wood with an expert who can tell his warbler from his chiffchaff.

I finished reading this in the garden over the weekend with birdsong all around. Sadly, mostly it was the tuneless chirps from the sparrows, but in amongst that was songs from a bird that I didn’t recognise. The effortless writing in here makes for easy reading and he keeps your interest in the subject all the way through by mixing together history, science and personal anecdotes. All of this adds up to a book on birdsong that is well worth reading, and it has a stunning cover too. Like all good non-fiction books it answers lots of your questions, and hopefully it will inspire people to get outside to hear the music of the birds.
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Something magical happened whilst I was reading A Sweet, Wild Note: I felt more attuned to birdsong than I had ever been before. I admit it was the start of spring but I suddenly started to notice the chirrup of the sparrow building its nest in our garden hedge and I don't believe I would have noticed it had I not been reading this delightful book.

So I had a few preconceptions of a book about birdsong but when faced with the most unexpected and hilarious opening line in Chapter 1, my preconceptions flew out of the window. I'm not going to say what it is as I don't want to spoil it for other readers but kudos to Richard Smyth for delivering such a cracking opening line. It managed to set the tone of book as being factual but fun and made me more eager to read it than at first expected.

The book comprises only six chapters as we investigate birdsong and its place in music, literature and our own lives. I was fascinated by the cellist Beatrice Harrison who was recorded playing her cello in a Surrey bluebell wood accompanied by the pure warbling notes of a nightingale. This had me whizzing off to google to listen for myself and you can listen to it here on YouTube.

As spring began to take hold whilst I was reading A Sweet, Wild Note I only had to lift my gaze out of the window to see the birds' nests taking shape in the trees. I watched a pair of magpies, carrying impossibly sized twigs in their beaks, building a nest so huge it could house a whole mischief of magpies. At first I was disappointed that magpies had chosen this prime spot in front of my window: I'm a Sunderland fan so anything black and white makes me look like I'm sucking a lemon, but of all the birds to build a nest it had to be the thieving Bill Sykes of birds! Richard Smyth managed to make me see magpies in a new light as a necessary cog in nature's wheel and I'm now looking forward to seeing the magpie family's new additions...until they wake me up at 5am on a Sunday!

An absolute must for any bird lover, A Sweet, Wild Note is completely enlightening and absolutely fascinating.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion. ( )