You could be forgiven for thinking that it's lightweight - when it's anything but. It's a deceptively slim book and a ridiculously easy read. Mateship with Birds was originally a book of bird notes from Australian writer Alec Chisholm, first published in 1922 and you might be thinking this is just another look at a rural life in a harsh but beautiful part of Australia, where people struggle to make a living. Her daughter, Hazel, kept a nature notebook which was completely factual and accepting of birth and death in a way that can only be achieved by those who live with livestock - and deadstock - on a daily basis. By day she worked in a nursing home where she was a lunchtime 'wife', sitting at the bedside of some of the old men in her care. Whilst Harry watched and recorded, his neighbour, Betty, watched Harry and recorded the childhood illnesses and accidents of her two children. His animals and the birds were his family and his land - difficult though it could be - a part of him. In the early nineteen fifties a lonely, middle-aged farmer observed the birds on his land and recorded what he saw in the blank pages of his milk ledger.
Summary: A deceptively easy read with depths which are not immediately evident.
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