Book #4/2019 The Horseman

The Horseman by Tim Pears
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A list of some twenty-eight characters at the beginning of the book is somewhat confounding. It is necessary to get your head around these from the start, otherwise confusion will spoil your enjoyment of this gentle, pastoral novel set in Devon in 1911/1912. Composed as a calendar through the months and seasons and following the daily, hardworking lives of the Sercombe family: Albert Sercombe, a ploughman, Ruth, his wife, Fred, Sidney and Leopold (Leo), the three sons and Kizzie, their daughter. These are the central characters - in particular the twelve year old Leo - along with Arthur, Lord Prideaux, owner of the estate and Charlotte (Lottie), his only child.

A bucolic blend of Flora Thompson, Laurie Lee and Thomas Hardy, sprinkled with countryside words and events through the seasons: how to groom a Shire horse, how to plough a field, how to slaughter and butcher a pig (in graphic detail), the harvest cycle of collecting, stack-building and threshing. It's all here in forensic detail. One wonders - where is this going? Is there a plot?

Remember Leo and Lottie? Working class, humble lad and privileged daughter of landed gentry. Leo loves horses. His mind is set on working with them, one day. Lottie is at first antagonistic towards him, but at the same time intrigued by this quiet lad. They share a love of all things equine. It will take them on a journey through their age of innocence to a simple act, misinterpreted, that leads to devastating consequences. The last ten minutes of this beautiful story left me stunned...

My thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for this ebook.

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A Message From Martha

A Message From Martha is the title of a book recently published by Bloomsbury; written by Mark Avery it catalogues the demise of the Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius. Mark writes that we should remember the passenger pigeon because of the largest-scale human-caused extinction in history. The passenger pigeon is among the most famous of American birds, but not because of its beauty, or its 60-mile-an-hour flight speed. But for its extinction from a population of more than 5 billion birds, in the early to mid 19th century, to zero in 1914. 100 years ago this week, the very last pigeon of her kind died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and her passing merits our close attention today.

Mercilessly slaughtered by the tens of millions at breeding colonies in the Northern USA and at huge wintertime roosts in the South during the post-Civil War era, passenger pigeons were shipped by trainloads to dinner tables in homes and restaurants across the East. Their population fell from biblical numbers at midcentury to tiny, aimless flocks in 1890. By around 1900 the few birds that remained were all in captivity. The last male died in 1910, leaving Martha as a barren relic of past abundance.

Martha was the last to die. She was thought to be 29 years old and had never lived in the wild. She is now in the Smithsonian.

At times I found myself reading Avery's book with a lump in my throat. How could this happen? Or be allowed to happen? The statistics on population size, breeding colonies, roosts and migration flocks are simply mind-boggling, completely dwarfing anything we can see today. The Passenger Pigeon was capable of flying at 60 m.p.h. Imagine a flock recorded as being a mile wide, flying overhead for four hours, blanking out the sun - a flock 240 miles long. It stretches the bounds of credulity. And yet so it was.

John Fitzpatrick of Cornell Lab for Ornithology said: We need to imagine Martha asking us, “Have you learned anything from my passing?” Timely conservation action really does work, even for species that have reached alarmingly low numbers. The word 'timely' though, needs to be emphasised. It is easy to say that the Turtle Dove will not become the new Passenger Pigeon - but can we be sure?

I would suggest that 'A Message From Martha' is required reading for anyone interested in conservation and biodiversity and the inevitable fate of many of our endangered species if we don't act now.