Cris Freddi

British Birds Magazine review of Pelican Blood

With recent books such as Tales of a Tribe, Beguiled by Birds, A Bird in the Bush, Whose Bird? and Birds Britannica, some of us appear to be taking stock of our birding heritage and almost longing for days gone by. Cris Freddi's exciting debut novel Pelican Blood adds to this growing list of ornithological retrospection. The author was an active twitcher in the 1980s and has transported the characters, mood and ethos of the so-called 'golden age' of twitching into a contemporary setting. So take donkey jackets, hitch-hiking, far-left political tendencies and the irregular use of mild narcotics and imagine them alongside internet birding, 'chequebook twitching', pagers and recent taxonomic amendments.

The story revolves around three iconoclastic, super-cool characters that regularly car-share on the way to twitches. At the heart of the novel is a genuinely touching love story, but the bulk of the text is spent describing birds and birding. The author's underlying message recalls the early writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, in which an individual tries to give meaning to a life that basically has no meaning; in this case the characters attempt to enrich their meaningless lives by obsessively birding and chasing a goal of seeing 500 birds in Britain. If such profound existential ponderings don't float your boat, you'll be glad to know that the story is packed full of murders, sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

So when that Oriental Plover Charadrius veredus is found on Shetland, take Pelican Blood with you because this gripping, moving and thoroughly enjoyable novel will make the hellish journey a lot less painful. Once you've read it, do pass it on to a non-birding friend, but just don't let them know that birders aren't really as cool as Freddi would like us to believe!

Tom McKinney November 2005