"Catching the Tail of Twelve Magpies" Author: [Poland] Stanislaw Ubinski People's Literature Publishing House

【Editor's recommendation】

★ Winner of the Nike Prize, the highest award in Polish literature, a model of natural literature translated directly from Polish

The book won the Nagroda Literacka Nike readers' vote award, the most prestigious literary award in Poland, as well as several authoritative Polish literary awards including the Warsaw Premiere Literacka Award and the Gdynia Literature Award. It was shortlisted for the Artist Passport Award (Paszporty "Polityki") selected by Politiken weekly and has been translated into multiple languages ​​including English, French and Spanish.

The simplified Chinese version is directly translated from the latest revised Polish edition, allowing readers to experience the resonance between nature and literature.

★A guide for bird watching enthusiasts: You just need to look up!

The Polish proverb "Catch two magpies by the tail" refers to doing many things at the same time, trying to kill two birds with one stone. "Catch twelve magpies by the tail" is a metaphor for 12 stories about birds.

Follow the author's footsteps, go to the forest to take care of the lost birds on the way, go to the countryside to look for the white storks in their nests, watch the long-tailed forest owls flying across the sky in the borderland, and listen to the singing of the Brandt's reed warbler in the city park...

“It turns out that being passionate about something changes you forever, and we will never, ever stop birding.”

Through beautiful and poetic words, the author writes about people's fascination with the world of birds, and together we gently gaze at the world that nature has given us.

★ "Easter eggs" everywhere, a journey of discovery integrating humanity and nature

Combining close observation of birds with historical culture, follow the author to find the figures of birds in literature, paintings, movies, and music...

007's name comes from an ornithologist. Baker, the author of "The Peregrine Falcon", is an unsociable "weirdo". He is a bird "villain" in Hitchcock's movies. The singing of starlings is similar to Mozart's piano concerto. Jeremy Clarkson, the author of "Clarkson's Farm", once "turned over" for eating a bunting...

There are hidden jokes everywhere and various easter eggs waiting for you to discover!

★Highly recommended by many naturalists and writers

Wu Tong, professor of the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University and author of Birds of the Old Summer Palace, wrote the preface, and Liu Huajie, Zhang Jinshuo, Guo Geng, Liu Yang, Ouyang Ting and other well-known naturalists and writers jointly recommended it

★Contains two styles of bird art illustrations, beautifully showing the diverse forms of birds

The chapter page design features 12 bird paper-cut illustrations created specifically for this book by naturalist painter Flash Sparrow;

The book is accompanied by 12 color illustrations of bird history by John Gould, a famous British ornithologist in the 19th century.

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【Content Introduction】

I gaze into the amber eyes of the titmouse

Caress the soft feathers of a wetland reed warbler

Listen to the titmouse singing

Smell the scent of wings and pine resin

…

A poetic note of nature observation, twelve stories of encounters with birds. Ubinski observes birds not only from the perspective of a naturalist, but also from the perspective of a humanist. Follow the author's footsteps, go to the forest to take care of lost birds on their way to the forest, go to the countryside to look for white storks in their nests, watch long-tailed forest owls flying across the sky in the borderland, listen to the singing of Brandt's reed warblers in the city park, and look for the figures of birds in literature, paintings, movies, and music...

Whether in urban spaces or natural wilderness, bird watching is not about escaping from the hustle and bustle, but about looking more gently at the world that nature has given us.

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This book perfectly combines my identity as a nature observer and a humanist. I hope that readers who are interested in nature can feel the charm of culture from nature, and those who are not interested in nature can be awakened to the softest feelings for nature in their hearts by the paintings, music and film clips mentioned in the book. Contributing a solid force to protecting nature can encourage us to enjoy the generous gifts of nature more rationally, and we can feel this happiness even if we are in a city with tall buildings.

——Stanisław Ubinski, acceptance speech for the Nike Prize

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【Expert Recommendation & Reader Comments】

This is a wonderful bird book written by Polish writer Ubinski. The author's Polish background, personalized writing, and the perfect blend of first-order and second-order natural history culture make this book quite unique. Like Edward Grey's "The Charm of Birds", Paul Lawrence Farber's "Discovering Birds", Stephen Moss's "Birds in the Bush", etc., it provides readers with a lot of interesting information. I believe that Chinese natural history enthusiasts will like this work.

——Liu Huajie, professor of philosophy at Peking University and advocate of natural history culture

The most valuable point of "Catching the Tail of Twelve Magpies" is that it observes birds and nature from an equal perspective, and records and describes the birds we see and appreciate in a more humanistic way, rather than in a purely ornithological natural history way, just recording what family, genus, and class they belong to. For Chinese readers, this translation is a gift from different cultures to the mutual construction of nature and humanity.

——Wu Tong, Professor of History of Science at Tsinghua University and author of Birds of the Old Summer Palace

At first glance, the magpie may not be enough to attract readers. But after flipping through it, I found that the "magpie's tail" has many different meanings in Polish. After reading a few paragraphs, I couldn't put it down! Bird watching is booming in my country, and there are many original books. But it is rare to find a book like this that can link European history, geography, culture, art, and the latest scientific research results with bird watching, and has such a strong literary quality! This is a beautiful work with birds as the main subject of literature! I recommend it.

——Zhang Jinshuo, deputy director, PhD, research librarian of the National Museum of Zoology

This bird-watching essay, through twelve bird-watching essays, closely links birds with literature (including ancient paintings and music). It is not the specious description of ordinary writers, but it is both artistic and scientific, and there is no lack of personal experience of bird watchers, describing bird migration as an epic process, and describing the obsessed "pushcart" as a "bird man" with a seizure. Fortunately, I went bird watching in Poland a few years ago, and was deeply impressed by the dominant bird species in Warsaw, the purple-winged starling and the jackdaw. The Latin name of the little owl with vertical stripes on its belly that I have seen recently is "Athena the Night Goddess", which reminds me that I can also learn about these lovely elves from the folk culture of birds. "Birds in a Cage" is about four British officers who were imprisoned during World War II, but they persisted in observing red-started robins, turning their prison life into bird watching. I have thought more than once that if our island guards learned to watch birds, wouldn't their boring life become beautiful? At the end of the book, the author introduces the world-famous extinct birds, such as the dodo, passenger pigeon, and great auk, as well as the Polish blue-breasted pheasant that has disappeared in real life. This is truly a textbook-like bird book that inspires people.

——Guo Geng, researcher at Beijing Milu Ecology Center and Beijing Biodiversity Conservation Center, and senior bird watcher

The author's writing style is not only from the perspective of Poland, but also includes the history of world bird culture. This book can enable many young bird-watching enthusiasts to embark on the path of ornithological research, or become bird protection activists. Even if you don't read the text, I believe that John Gould's classic natural history paintings and bird paper-cut illustrations of the sparrow will also arouse readers' love for nature.

——Liu Yang, Professor of the School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Deputy Secretary-General of the Ornithological Branch of the Chinese Zoological Society

This book is like a set of brisk variations on the theme of "birds". As an experienced bird watcher, the author not only writes about his daily bird watching, volunteering for bird banding, and conducting a census of storks, but also tells the life and creation of some important bird illustration makers, painters who are good at painting birds, and outstanding bird nature literature writers, as well as the significance of birds in human history and culture. In these interactions between "people and birds", it shows how people view and understand the relationship between themselves and the birds around them, as well as the situation of birds in human life. Rather than saying that this book allows readers to appreciate the joy of bird watching, it is better to say that what is more touching is the author's deep love and protection for birds. His pity and his worries are for those birds that have disappeared forever in human history and have become legends, as well as for the wild creatures that are still struggling to survive in the cracks of the urbanization process. After reading, it will also make us reflect a lot. We share this limited land with birds, and as humans, we have invaded and destroyed the living space of too many birds.

——Ouyang Ting, a famous nature writer, author of "A Tree in the North"

This book presents a completely new perspective: combining close observation of birds with historical culture, the narrative is moving and thought-provoking.

——Stephen Moss, famous British nature writer and naturalist

This book is not only suitable for senior bird-watching fans, but also for ordinary readers who know little about birds but love literature. It allows us to discover that the colorful bird world is so closely related to the human world.

—Maciej Luniak, Professor, Institute of Zoology and Zoological Museum, Polish Academy of Sciences

This is a book about love and also about people. It tells us that nature is everywhere and needs our care.

——Michał Cichy, famous Polish writer and journalist

A well-deserved winner of the Nike Readers' Choice Award, this is a small book that speaks volumes about a world we encounter every day but about which we know so little. This is a book about birds, but it is also a book about us.

——Katika, goodreads reader

We don’t lack books about birds – there are plenty of them. What we definitely lack are books that speak to our passion for birding, and this book does just that from a colorful perspective, without getting bogged down in digressions and anecdotes or lost in scientific jargon. This is not a book about ornithology, it’s about man’s fascination with the world of birds. Yes, this is a book about us, about humans and our empathy for the world around us. Unfortunately, in our world, birding is still seen as a harmless quirk and leaving trash in the forest is taken for granted.

——Eleazar, reader of the Polish reading community lubimyczytac

【About the author】

Stanisław Łubieński (1983- ) is a Polish writer and nature educator. He has been fond of bird watching since childhood and has traveled all over Hungary, Scandinavia and the Danube Delta. "Catching Twelve Magpies by the Tail" won the most prestigious Polish literary award - the Nike Award (Nagroda Literacka Nike) reader voting award, and also won the Warszawska Premiera Literacka Award, the Gdynia Literature Award (Nagroda Literacka Gdynia), and was shortlisted for the Artist Passport Award (Paszporty "Polityki") selected by the Politika weekly and many other authoritative Polish literary awards.

Translator’s Profile

Mao Rui graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University and received a PhD in Linguistics from Jagiellonian University in Poland. She currently teaches at Shanghai International Studies University. She has translated books such as "Robot Master" and "Technology Encyclopedia".