A Patch Made in Heaven: A Year of Birdwatching in One Place

The popular view of birdwatchers (or "twitchers") is of people who rush madly from one end of the country to another to tick birds off their lists. But behind the headlines are an army of enthusiasts who do quite the reverse—they stay devotedly within a small local area, their Patch, and enthuse and obsess about the birds within it. They are every bit as committed and eccentric as their far-traveling counterparts. A Patch Made in Heaven is the diary of a wildlife-watching year in a single square kilometer of southern England. Written in wryly humorous style, it details the birds, the animals, and the human visitors that turn up and use this tiny parcel of land. It chronicles the delights, disappointments, and frustrations that go with dedicated "patch-watching," and also uncovers all sorts of unusual and unexpected details about what we might think are familiar British creatures. Although the book is set on one particular Patch, the real location is not revealed because most of its wildlife, and most of its events, can be witnessed anywhere by anyone, making A Patch Made in Heaven a great celebration of the British countryside and its wildlife.