Torbjørn Ekelund

A Year of Birds
Ornithological Field Notes from My Immediate Surroundings

Sometimes you discover something new, or see something familiar in a new way. The space expands. The world gets bigger. A curtain is pulled aside, and you see into a parallel universe.

With these words, a journey begins. Not across continents, but into the small things that surrounds us. When epilepsy forced journalist and amateur ornithologist Torbjørn Ekelund to abandon his plans for a globe-spanning bird book, his world shrank to the local woods of Maridalen, his garden, and a small cabin by the sea. But in that shrinking, something expanded.

Told through a series of diary entries over the course of a year, A Year of Birds follows Ekelund’s growing awareness of the birds around him. At the beginning of the year, he knows almost nothing about birds. By the end of the year, he knows a little more. He watches blackbirds and bullfinches, observes gulls and geese, and lets the ordinary transform into the extraordinary through simple, sustained attention.

This is a book about birds but also about perception, limitation, and the beauty of staying still. It is about discovering nature not in far-off landscapes, but right where you are. With warmth, humour, and a quiet existential undertone, A Year of Birds invites us to look more closely, live more attentively and see the world anew.