Blackie & Co.: Blackbirds in My Garden

From Marginalian Editions comes a moving meditation on our connection with other creatures, told through the unforgettable story of a family of blackbirds sharing a British birder’s backyard garden. In the savage winter of 1962—Europe’s coldest in eighty years—a blackbird began roosting in the elderberry tree in Hockley Clarke’s overgrown garden. Clarke, a retired headmaster and lifelong birder, named him “Blackie” and began bringing the bird food every morning and evening. Soon, the blackbird was flying down to greet him with “a few glad chuckles,” and a quiet and extraordinary friendship began. First published in 1978, Blackie & Co. is Clarke’s engaging chronicle of the blackbird family that took up residence in his backyard. What starts as a record of daily feedings and weather reports deepens into a lucid, moving reflection on attention, connection, and the limits of empathy across species. “I spoke to him; he knew my voice and I am sure that he answered in his own language,” Clarke writes. “There was perfect trust between us, a source of joy to me, and it must have been a comfort to him.” In Clarke’s modest, reverent words, readers will find a kindred spirit to Gilbert White and Helen Macdonald: a naturalist who sees wild creatures not as symbols or scenery, but as beings with their own inner lives, worthy of our care and awe. With a foreword by Maria Popova, Blackie & Co. is a forgotten classic of uncommon grace—a reminder that love, in all its forms, is made not of sentiment, but of sympathy, patience, and shared time.