鸟儿永不归来

This book tells the stories of nine bird species that became extinct in modern times. In a sense, these are nine nonhuman biographies: accounts of how the birds evolved, how they lived, and how they came to be themselves over vast stretches of time.

Their lives were deeply entangled with ours. The book follows their encounters with people and the traces they left in human memory after extinction. But the birds remain at the center of their own stories. I wanted to explore not only how they disappeared, but what kinds of living beings they had been.

Reconstructing these lives meant working through historical records and scientific literature, comparing accounts, and attending closely to the evidence. The research also draws on primary sources originally published in several languages. That research underpins the narrative, making its detail possible while keeping sight of what remains uncertain.

The book includes more than 600 references, most of them English-language sources. The manuscript also received professional scientific review from an ornithologist with a PhD.