A fascinating insight into the changing wildlife of Britain, it made me take more notice about how things have and are changing near me, especially when I think about the lockdown last year. Our nature is amazing, and books like this make you want to appreciate it all the more.
This was the first book by Stephen Rutt that I've read but will certainly be looking out for more of his work.
Thank you netgalley

Thank you for Netgalley and the Publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

First of all I can't believe this book was written by someone so young, because this book radiates wisdom beyond his years. (and i hope this comes off as the compliment i am intending this to be)

I adored this book so much. It was way more emotional than I expected it to be.
The writer's knowledge of the natural world is undoubtedly there and it comes through in the way he talks about the fauna and flora.

Initailly the book was supposed to tell the story of following the warblers throughout Britain, but due to the pandemic the writer was forced to stay somewhat put with his father's family. As a naturalist, he made the most of his time there and wrote a book that gives us a glimpse of the abundance of Britain's fauna and flora. But more importantly gives us insight to all the things that are going wrong. Surrounded by all the beauty and wonder of nature one can get so immersed that he/she becomes blind to the reality of climate change and how not just the seasons but nature has changed the last decade.

I really enjoyed that chapters of this book focuses on different species. All the detailed but not overly indepth introduction of species.

After reading this book, i really want to dive into other books by the author.
5stars

I feel this is a lovely book but it reached me after many other British-books-about-birds-written-by-a-middle-aged-man, and this is probably not the one I will remember the best or the most fondly. From the blurb at the back of the book I expected the book to be a bit more generalist... but it really was all about the birds. I enjoyed how Stephen Rutt links the environmental crisis to the birds and how their behaviour is affected; he really shines when he talks about these migratory birds and their travels. At times the writing felt clumsy: a mix of lecture-style paragraphs (which I found really interesting actually) and personal observations (how many sentences in the same paragraph can you start with "And...", and how many short sentences without verbs can you squeeze in?)
Overall while the book is lovely in itself, I didn't find it different enough from the myriad of bird books that have been published in the UK in the past 18 months. The main differenciator really is the pandemic but although it is the background of Stephen Rutt's book - spending his first lockdown in Bedfordshire, stuck away from his Scottish home -, it was not enough for me to find it particularly different or memorable.

The Eternal Season is an evocative and fascinating exploration of the changing nature of a British summer published at the height of the season. None of us will ever forget the summer of 2020. For Stephen Rutt it meant an enforced stay in rural Bedfordshire, before he could return again to the familiar landscapes of Scotland’s Dumfries. But wherever he found himself, he noted the abundance of nature teeming in our hedgerows, marshlands and woodlands – the birds, butterflies, moths and dragonflies, bats, frogs and plants that characterise the British summer. Summer – the eternal season of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 – is a season that transcends its boundaries. It was while walking down the bank of the River Nith, one October day, day-dreaming about blackcaps, that he realised what he thought he knew about the season was wrong. He was dazzled by hawthorn berries and the integral role summer had played in autumn’s bounty.

He had planned to go in search of summer, beginning in January with a blackcap in a gale in Liverpool, a chiffchaff in a Cornish blizzard… and then a pandemic put a halt to that. With all his plans cancelled, he was able instead to watch the long and slow unfolding of a summer, an exceptional summer of sunshine and heat and worry. He could watch the lengthening light, the leaves unfurling and the migrant birds arriving. These progressions become the rhythm of the season. Or should. Yet in his explorations of the landscapes and wildlife at the height of the year, he also began to see disturbances to the traditional rhythms of the natural world: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time, disruption to habitats and breeding, the myriad ways climate change is causing a derangement of the seasons.

The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and an observation of the delicate series of disorientations that we may not always notice while some birds still sing, while nature still has some voice, but that may be forever changing our perception of the heady days of summer. What happens when that goes wrong? When the rhythm falls out of sync? It is a tracing out of the gap between what should be and what is happening. By looking at summer through wildlife, landscape and historical nature writing, it shows us how we can see, know and really feel what’s happening to nature now. It is a work of joy, despair, confusion, and ultimately, unexpectedly, hope. It is a biodiverse work, focusing on the trees, plants, dragonflies, butterflies, moths and arachnids that share the summer with our familiar birds. This is a poignant and evocative look at the changing patterns of nature, usual summer species and the seasons which have been impacted by climate change and the human toll. A captivating, richly compelling and impeccably researched book. Highly recommended.

I love nature writing as a genre and this book with the very focus of summer 2020 is. a great addition to the genre. Rutt is caught away from his home patch when the first lockdown came in to force in March 202o and uses the time to explore thoroughly the new landscape and connect the things he sees to world events and to global (climate) changes.
Later in the narrative we return to his home patch and get a more detailed look at the markers he uses to note the season's passing.
I was surprised how much difference it made reading a book where I didn't know the landscapes being explored but it has made me keener to get to know more about different UK ecosystems as well as reminding me to look closer at the special things we have here in Norfolk.

Unlike many in this genre there is not much of Rutt himself in the text and I did miss this personal connection but the studies and works cited definitely give lots of pause for thought.