The first ever sewn-bound book published by Red Squirrel Press, The Ayrshire Nestling also contains 44 rare colour plates from hand-coloured originals. (See the review immediately below for further details.) 240pp, including an Afterword; book dimensions: 198mm H x 129mm W.

 

What readers have said:

 

'The Ayrshire Nestling is about far more than birds alone. I’d go so far as to say that it’s an instant classic, as nature writing and bildungsroman, and fit to rank alongside Barry Hines’s A Kestrel for a Knave or the wonderful writings of J.A. Baker. This is especially true in how it captures the (perhaps peculiarly male) drift from one obsession to another. It seems astonishing that it’s Cambridge’s first creative prose book (as distinct from his 2016 book The Dark Horse, The Making of a Little Magazine), but I’m sure it won’t be his last.'

 

— Matthew Paul, from his review on The Friday Poem website. Read the full review here.

 

'A marvel. The blend of life writing, natural history and prose poetry is strikingly authentic and moving. [The Ayrshire Nestling] is a remarkable survivor’s story.'

 

— James McGonigal, poet & biographer of Edwin Morgan (The Last Dragon)

 

'I've been wondering where to start my praise for The Ayrshire Nestling, which I enjoyed immensely, and I've been afraid of offending your modesty with any extravagant adjectives. I somehow didn't expect it to be quite so compulsive, and I found myself surprised to have read about 150 pages at one sitting. It's beguilingly original, and I can't think of either a 'nature' book or an autobiography that would fit comfortably into a category beside it.'

 

— Gerald Mangan, memoirist, artist, poet

 

On Gerry Cambridge:

Gerry Cambridge’s six books of poetry include Notes for Lighting a Fire (2012) and The Light Acknowledgers & Other Poems (2019), both from HappenStance Press. He founded The Dark Horse, Scotland’s leading poetry journal, in 1995. He is also an essayist, print designer, typographer, and former nature photographer. He continued to live in a caravan in Ayrshire, adjacent to the one mentioned in this account, from 1977–1997, then left to become Brownsbank Fellow in MacDiarmid’s former home for 1997–1999. As a critic he contributed ten essays to the four-volume Oxford Encyclopaedia of American Literature (2004) and wrote nine 12,000-word monograph essays for the Gale/Charles Scribner’s Sons textbook series British Writers and American Writers between 2000 and 2006. In his mid-twenties he was, as far as he knows, one of the youngest-ever regular freelancers—specialising in nature articles—for the UK edition of The Reader’s Digest magazine, which at the time (the 1980s) had a monthly circulation of 1.5 million copies. An Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature, he received a Cholmondeley Award for his poetry, administered by the Society of Authors in London, in June 2024. The Ayrshire Nestling is his first book of creative prose.

Please contact us.