Tim Dee at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London WC2 on Tuesday 27 October, 6.30pm. Tickets free, email events@foyles.co.uk to reserve a place.

In his memoir, The Running Sky: A Birdwatching Life Tim Dee records a lifetime of looking at birds. Mapping his observations and encounters over four decades, he tracks birds both well-known and bizarre from Northern Shetland to Los Angeles to Southern Zambia. Come for an evening at Foyles as he shares his passion for these winged creatures. We guarantee you’ll never look at the Trafalgar Square pigeons in the same way again.

Stephen Moss, in The Guardian; “After years of neglect, the past decade has seen a resurgence of this kind of “engaged” nature writing, in which authors balance keen and informed observation with their own thoughts and feelings. Examples include Richard Mabey’s Nature Cure, Mark Cocker’s Crow Country, and the more recent Birdscapes by Jeremy Mynott, which analyses our intellectual, social and emotional responses to birds, and attempts to discover why they fascinate us so much.

The Running Sky, Dee’s first book, is very much in this tradition, comprising a series of 12 thoughtful and acutely observed essays, one for each month of the year. Taking a specific event as each essay’s starting-point, he interweaves observation, autobiography and intensely personal reflections on what birds mean to him”.