This is not a Field Guide – it’s a novel. It’s a somewhat novel novel being a story of love amongst birders.
On the weekly bird walks of the East African Ornithological Society romance is stirring. Will Mr Malik get the girl – or will he be given the bird?
This is a light-hearted romantic comedy with a bird on a good many pages, and each chapter is named after a bird too.
If you are heading out to East Africa it would while away the flight very pleasantly – but don’t order it thinking that it will help you sort out the identification of the Sokoke Pipit because it won’t.
The author is a zoologist with a PhD in Australian natural history writing – perhaps the only member of that species?
I enjoyed it. I read much of it on my recent flight to and from Aberdeen and I was just in the mood for an untaxing, but entertaining, tale.
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson is published by Penguin.
A Message from Martha by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury.
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A lovely, gentle, book much in the style, I thought, of Alexander McCall Smith. Some lessons to be learnt by most bird-listers!
Your post today Mark, reminded me of the fortune I had to see a Sokoke pipit and a Sokoke helmeted guinea-fowl as well as a Sokoke pygmy elephant shrew in that wonderful forest remnant on the Kenya coast, some thirty years ago.
Incidentally, I hope your Hadada count was quite low for the sake of your fellow travellers on the flight to Aberdeen!