This small book is built around the idea of writing about 24 birds from around the world, but one for each hour of the day. What is the species doing at that particular time? It’s an approach that works partly but not, in my opinion, brilliantly. After all, you need to know something about the bird’s year and whole day to understand the hour we are given.
It is a small book – my hand on the cover blots out three quarters of it, and the 24 species have c120 pages, small pages with about 180 words per page but one of which is an illustration and another has a title and other information, which leaves c650 words for each bird. It’s not really enough in my view and has strained the author’s ability to give enough context to make the chosen hour full of interest.
The 24 birds are well chosen to appeal to readers on all continents from penguins to robins (both American and European), from antbird to Oilbird and from Kakapo to Cuckoo. Birds are wonderful and you can’t go far wrong in singing their praises and describing their variety. It’s a shame that the text on Great Snipe (7pm) is mostly about Common Snipe. There were some other examples where I wondered how well the author knew the species of which he wrote.
Tony Angell’s illustrations are nice.
This is a book which will work for many readers but didn’t work for me.
The cover? Yes, it’s rather nice – I’d give it 7/10.
Bird Day: the story of 24 hours and 24 avian lives by Mark E. Hauber (illustrated by Tony Angell) is published by University of Chicago Press
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