Category: Book review

This book is a very good read. It’s packed with stories of birds and other wildlife seen whilst being a serving soldier. McMullan travelled widely as a soldier including serving in the first Gulf War which is a particular type of ‘travelling’. We are regaled with birding observations from the Middle East, Falklands, Germany and…

This is a scientific investigation and account of why and how birds turn up a long way from where they might be expected. It’s the science behind the biology which enables twitching to be a hobby. Both the authors are academics, both are birders – it’s a potent combination. The book begins with a review…

This approaches a coffee table book. Open the book at almost any page and you will find pleasant and arresting images, often close-ups of plants. And on many pages there are some thoughtful words, often quotes from the dead and famous. It’s a good book with which to spend some time. I enjoyed looking through…

This small book is great fun. All human life, I mean dipteran life, is here; birth, sex, death, shit and a buzzard. It’s quirky but also very informative. It will make you laugh but it will also make you think. It’s a fly’s life – all 23 days of it. The words by Jaap Robben…

This is a companion book to Roy Dennis’s acclaimed Cottongrass Summer (reviewed here) which came out last year. It is another series of essays and they are wonderful. They certainly don’t feel, even remotely, like the ones that didn’t make it into the first volume. The standard is very high and I’ve read most of…