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…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – The Colour of Silence by Clare Newton.
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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…
I have a cold and a cough
They are just a cold and a cough because I’ve been sticking things up my nose and trying to find my tonsils to do lateral flow tests, all of which have been negative. I don’t think I’ve ever had hypochondiacal tendencies, I’m more likely to think and say ‘I expect it’s nothing’ but in these…
Sunday book review – Biography of a Fly by Jaap Robben and Paul Faassen
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…
Sunday book review – Mistletoe Winter by Roy Dennis
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…
Sunday book review – A Spotter’s Guide to Countryside Mysteries by John Wright
This is a bit like an i-Spy book for grown-ups, or semi-grown-ups. It’s an anthology of interesting things to look out for in the countryside, grouped in three sections; field, wood and seashore. The seashore section is short and felt a bit like a refreshing dessert after a sizeable starter in the fields and a…
Sunday book review – The Implausible Rewilding of the Pyrenees by Steve Cracknell
I’ve written several times that rewilding isn’t all about letting wolves and bears loose in the countryside, it’s about habitat restoration and letting nature take its course rather more. But this book is about the impacts of top predators on the pastoral communities in the Pyrenees (mainly) to which they have returned on foot or…
Sunday book review – Flight from Grace by Richard Pope
This is a finely produced and beautiful book about birds in history. Even if you didn’t read the words between the pictures you’d get a lot out of it. And, that was how I started with this book – I flicked through it, was caught up by an image, read the caption and then looked…
Sunday book review – Birding in an Age of Extinction by Martin Painter.
This is a good read if you are a birder or if you’ve ever chased after a rare bird anywhere in the world. The author has done a bit of that, with what appears to be the usual mixture of success and failure. He has travelled widely and visited such places as remote Norfolk Island…
Sunday book review – Wild Mull by Stephen Littlewood and Martin Jones
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This is a very attractive book which deals with a very attractive place which is rich in wildlife. If you are a naturalist visiting Mull then you should read this book, luxuriate in the images, imagine you’ll see all the wildlife and plan your trip ahead of setting off, and take the book with you…