Category: BOOK REVIEWS

Sunday book review – Climate Change and British Wildlife by Trevor Beebee

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This is an appropriately weighty book on a portentous subject. It is very attractively produced with many photographs of wildlife, habitats and people and a fine looking jacket by Carry Akroyd (although the jacket on my copy is slightly ill-fitting).  The index is very good but the reference list is rather shorter than I expected….

Sunday book review – Landfill by Tim Dee

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OK, so this book isn’t about landfill (although it is  a bit).  It is a book about gulls (but not just about gulls) and it is a book about the author (but not just about the author) and it is about Bristol (but not just about Bristol). And at this point I have to state…

Sunday book review – Riverwatch by Mark Everard

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This book by an ecologist and keen angler, is a series of short essays about life by, on and in the river through the year.  It focuses on riverine processes and ecology, and flows very well. Each of the 60 short essays, five for each month, also has an illustration from the author.  And he…

Book review: Bats by Nancy Jennings

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I like these RSPB Spotlight books (see reviews of Kingfishers and Bumblebees). This one is about bats. It’s quite a wide-ranging book with information about the 17 UK species but also about a range of the world’s other 1400 bats. It’s understandable that we don’t know a huge amount about bats – they are nocturnal,…

Sunday book review – Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? by Lev Parikian

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I’m not keen on the cover of this book and I’m not that keen on its title, but I really enjoyed the  story. A middle-aged lapsed birdwatcher takes up the hobby again and tries hard to see 200 species in a calendar year while also being a freelance conductor (of music).  Does he succeed?  I…

Sunday book review: A Richness of Martens by Polly Pullar

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I really hadn’t appreciated that the collective name for a bunch of martens was a ‘richness’ until reading this book. And there are many individually-known Pine Martens that feature in this book, all living on the westernmost peninsula of Britain, on Ardnamurchan. The book is an account of the behaviour of Craig, Clive, Chris, Chloe,…

Sunday book review: Bird photographer of the Year (collection 3).

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I was one of the judges for these awards – the judging was in early January and the book is out and was selling well at the Bird Fair last weekend.  That’s pretty good going. The cover photograph, of American Flamingos at a flamingo sanctuary in Madrid, and by Pedro Jarque Krebs from Peru, was…

Book review – Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich

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  This book was published quite a long time ago – 1999 in hardback – but it deals with a topical subject and I noticed it on sale in the bookstores of Yellowstone National Park a few weeks ago.  I almost bought it then, particularly as there was a Raven running around on the roof…