Standing up for Nature
The Bristol Ornithological Club is 50 years old and this book is a celebration of its first half century. I was a member from 1970-76 and so my memories are mostly from its early years when I was a schoolboy and starting (mad) keen birding. This is a friendly warm book which sketches the…
Sunday came early this week – see here
It’s a while since I bought a Ladybird book – but I still have a lot of the original series dotted around the house. This book, published today, is one of the ‘Expert’ series and the three authors can rightly be classed as such (but even if they weren’t, this book has been peer-reviewed by…
This is a small book (88 pages) of interesting facts about trees written by Ian Parsons, an occasional Guest Blogger here. They are the sort of facts that you can use to amaze your friends with your knowledge. That’s what I shall be doing anyway. Do you know what is the oldest tree in the…
Bobby Tulloch was a Shetlander whose fame spread far beyond the isles of his birth. Born on Yell in 1929 he died in 1996. For many of us his name will ever be associated with the Snowy Owls which nested on Fetlar from 1967 to 1975. To those of us who never knew the man…
I have reviewed 31 books on this blog this year – three more than last year. Some of these are sent to me by publishers or authors, some I simply go out and buy. Which books you like is as personal a choice as what music you like. But for what it’s worth, here are…
This book is a review about how animals beget other animals. It must be quite difficult to write about sex in a way that is neither coy nor coarse and which will keep the attention of the reader with whatever moral and personal baggage they might bring to the subject. The author tells us of…
This is a very pleasant book of observations of birds around the author’s home in the Lake District. There is a lot about the flight of Buzzards and the song of Blackbirds. I really liked the author’s watercolours of the views and some birds of the Lake District and nearby areas although I’m not…
This is a book about bird gatherings from seabird colonies to winter roosts. Having spent a frustrating evening recently looking for a Pied Wagtail roost that wasn’t there I enjoyed hearing of Matt Merritt’s successes. A huge flock of birds is a sight to be seen – and sometimes a sound to be heard and…
This book is on the same model as the preceding three volumes: an anthology of seasonal nature writing with a mixture of work from well-known and older writers and some very modern pieces too. I liked Spring, Summer and Autumn and I like Winter too. It felt as though there were more poetry in this…