The Society of Wildlife Artists is 50 this year – Happy Birthday SWLA! I was quite surprised it had been around that long. The funds raised from sales of this book will assist the SWLA in giving bursaries – so think of it as an easy Christmas present for anyone with an interest in wildlife…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Book Review – The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle
This is a guide to the 56 warbler species of the USA and Canada. You might think that there is hardly any need for a guide to a group of birds that are so patterned, so marked, so coloured and so …well, obvious! But there is, because they are quite confusing. The Peterson Guide has…
Bank Holiday Monday Book Review – Mariposa Road by Bob Pyle
This is a book about butterflies in the USA – and about the people who like butterflies and the people met ‘on the road’ while looking for butterflies. The road is quite a long one as Bob Pyle tried to see all the USA’s butterflies in a year – which meant criss-crossing the USA several…
Sunday Book review – Birds of the Heart of England, edited by Trevor Easterbrook
This volume is about the birds of 12 10-km squares in the middle of England, centred on Banbury. The Banbury Ornithological Society was founded in 1952 and this volume is a very impressive record of their work (and play) over the last six decades. I used to live in this area, and am ashamed to…
Sunday Book Review – Birds Coping with an Obsession by Derek Moore
Derek Moore is a character. This is the story of Derek’s 70 years of working in a bank, playing in a band, playing cricket, birding and being a nature conservationist working for the Wildlife Trusts. I found all the different bits interesting – and that photo of him playing cricket makes him look like quite…
Sunday Book Review – Birds and People by Mark Cocker (photographs David Tipling)
This book arrived on Thursday and I have to admit that I have not read all the 400,000+ words, but I don’t have to, to be able to tell you that this is a fantastic book. It is a book to dip into for knowledge and pleasure. I have dipped into some of those places…
Sunday Book Review – Finding birds in southeast Arizona by Tucson Audubon Society
This part of the USA has some great birding sites and some great birders. I didn’t field-test this book as I was given it when in Tucson and I had Richard Fray to show me birds so I didn’t need a book. But flicking through the pages now, it has everything that you want from…
Sunday Book Review – Britain’s Freshwater Fishes by Mark Everard
We talk about fishermen (and rarely of fisherwomen) but we don’t talk about fish-watchers as we will talk about bird-watchers, do we? Why is that? There isn’t a Royal Society for the Protection Fish nor a Fishlife nor a Fish Conservation. Yes there are organisations which do some good work for our fishy friends…
Sunday Book Review – Feral by George Monbiot
This is a book that many people ought to read. I read most of it before I went to the USA and then read all of it, some of it several times, on my return. I was reading it again at 6am yesterday morning in the back garden of the Old Mill Hotel in Salisbury…
Sunday Book Review – A World in One Cubic Foot: Portraits of Biodiversity by David Liittschwager
This book is quite different and very interesting. It was put together by recording, in six different habitats, for a 24-hour period in each, the species that passed through a metal frame of 1-foot dimension. Then Liittschwager photographed a whole range of species that had occurred within that metal frame in that time-frame. It’s a…