This review is part of a ‘blog tour‘ where yesterday, this book, The Crossley ID Guide, was reviewed by 10,000 Birds. This is a useful guide to bird identification aimed at beginners and intermediate birders. I guess I would put myself at the high end of intermediate as I know all the common birds…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday Book Review – Winging It: birding for low flyers by Andrew Fallan
This book is another one about being an ‘avid’ birder in a world of experts who are better at identifying birds than are you. It’s a somewhat engaging journey around well-known birding localities seeing and missing birds. I was pleased every time that Andrew Fallan saw his target species and he does collect a…
Sunday Book Review – Adar Nythu Gogledd Cymru
…also known as The Breeding Birds of North Wales, edited by Anne Brenchley, Geoff Gibbs, Rhion Pritchard and Ian Spence – but I guess you realised that. There are going to be lots of atlases around this year and next, I guess, as spin-offs from the Britain and Ireland Bird Atlas (to which I intend…
Sunday Book Review – Birduder 344 by Rob Sawyer
This book takes us through Rob Sawyer’s life and the birds he has seen, missed and misidentified. The title refers to the fact that Sawyer regards himself as a cross between a ‘dude’ and a ‘birder’, and that his life list reached 344 species. I don’t know Sawyer but he comes across as a reasonable…
Sunday Book Review – Tracks and Signs by Lars-Henrik Olsen
This book covers animals and birds (birds are animals!) of Britain and Europe (Britain is part of Europe!). It’s quite a good book. Because it covers the whole of Europe you will learn how to spot signs of Musk Ox or White Stork in your locality. I don’t know much about identifying species from their…
Sunday Book Review – The World’s Rarest Birds by Erik Hirschfeld, Andy Swash and Robert Still
This book is actually about threatened birds rather than rare birds – it deals with those 197 species which are regarded as Critically Endangered and those 389 which are Endangered. Having said that, many of these species are very rare. For example, there are (or were) 27 Sulu Hornbills in the world (on three islands…
Sunday Book review – Scilly Birding by Simon Davey.
Oh to be on Scilly now September’s here! I’ve only been to the Isles of Scilly once, as a child, on a day trip on the Scillonian from Penzance, and around Easter time. It must be time to go back! It’s a pity they are so far away – but if they weren’t out west,…
Sunday Book Review – The Natural Eye by The Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA)
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…
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…