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…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
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…
Book review – Looking for the Goshawk by Conor Jameson
I liked Conor’s previous book, but I like this one even more. Whereas in Silent Spring Revisited Conor lived through the events described but seemed, to me, to be a little detached from them, this is a book where he describes what he did, and where he went, to get to grips better with a…
Book Review – Bird Conservation by Williams et al
Bird Conservation – global evidence for the effects of interventions by David R Williams, Robert G Pople, David A Showler, Lynn V Dicks, Matthew F Child, Erasmus KHJ zu Ermgassen and William J Sutherland. Published by Pelagic Publishing. Paperback £34.99, Hardback £64.99, e-Book £19.99. 575 pages. This is a very useful reference book for conservation…
Book review – Britain’s Sea Mammals by Jon Dunn, Robert Still and Hugh Harrop
The first cetacean I ever saw was probably a harbour porpoise off the coast of Argyll – although I thought it was a dolphin. And the first whale I saw, which surfaced in a raft of Manx shearwaters off the north coast of Rhum, was probably a minke whale – although I thought it was…