Aug 15 2011
I have not been doing a great deal of birding this month because I have had a bad cold that has meant that I have been a bit house-bound. Having already read any outstanding books on my reading list and having exhausted my monthly supply of magazines I turned to an old favourite. This must have been the fourth time I have read Colin Tudge’s impressive and comprehensive book on birds and their world.
Aug 08 2011
This book was recommended to me particularly for the photographs by Stig Frode Olsen and it has to be said that it is hard to imagine better photography than this. Each species has eight to ten accompanying photographs each of the highest quality. The text is equally as impressive and comprehensive. For each species there is an introductory section followed by sections on conservation ; distribution, population and habitat ; diet and hunting ; courtship and reproduction ; movement and migration; and the future prospects for the species. There is also a chapter on “rare visitors and vagrants” dealing with the lesser encountered species likely to pitch up in Britain.
Jul 20 2011
“The Running Sky” is one of those bird books that belongs to the “emotional” or “aesthetic” tradition of natural history writings. In twelve chapters, one for each month of the year starting in June, Dee relates stories from a lifetime of birding. In his own words “it follows a single year of (birds) from one summer to the next; it begins with nests and eggs and chicks on the sea cliffs of Shetland, and it ends, a year later with nests, eggs and chicks in the holes of an oak wood on Exmoor.” A mixture of acute observation of both people and birds, this book relates a selection of experiences from over 40 years of birding. Continue reading
Jul 04 2011
This book has been sitting on the bookshelf for a while. I actually bought it as a gift for Anne but I borrowed it to read on our holiday to Montacute and then the New Forest. The title gives the story away. It is the personal recollection of the author’s life with a series of Corvids which she obtained largely as birds dropped from the nest or abandoned and “rescued” by other people. There is a certain affinity with Gerald Durrell in that it is an often humorous account of the interaction between a human and a “wild” animal more or less domesticated. Woolfson mainly deals with the corvids that she raised including a Rook and a Magpie.
Jun 18 2011
I came across a first edition hardback copy of this book at our local Oxfam shop so I only paid £3.99p for it which was quite a bargain. I mainly know of Dominic Couzens from his regular features in “Bird Watching” magazine where he specialises in articles about the “secret lives” or little known facts about both common and rarer species and also articles on bird identification. He is a very popular and enthusiastic populariser of bird ethology and this book is of this kind.
Couzens’ covers many of the topics surrounding the lives of garden birds including sections on biology, health, disease and illness ; feeding ; pairing, bonding, nesting and breeding ; bird song and calls ; migration, weather and climate, population changes and many, many more fascinating topics surrounding the lives and trials of birds.
Where this book differs, usefully, from other books on the same subjects is that these topics are covered under the structure of a month by month diary of the life of birds. This means that you can always have a quick reminder of the main conditions that will affect the birds that you can observe in your own garden as the year unfolds.
Jun 04 2011
I have just finished reading this fantastically detailed book. The title pretty much says it all – it is a field guide to help identify the habitats, remains and signs of life resulting from the presence of birds. Really for ornithologists in the field, it is nevertheless full of interesting information for the casual but interested reader. The chapters dealing with pellets, prey remains and skulls may be a bit specialist there is lots of fascinating information in the chapters dealing with bird nests, eggs and feathers that can help the casual observer make sense of things they may find or see in the natural environment.
“Tracks and Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe” Roy Brown, John Ferguson, Michael Lawrence and David Lees Paperback: 336 pages. Publisher: Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd (Helm Identification Guides) (30 April 2003). ISBN-10: 0713653825. ISBN-13: 978-0713653823.
May 26 2011
I have just finished reading “Birds and Men” by E.M. Nicholson. Anne got me this book as a present from the online Oxfam shop. It is an original hardback.
Max Nicholson, who died in 2003 aged 98, was one of British ornithology’s giants. His developed an early interest in bird watching and began to maintain a list of birds seen from 1913 (aged 9). At Oxford he read history, and visited Greenland and British Guiana as a founder member of the University’s Exploration Club. At Oxford he organized bird counts and censuses on the University’s farm at Sanford.
May 07 2011
I have just read this beginners introduction to the kinds of wild birds you are likely to encounter at a WWT site. Aimed at the newcomer to waterbirds, it splits the birds into logical groups (if not exactly taxonomically correct) and in “Kate’s Top Tips” it appears to aim at provide the reader with various aides-mémoire to help in distinguishing the various species you are likely to encounter. This sounds like a great idea – even for a non-beginner – except that it has to be said that these aides may have been what originally helped Kate Humble remember the differences between species but I, for one, didn’t find them memorable at all and I can’t imagine that anyone else would either.
Apr 02 2011
“Owl” by Desmond Morris is part of the “Animal” range of books published by Reaktion Books. I had previously read “Falcon” by Helen Macdonald and like that book, Owl deals in great measure with the mythical, sociological and iconographic history of Owls as well as the natural history of owls. In this book, however, the balance between the social history and the natural history is weighted too much to the former in my opinion. Continue reading
Mar 10 2011
We have been on holiday for a week in Funchal where we did see some birds, Swifts, Blackcaps, Blackbirds, Grey Wagtails and inumerable pigeons. We didn’t really go there to bitd watch however but I did need a good solid book to read to I took “Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds” by Bernd Heinrich and I wasn’t disappointed.