Book Reviews
Beak, Tooth & Claw: Living with Predators in Britain
Author: Mary Colwell
Publisher: William Collins, London
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9780008354763
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 312pp
Price: £16.99
If you firmly believe that no fox should ever be shot or equally firmly believe that foxes should always be controlled then you may think that this is not a book for you. This is a book full of nuance. Mary Colwell explores predation by talking to people who are actively involved in land management and conservation. She encourages the reader to learn from people trying to face complex conservation challenges which don’t have simple solutions.
Beak, Tooth & Claw starts... read more
Graham Appleton
Britain’s Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland
Author: Paul D. Brock
Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9780691179278
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 608pp
Price: £24.00
There are a great number of books out there which claim to be guides to Britain’s insects. However, the majority of them struggle to not only cover most of the main groups, but also they can be misleading, not sharing the other possibilities which the book wasn’t able to cover. With around 25,000 species of insect in Britain and Ireland alone, it’s understandable to see why many of these books fall short.
Paul D. Brock’s Britain’s Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great... read more Robert Jaques
The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future
Author: Stephen Rutt
Publisher: Elliott and Thompson Ltd, London
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9781783965731
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 256pp
Price: £14.99
The Eternal Season is an exploration of the British summer, framed within the 2020 global pandemic but reaching back in time through reference to the writings of others, the author’s recollections of younger years, and the stark figures presented from BTO’s long-term monitoring schemes. This is a book about change and the disturbances that we are now seeing in the patterns and rhythms of the natural world; from the changing arrival and departure dates of summer migrants, through the... read more
Mike Toms
The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird
Author: Sam Lee
Publisher: Century, London
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9781529124835
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 248pp
Price: £14.99
Many will know Sam Lee as an award-winning singer, a folk music specialist dedicated to collecting and interpreting Britain’s oral tradition. Some will know him for his work as musical director for RSPB’s ‘Let Nature Sing’, while others will know him through his springtime concert series ‘Singing with Nightingales’, where an audience is led out into darkness of a late spring evening to hear Nightingales and human performers create music in each other’s company, and sometimes together. All... read more
Mike Toms
How You Can Save the Planet
Author: Hendrikus van Hensbergen
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, London
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9780241453049
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 240pp
Price: £7.99
A book by Hendrikus van Hensbergen, the founder Action for Conservation (an organisation getting more young people involved in nature), needs little introduction. Highlighting the lack of participation of young people in conservation, the organisation has helped to inspire others in the field to engage more with the young. The charity has a large following and holds a series of successful events and programmes throughout the year. Action for Conservation was a major influence in the creation... read more
Keir Chauhan
Europe's Dragonflies: A Field Guide to the Damselflies and Dragonflies
Author: Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash
Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN: 9780691168951
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 360pp
Price: £25.00
As we see the climate warm and the British weather feels more Meditteranean during the summer, new species of dragonfly and damselfly have begun to be recorded in Britain for the first time. This makes it a great time for Wild Guides to publish a guide for Europe’s Dragonflies.
Wild Guides have developed a reputation for high quality guide books for wildlife (amongst other topics) over the last decade, and have covered several groups previously untouched by field guides. This... read more
Robert Jaques
A Beginner's guide to Dragonflies & Damselflies of Britain and Ireland
Author: David Chandler
Publisher: Pisces Publications, Newbury
Publication Year: 2019
ISBN: 9781874357957
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 92pp
Price: £8.50
It isn’t unusual for the avid birder, during the peak of summer when many birds are quieter and less obtrusive, to switch their sights to other fauna. Dragonflies and damselflies, with their aerial abilities and colourful markings, can do a lot to keep the at-a-loss birder entertained in the warmer months. They do, however, require a different set of skills to identify, with new nomenclature to learn and different features to pay attention to.
David Chandler has geared his book A... read more Robert Jaques
Shearwater: A Bird, an Ocean, and a Long Way Home
Author: Roger Morgan-Grenville
Publisher: Icon Books, London
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9781785787201
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 282pp
Price: £16.99
Part travelogue, part memoir, Morgan-Grenville’s book delivers an engaging account of one of our least accessible breeding birds, the Manx Shearwater. The13 chapters are structured around a narrative journey, beginning under the watchful gaze of a grandmother whose strong presence shapes the remainder of the book. The story of the Manx Shearwater, both in its breeding colonies and out on the open ocean, is told in a way that brings together the bird’s ecology with acutely judged but lightly... read more
Mike Toms
Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky
Author: Sarah Gibson
Publisher: William Collins, London
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9780008350635
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 328pp
Price: £16.99
Just as the May return of our breeding Swifts delivers a feeling of reassurance, so their late summer departure leaves a sense of loss. That loss, repeated each year, now carries the greater weight that comes from knowledge of the decline in UK Swift populations, evident in BTO’s long-term datasets. Sarah Gibson came to Swifts late but is a passionate local advocate for this long-distance traveller, involved in efforts to identify and protect breeding sites and increase awareness. Through... read more
Mike Toms
Birds of East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi
Author: Terry Stevenson & John Fanshawe; Brian E Small & John Gale (Illustrators)
Publisher: Helm, London
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN: 9781408157367
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 640pp
Price: £35.00
This is a second edition of a field guide which appeared in 2002. Superficially it looks like many other second editions but a closer look shows that this is a major revamp and updating. It covers all of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and at least mentions all the species which have occurred in these countries with almost all of them illustrated. The guide covers 1,448 species which is an increase of 60 on the first edition and they are covered on 289 plates (286 previously). A... read more
Peter Lack
Flight Identification of European Passerines and Select Landbirds: an Illustrated and Photographic Guide
Author: Tomasz Cofta, photographs by Michal Skakuj
Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford
Publication Year: 2021
ISBN: 9780691177571
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 496pp
Price: £38.00
Vis-migging, the art of watching, identifying and recording all of the birds seen flying through and over a particular watchpoint is better known as recording visible migration. The ability to accurately identify what often amount to little more than smallish dots is something that can only be gained by spending time vis-migging – lots and lots of time, learning the different flight patterns of the different families and the individual species. There is a short-cut to gaining the huge amount... read more
Paul Stancliffe
All the Birds of the World
Author: Josep del Hoyo (editor)
Publisher: Lynx Edicions, Barcelona
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN: 9788416728374
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 968pp
Price: £85.00
Lynx have had a long-term project to produce an exhaustive guide to the birds of the world. It started out with the 17 volumes of the Handbook of the Birds of the World (1992-2013) which has family and species accounts for all birds. This was followed by the two volumes of the Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World (2014-16). They have now published the third and final stage of this avian odyssey with this current book.
The publishers state that the book’s... read more
Steve Hunter
Fragile: Birds, Eggs and Habitats
Author: Colin Prior
Publisher: Merrell Publishers, London
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN: 9781858946887
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 240pp
Price: £40.00
The acclaimed Scottish photographer Colin Prior is more usually associated with stunningly evocative panoramic landscapes of his homeland and further afield, but for his latest project the artist has returned to one of his first loves, birds; a passion nurtured while growing up on the edge of a Glasgow suburb. Like many however, Colin is acutely aware of the staggering decline of many species and the loss of the habitats they depend upon. Fragile is both inspired by and acts as a metaphor... read more
Justin Walker
My Birding Life
Author: Moss Taylor
Publisher: Wren Publishing, Sheringham
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN: 9780954254582
Binding: Softback
Page Count: 189pp
Price: £20.00
Ask any birder or naturalist that lives in Norfolk if they know the name Moss Taylor and invariably, they will say "yes", and I suspect the majority will have met him too, and of these many know him as a friend. He is a man, on first meeting, you are unlikely to forget!
Moss has been a keen birder since 1953 and a Norfolk resident from 1969 to the present day. He has also been a qualified ringer for over 50 years, only recently surrendering his permit after some of the most... read more
Jeff Baker
Lincolnshire Bird Atlas 1980-1999
Author: Lincolnshire Bird Club
Publisher: Lincolnshire Bird Club
Publication Year: 2020
ISBN: 9781716802638
Binding: Hardback
Page Count: 180pp
Price: £30.00
Published soon after the series of local atlases that coincided with Bird Atlas 2007–11, you might think the Lincolnshire Bird Atlas would span a similar period. You might expect a lavishly illustrated atlas with up to date distribution maps. You’d be wrong on both counts because this is a very different atlas, one from a different era. An atlas that nearly never was.
There’s a temptation with any atlas to jump straight to the maps but I always recommend readers... read more
Simon Gillings
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