Owls

It has to be said that there are an awful lot of books on owls out there, ranging from superb to surplus to requirements. Any new book on owls, therefore, is going to need to be something special to stand out from the crowd. Does Marianne Taylor's book manage it? To be honest, I'm not sure. It is a good-sized book, absolutely infested with excellent colour photographs, so is going to appeal to the coffee-table book collector and, with a wonderful portrait of a Long-eared Owl on the cover this book will certainly excel in this role.

But look closer and you realise that the text is much more than a cursory, aesthetically pleasing jaunt around owl-dom. There are chapters on behaviour, ecology and conservation as well as the extensive species-by-species look at North American and Eurasian species. And yet, it fails to deliver for the real owl enthusiast, the scientific elements do seem a little over-digested and the whole thing leaves you wanting more. So, this volume would probably best suit someone wanting to find out more about owls, informed younger readers and others coming into the wonderful world of birds and birdwatching and wanting to add more to flesh out the field guides.