Book reviews

Book reviews

Read reviews of the books we hold in the Chris Mead Library, written by our in-house experts. A selection of book reviews also features in our members’ magazine, BTO News.

Featured review

All the Birds of the World

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.

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All the Birds of the World

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The Rarity Garden: The Great White Cape of Flamborough

Author: Richard Baines

Publisher: Yorkshire Coast Nature

Published: 2025

Barely a week goes by without another book appearing on the shelves which delves deep into the personal way that nature, in one way or another, has impacted on the writer’s life. Often self-reflective ...

The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife

Author: Tim Birkhead

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, London

Published: 2025

Tim Birkhead will need little introduction to the majority of BTO News readers, as a well-known academic, pre-eminent ornithologist and writer of multiple books on birds, his reputation is far ...

Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts

Author: Hannah Bourne-Taylor

Publisher: Elliott & Thompson, London

Published: 2025

People who didn’t already know Hannah Bourne-Taylor could hardly fail to notice her bold method of getting Swifts on the political agenda, walking through London adorned only in artistic body paint to ...

The Cuckoo’s Lea: The Forgotten History of Birds and Place

Author: Michael J. Warren

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, London

Published: 2025

In this book, author Michael Warren takes us on a journey across England (and a bit of Wales) and through time to explore the connection between English place names and birds. Especially interesting ...

Land Beneath the Waves

Author: Nic Wilson

Publisher: Summersdale Publishers, Chichester

Published: 2025

“I am not a memoirist” declares Nic Wilson at the start of her new book. But we do indeed learn a lot about her life in the ensuing 13 chapters, although some details are pieced together with help ...

Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood

Author: Adam Nicolson

Publisher: William Collins, London

Published: 2025

In Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood, Adam Nicolson charts his journey to learn more about the natural world surrounding his home of over 30 years in the Sussex Weald. From the vantage point of the ...

Endemic: Exploring the Wildlife Unique to Britain

Author: James Harding-Morris

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, London

Published: 2025

Endemic. It’s a word that conjures up imaginings of species only found in tropical rainforests or islands. As soon as I read the title of this book I was intrigued. Endemics in Britain. It’s something ...

Encounters with Corvids

Author: Fionn Ó Marcaigh (author), Aga Grandowicz (illustrator)

Publisher: Natural World Publishing, Dublin

Published: 2025

Dr Fionn Ó Marcaigh is a zoologist from Dublin, who received his PhD from Trinity College in 2023 for a thesis on the evolution of birds on islands. Encounters with Corvids is his first published book ...

The Vanishing Mew Gull: A Guide to the Bird Names of the Western Palaearctic

Author: Ray Reedman

Publisher: Pelagic Publishing, London

Published: 2024

At first glance, this book might appear to be another volume exploring the declines of bird species, as a result of Anthropocene activity. But reading beyond the title, it soon becomes clear that the ...
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