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 (2014–2016). 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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Of the Trees and the Birds

Author: Ian Parsons

Publisher: Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath

Published: 2024

My last BTO book review focused on a book that was about the relationship between flowers and birds. Of the Trees and the Birds carries on in a similar vein. However, as the title suggests, this ...

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 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 much of the BTO audience; as a well-known academic, pre-eminent ornithologist and writer of multiple books on birds, his reputation is far reaching. As a ...

Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds. Volume 1: Introduction

Author: The Featherguide (ed.) & Feather Research Group

Publisher: Featherguide Publishers, Köthen

Published: 2024

As a lifelong feather collector and researcher using feather analyses for peregrine diet studies, I am always drawn to detailed feather resources. Feathers offer invaluable insights beyond diet ...

Cuckoo

Author: Cynthia Chris

Publisher: Reaktion Books Ltd, London

Published: 2024

Cuckoo is the latest monograph of Reaktion Books’ Animal Series. It is short and concise and takes a slightly different approach to other recent bird monographs, focusing less on scientific studies ...

The Storm-petrels

Author: Rob Thomas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, London

Published: 2024

It’s difficult to do justice to such a clear labour of love in a short review. The passion, fascination and sheer awe author Rob Thomas has for storm-petrels leaps off the page, and is infectious. In ...

Murmur (second edition)

Author: Darren Andrews

Publisher: Self-published

Published: 2024

Books are usually filled with an abundance of words, but Murmur holds a wealth of images featuring Starling murmurations from Leighton Moss, Blackpool North Pier and Carnforth in Lancashire. The words ...

Bird Tracks: A Field Guide to British Species

Author: John Rhyder & David Wege

Publisher: The History Press, Cheltenham

Published: 2024

Quite often, a bird does not need to be seen to prove its presence. Many birders are adept at identifying birds by sound, or can confidently assign a nest or errant eggshell to species. But how many ...

Ten Birds That Changed the World

Author: Stephen Moss

Publisher: Faber & Faber, London

Published: 2024

In Ten Birds That Changed the World author Stephen Moss succinctly explores our relationship with birds over 10 chapters. He cleverly uses their charm and approachability to show how our actions have ...
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