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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Curlew Calling: an Anthology of Poetry, Nature Writing and Images in Celebration of Curlew

Author: Karen Lloyd

Publisher: Numenius Press

Published: 2017

Mark Cocker points out in his foreword to this thought-provoking anthology the significance of biodiversity loss for our cultural heritage. Birds in particular have long been embodied in the arts; ...

Australian Bird Guide

Author: Peter Menkhorst, Danny Rogers, Rohan Clarke, Jeff Davies, Peter Marsack & Kim Franklin

Publisher: Christopher Helm, London

Published: 2017

I was fortunate recently to visit Australia with my family. When a Brisbane-based friend heard we were coming over he advised me to wait before buying a new field guide, as this one was due to be ...

Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago: Greater Sundas and Wallacea

Author: James A Eaton, Bas van Balen, Nick W Brickle & Frank E Rheindt

Publisher: Lynx Edicions, Barcelona

Published: 2016

I visited Sumatra last year, armed with a fairly dated “A field guide to the birds of Borneo, Sumatra, Java and Bali” by MacKinnon and Phillipps, and although I did get by with this guide, I felt an ...

Charles Darwin's Life with Birds: His Complete Ornithology

Author: Clifford B Frith

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

There are numerous titles ending in ‘ist’ that could be used to describe Charles Darwin; as Clifford Frith notes, he was a ‘biologist, zoologist, entomologist, botanist, geologist, volcanologist, ...

The Cuckoo: the Uninvited Guest

Author: Oldřich Mikulica, Tomáš Grim, Karl Schulze-Hage & Bård Gunnar Stokke

Publisher: Wild Nature Press, Plymouth

Published: 2017

The familiar call of the male Cuckoo echoing across reed beds and moorland is widely recognised throughout Europe as a harbinger of spring; yet few have witnessed the intimate details of the life of ...

Multimedia Identification Guide to North Atlantic Seabirds: Albatrosses and Fulmarine Petrels

Author: Bob Flood, Ashley Fisher & illustrations by John Gale

Publisher: Pelagic Birds & Birding Multimedia Identification Guides (in association with Scilly Pelagics)

Published: 2016

The back cover pretty much says it all – over 270 pages of detailed and original text. Over 200 colour photographs. Over 180 stunning and accurate illustrations. Large format colour range maps based ...

The Birds of Spurn

Author: Andy Roadhouse

Publisher: The Spurn Bird Observatory Trust

Published: 2016

As I sit at home writing this review, the Spurn Migration Festival is in full flow. BTO’s Andy Clements is there and news has just emerged that he has just found a Kentish Plover! This coastal species ...

The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg

Author: Tim Birkhead

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, London

Published: 2016

This book, like others by Tim Birkhead, is a journey through the history of a particular field of scientific exploration: in this case, the biology of eggs. Engagingly written and extensively ...

Woodland Bird Songs & Calls

Author: Jannes Hannu & Owen Roberts

Publisher: New Holland, London

Published: 2013

As with the previous title this book would be useful as a guide to learning woodland bird songs and calls, and covers an extensive range of species but, once again, it contains many species never ...
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