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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The Birds of Wales/Adar Cymru

Author: Rhion Pritchard(Editor), Julian Hughes(Editor), Ian M Spence(Editor), Bob Haycock(Editor) & Anne Brenchley(Editor)

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, Liverpool

Published: 2021

This impressive tome from the Welsh Ornithological Society is the third full avifauna for Wales, following 1994’s original Birds in Wales (Lovegrove, Williams & Williams) and a subsequent update ...

How You Can Save the Planet

Author: Hendrikus van Hensbergen

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, London

Published: 2021

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 ...

The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird

Author: Sam Lee

Publisher: Century, London

Published: 2021

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 ...

The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future

Author: Stephen Rutt

Publisher: Elliott and Thompson Ltd, London

Published: 2021

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 ...

Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky

Author: Sarah Gibson

Publisher: William Collins, London

Published: 2021

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 ...

Shearwater: A Bird, an Ocean, and a Long Way Home

Author: Roger Morgan-Grenville

Publisher: Icon Books, London

Published: 2021

Part travelogue, part memoir, Morgan-Grenville’s book delivers an engaging account of one of our least accessible breeding birds, the Manx Shearwater. The 13 chapters are structured around a narrative ...

Flight Identification of European Passerines and Other Selected Landbirds: an Illustrated and Photographic Guide

Author: Tomasz Cofta, photographs by Michal Skakuj

Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford

Published: 2021

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 ...

All the Birds of the World

Author: Josep del Hoyo (editor)

Publisher: Lynx Edicions, Barcelona

Published: 2020

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 ...

Red Sixty Seven

Author: 67 authors and 67 artists & curated by Kit Jewitt

Publisher: British Trust for Ornithology

Published: 2020

While public support for conservation continues to grow, the funding provided by governments has fallen away. Within the UK, public sector spending on biodiversity, expressed as a proportion of GDP, ...
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