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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Emma Turner : a life looking at birds

Author: James Parry & Jeremy Greenwood

Publisher: Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists' Society, Norwich

Published: 2020

Emma Turner was a pioneer: one of the early bird ringers; one of the early bird photographers; one of the first 15 woman fellows of the Linnean Society (January 1905) and one of the first four female ...

Britain's Birds: an Identification Guide to the Birds of Great Britain and Ireland

Author: Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash, Hugh Harrop & David Tipling

Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) & Oxford

Published: 2020

This bird ID guide covers 631 species and includes birds recorded in Britain and Ireland. It is incredibly comprehensive and has a plentiful amount of glossy, detailed photographs which show all the ...

Birds of the West Indies

Author: Herbert A. Raffaele, James W. Wiley, Orlando H. Garrido, Allan R. Keith & Janis Raffaele

Publisher: Helm, London

Published: 2020

Having observed last year when reviewing the excellent new Lynx Edicions Birds of the West Indies following a recent trip to the region, that all the available bird guides at that time appeared to be ...

Birds of the UK Overseas Territories

Author: Roger Riddington(Editor) & Miranda Krestovnikoff(Foreword By)

Publisher: Poyser, London

Published: 2020

Readers of British Birds will most likely be familiar with much of the content of this new publication from Poyser, which brings together 13 papers published over the past 12 years, each describing ...

Acoustic Ecology of European Bats: Species Identification, Study of their Habitats and Foraging Behaviour

Author: Michel Barataud (author), Yves Tupinier, Herman J.G.A. Limpens (contributors) & Anya Cockle-Betian (translator)

Publisher: BIOTOPE, Paris

Published: 2020

With developments in bat detectors, particularly passive detectors which are left outside to automatically trigger and record any bats that fly past, there is the potential to provide representative ...

Avifaunas, Atlases & Authors: a Personal View of Local Ornithology in the United Kingdom, from the Earliest Times to 2019

Author: David Ballance

Publisher: Calluna Books, Wareham

Published: 2020

As the title of this book suggests, it is a meta-book; a book about other books. Its main purpose is to inform the reader about works that deal, in various ways, with the element of place in ...

The Kestrel: Ecology, Behaviour and Conservation of an Open-land Predator

Author: David Costantini & Giacomo Dell'Omo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Published: 2020

The Kestrel is probably not a book for those with a passing interest in kestrels, but would be a useful addition to the library of anyone who has a keen research interest in this widespread but ...

Pembrokeshire

Author: Jonathan Mullard

Publisher: William Collins, London

Published: 2020

Like the author, I too spent many a childhood holiday in Pembrokeshire. In those days the five hour drive from the mountains of Snowdonia to the Mediterranean-like coast of Pembrokeshire was well ...

Uplands and Birds

Author: Ian Newton

Publisher: William Collins, London

Published: 2020

Once again, Ian Newton has produced another brilliant book. As always, it is packed with facts and ideas presented in a clear and easy style that both grips one’s interest and deepens one’s ...
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