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

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 ornithology. These can largely be separated into books describing where different birds occur within a country or region (atlases), and those describing the occurrence and status of birds in one or more localities (avifaunas). It is a follow-up to a previous book (and three large supplements expanding on it) by the same author called Birds in Counties, which was published in 2001. Birds in Counties extracted annotated bird species lists from all the main books, papers, articles and reports of relevance to each county in the UK. By contrast, this book does not aim to summarise the available information but, rather, grants readers an awareness of this vast literature, and better equips them to navigate within it.

The book is divided into two parts, the first of which sets the scene by describing how bird-recording has evolved in Britain and Ireland. In doing so, the author also deals with works that have an over-arching significance, such as those deriving from the four British and Irish Atlas projects. The second, much larger section takes the reader county by county through publications whose perspective is more local. Over 100 pages in this section are taken up with bibliographies for each county; but Ballance takes the reader far beyond a list of the relevant authors, dates and titles. Each chapter gives some sense of the main bird-related interests within the county and the history of local ornithology there. In describing the relevant literature, he clearly conveys the significance of the main works with useful information about their scope and quality, as well as their relevance and availability both to historical scholars and modern-day readers. However, perhaps the main attraction of the book, from a non-academic perspective, is the author’s vivid portrayal of hundreds of ornithologists who have contributed to bird recording in one or more of these counties. A few of these people will likely be familiar to most readers; but the vast majority will not be. In providing us with glimpses into the lives and characters of these extraordinary people and their remarkable achievements, Ballance brings to life what might otherwise have been quite a dry recital of books, dates and places.

This impressive tome will be an essential addition to most ornithological libraries. Its ring-bound 314 A4 pages give it a thesis-like appearance, but the breadth and depth of knowledge it contains far exceeds what can be accumulated during a few years of concentrated research. As well as enabling the author’s stated aim of producing the book for relatively little cost (thereby making it accessible to as wide a readership as possible), this format makes the book well suited to being used as a reference, which is its main purpose. This is not a book that is destined to be read from cover to cover by the majority of its owners. However, the wealth of interesting information it contains, and the quality of the writing with which this is conveyed, make it a highly enjoyable book to dip into. Such an encounter might serve as a quick history lesson on one’s own county, or take a more meandering path through the evolution of local ornithology. In either case, it will probably be more entertaining than you expect!

Book reviewed by Mark Wilson