My Spring Watches

Andrew Davies is probably best known among birdwatchers for his studies of Mandarin Ducks in and around Surrey.  However he is also an accomplished more general bird photographer and this book is essentially some memories and stories from his adventures while doing this.  It is not an autobiography although inevitably some parts do read like it.

Throughout the stories there are some more general suggestions and tips for how to go about photographing birds especially at the nest and how to avoid some of the pitfalls in doing this.  In all cases he emphasises that the welfare of the bird must always come first and if necessary to the detriment of the photograph.  As such it will provide the budding photographer with some useful information and the tips are provided in a far more engaging style than in a “how to do it” type of book.

It is well written and contains a plethora of photographs, mostly by the author, although sadly the quality of the reproduction of these does not always do them justice.  Also the book has almost A4 size pages which make it more difficult than some to handle although it does allow for some of the photographs to be printed rather larger than in many books.

Book reviewed by Peter Lack