The World of Birds
by Jonathan Elphick
will be donated to Spoon-billed Sandpiper conservation
Birds have always attracted our interest and admiration. More than any other group of animals, they have succeeded in capturing the human imagination. Found almost everywhere on earth, they are things of beauty, many have beautiful songs, almost all can take to the air and many perform astonishing migrations.
This large and sumptuous volume sets out to showcase nothing less than this whole world of birds. This is of course a monumental task but this lavish book is up to the task. In its 608 pages it addresses all the most important apects of birds’ lives. After a brief Introduction, its initial chapters cover early birds, anatomy and physiology, flight, food and feeding, bird society and populations, breeding, habitats, migration and birds’ relationships with humans.
These chapters are wide-ranging, clearly written and full of fascinating insights. Did you know, for example, that the Brown Thrasher of North America has a repertoire of 2,000 distinct songs, that the Sharp-beaked Ground Finch of the Galapagos Islands drinks the blood of Nazca and Red-footed Boobies and that our own Arctic Terns may fly over 1.5 million miles during their lives, equivalent to flying three times to the Moon and back?
The final chapter - ‘The Bird Families’ - actually occupies over half the book. Here can be found an account of every one of the 32 orders and 195 families of birds. Within the text for each family, an introductory panel sets out its defining characters, its genera and species, their sizes and weights, ranges, habitats, social and breeding behaviour, food, voice, migration and conservation status. This is followed by a more discursive commentary which describes the diversity of the family and identifies some of its defining or more distinctive members. Of course in any such treatment, taxonomy will be a potentially contentious issue. Here the approach is deliberately conservative, following, with few exceptions, that of the third edition of The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World.
Published: Aug 2014
London Natural History Museum
Pages: 608
ISBN: 9780565092375
Hardcover RRP: £39.99
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The book is greatly enhanced by the use of more than a thousand photographs, maps and diagrams. These turn what might otherwise be a rather dry and formulaic work into something much more attractive. Almost every page contains a photograph, with some featuring as many as four. Their overall standard is remarkably high and there are some very special images indeed. The distant shot of a displaying male Capercaillie in a Caledonian pine forest is a triumph of composition, as is the image of densely-packed roosting Knot at Snettisham. Further afield, the ‘whole flock’ picture of Red-billed Queleas and the photograph of the threat-displaying Sunbittern really caught my eye.
This book aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the world of birds for the general reader. In this it succeeds admirably. It is a highly readable and accessible introduction to what makes birds the most popular and most alluring of all the planet’s wild creatures. I can only echo the author’s introductory remarks: “If, as well as providing information, this book helps the reader to feel passionate about the birds with which we share the world, and to do something to help them, then I will be doubly pleased.”
Andy Stoddart
25 September 2014
Commission for Conservation
Rare Bird Alert does not profit from the sale of books through Wildsounds. Instead we are part of their Commission for Conservation programme where a percentage of every sale made through RBA helps supports BirdLife's Spoon-billed Sandpiper Fund.
