Although this slim and inexpensive book may be of little use to those with much experience of birdwatching in Malta, visitors and inexperienced residents will find it extremely useful. Rather than confusing the inexperienced by including every species that has ever occurred in Malta, it covers just those species…
The latest offering in this popular series covers a total of 65 sites in Dorset, although several of these involve a cluster of birding locations (such as the sections for The Fleet and Portland), so that in reality you get well over 70 birding sites for your money. As is inevitably the case in a coastal county, many of the locations are concentrated along or near the coast, but there is good treatment of inland locations too, including…
This is the latest title in the now well-established Crossbill Guides series. The Pyrenees, relatively easy to get to from Britain, has long been a favourite area for British naturalists. To the north, the cooler and wetter French side reveals different habitats and species to the warmer and drier south. In addition to the Pyrenees, this title includes the arid foothills and steppes of Huesca…
No ornithologist will ever regard Thomas Bewick, known primarily for The History of British Birds (1797–1804), as a naturalist of the same standing as contemporaries such as Edward Donovan, John Latham and James Bolton. Equally, no-one has ever read Edward Thornton’s The Temple of Flora (1799) as a serious work of botany. But both Bewick and Thornton in their different ways defined a certain English Romantic sensibility…
This is the third spin-off title from the same authors’ original Birds of Western Africa (Helm 2002). First came a field-guide version with the same title, then Birds of Ghana. The current title follows in much the same style as the Ghana guide, and is now the familiar format of colour plates opposite pages of text and maps – very user-friendly…
Essentially the same as the first edition (1987) but with (mostly minor) updates to the text. One chapter on ‘Breeding for release’ has been cut (the technique has proved to be ineffective and is no longer approved of). A short note on the late Chris Mead and his links to the BTO…
The forests of the Neotropics play host the world’s most species-rich avifauna, numerically dominated by the suboscine passerines – principally ovenbirds (Furnariidae), antbirds (Thamnophilidae) and tyrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae). These make up a veritable army of small brown birds that tend to be the identification bane of the visiting birder.
‘Zoologists often raced to be first to describe a new animal.’ Like the title, this arresting opening sentence captures the attention of the reader. Partly in preparation for the 4th edition of The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World, the authors have devoted a significant amount of effort to resolving the 4–6% of 100,000 ‘species-group’ names (since the starting point of zoological nomenclature on 1st January 1758) which are associated with publications difficult to date…
The cover of the box describes this photographic tutorial as designed to ‘inspire, demonstrate and encourage creativity’ in nature photography. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I loaded the DVD with interest. A colourful screen opened up with five subheadings or chapters – Equipment, Technical Basics, Creativity, Animal Life and Habitat & Plants…
A short introduction leads quickly to the main body of the work, 15 chapters and 186 pages of it. The first five chapters place the world’s three puffin Fratercula species among the other auks, summarise the studies which have been carried out so far, and describe the appearance, development and moult of the (Atlantic) Puffin, and its distribution and status in Britain, Ireland, France, Iceland, the Faeroes, Norway (including Svalbard), Russia, Greenland, Canada and the USA. The book then gets down to the nitty-gritty of the (mainly) breeding biology of the species…
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