Birdwatching: a Complete Guide to Observing British and European Birdlife

At the outset this book claims: “This superb illustrated guide combines accurate, easy to follow advice for the beginner with inspirational images and expert tips for the more experienced observer.” Does it live up to this? Well, yes and no. The book opens with a short preface by Rob Hume and is followed by six chapters: ‘What is a bird?’, ‘Getting started’, ‘In the field’, ‘How to identify’, ‘Species by species’ and ‘Where to watch’. These are followed by a glossary and a list of useful contacts.

So that’s the bones of the book, but how about the meat? The chapters themselves are attractively laid out and for the most part lavishly illustrated with photographs and small explanatory diagrams where appropriate. Each chapter breaks down into bite-size summaries with, for instance, the chapter ‘What is a bird?’ having sections on evolution and diversity, anatomy, senses, flight, migration, feeding, courtship, nesting and rearing, all of which are quite informative. The ‘Getting started’ chapter gives sound advice on choosing optics, note-taking (thankfully), the creation of bird habitat and the increasingly popular practice of photography. ‘In the field’ describes all the major European habitat types most of us are likely to find ourselves in at some point, and broadly details their bird communities. Next, the ‘How to identify’ chapter essentially covers topics like flight identification, field marks, behaviour, vocalisations, timing and abundance, all useful stuff to someone with an embryonic interest in birds.

The chapter ‘Species by species’ is the one that, for me, lets this book down. It gives a selection of European species – by no means exhaustive, which isn’t really the point of the book – each illustrated by a photograph, some of which are quite good, but others of which are truly awful (Mallard, Long-eared Owl, Sardinian Warbler and the Hippolais warblers, for instance). The problem in using photographs for identification purposes is that on occasion they have a tendency to look like badly mounted skins. This isn’t helped by the fact that, as here, they can also look like rather odd ‘cut and paste’ jobs, particularly when set against a stark white background.

That said, there isn’t much that’s likely to occur on someone’s feeders that can’t be identified from these photos, but anything beyond that is likely to reveal the shortcomings of illustrating birds in this fashion. Photographic guides can work well where species are shown in a variety of postures and plumages and are set within something approximating appropriate habitat type, but that isn’t the case here, unfortunately, and probably isn’t the main aim of this book anyway. The accompanying text for each species illustrated is generally good and accurate, although minimal.

The final chapter, ‘Where to watch’, is, for me, one of this book’s strengths. Details for various sites within 27 European countries are nicely set out with details of location, access, contacts and a brief overview of which species are likely to be encountered.

All in all, this book would make a nice present for a novice birder and at £12.99 it will hardly break the bank. However, one has to ask if such a book is really needed given the plethora of similar publications over recent years. Nevertheless, it does pull together many of the strings within mainstream birding and it does so reasonably well. This is a fairly laudable publication, but not a wholly satisfactory one.

First published in Birdwatch 171: 51 (September 2006). For a wide range of birding books, some at excellent discount prices, please take a look at the Birdwatch Bookshop.

Tech spec

• Birdwatching: a Complete Guide to Observing British and European Birdlife by Rob Hume (RSPB/Dorling Kindersley, London, 2006).
• 224 pages, illustrated throughout with colour photographs and maps.
• ISBN 1405313528. Pbk, £12.99.