When my childhood love of birds was rekindled a couple of years ago, the first thing I did was spend a lot of money. That’s the thing about hobbies – they’re not cheap.
Binoculars, for example, are an essential piece of kit, and you want them to be good. Ideally, they would deliver the bird, complete with identification, to your visual cortex in surround-sound 3D. In buying them, I managed to curb my natural instinct for wanton profligacy, and settled for a mid-price pair, which meant I didn’t have to sell my family (pets included) and even had some money left over for piles and piles of books. The enthusiasm, once revived, was insatiable.
There are some fantastic bird books out there, written by knowledgeable and brilliant people. The few that follow make up what I reckon are a good and broad selection for anyone just discovering birds or wanting to take their enthusiasm to the next level. It’s not an exhaustive list, but armed with these you won’t go far wrong. On the grounds that you can never have too many books, and by logical extension that you can never have too many bird books, I do invite your additions in the comments below.
I have a bundle of six of these books to GIVE AWAY to one lucky person. You can enter here.
Simon Harrap – RSPB Pocket guide to British Birds
Lars Svensson – Collins Bird Guide
The first thing you need is a field guide. How else are you going to identify that scrubby little brown blighter that’s just disappeared into the bushes, never to be seen again?
Caveats: birds, especially the flitty types, rarely appear in the poses represented in these books. If that’s the kind of thing you want, start with ducks.
I’m going to recommend two. The first, probably best for absolute beginners, is the RSPB Pocket guide. It’s clear, gives as much information as you’ll need in the normal course of events, and well presented. And it does fit in your pocket (assuming you have one).
But even better, and by popular consent hard to beat, is the Collins guide. It’s exhaustive, superbly illustrated, and nails the art of writing accurate descriptions of the birds without boring the pants off you. While not massive, it’s heavy enough that you’re not going to lug it around in the field, but modern technology, in the form of the accompanying app, is here to save us. With audio and video recordings of all the birds, as well as all the text and illustrations from the book, it’s basically essential.
Simon Barnes – How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher
This one caught my eye from the start. Not only has Simon Barnes been one of my favourite sports writers for many years, but the title matched my aspirations exactly. I wanted to be a birdwatcher, yes, but the reality was that for a long time I would have to be content with being a bad one. And here was a book telling me how to do exactly that.
A welcome antidote to a lot of the blithe expertise out there, How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher takes as its premise the idea that participation is the main thing, regardless of competence. It’s great for sparking enthusiasm and making you feel ok about your inadequacies.
Next level: Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed – by the same author, this offers a useful introduction to the arcane and bewildering world of birdsong.
Brett Westwood & Stephen Moss – Tweet of the Day
Early-rising Radio 4 listeners will be familiar with the soothing rhythms of the programme on which this book is based – daily 90-second snippets of birdsong and commentary, featuring a bird a day. Balm for the soul.
Westwood and Moss, both superb nature writers, transfer the idea to book form and make it, if anything, even better. Their short essays on each bird are informative and engaging, and collectively give you as good an introduction to British birds as you could ask for.
T H White – The Goshawk
The fashionable choice would be J A Baker’s The Peregrine, and that is indeed a quite remarkable book – a 224-page poetic elegy to a single bird. But if I’m honest, I find White’s book even more interesting. While The Peregrine is a work of startling density and poetry, The Goshawk is somehow more personal – the story, as Helen MacDonald puts it in her excellent introduction, ‘of two desperate and confused souls operating at dreadful cross-purposes’.
(Supplementary: Helen Macdonald’s prize-winning H is for Hawk. But you’ve read it already, haven’t you? You haven’t? Well, here you go.
Tim Birkhead – Bird Sense
Tim Birkhead knows a lot about birds. And I mean a lot. He’s spent forty or more years studying the guillemot, for God’s sake.
This book delves into the birds’ point of view. What and how do they see, hear, feel and smell? Brimming with a rare blend of actual proper scientific expertise and let-the-layman-understand readability, it makes an excellent companion to…
Jennifer Ackerman – The Genius of Birds
Another properly scientific book that remains accessible and informative throughout. If it doesn’t convert you to the utter brilliance of birds, well, I’m not sure I want to know you.
If those aren’t enough for you, here are some more of the books I’ve read in the last couple of years and which I particularly recommend:
David Attenborough – The Life of Birds: WELL OBVIOUSLY. (Supplementary: the TV series)
Alex Preston & Neil Gower – As Kingfishers Catch Fire: An examination of birds in literature. Beautiful prose, beautiful illustrations, beautiful production. So, beautiful then.
Stephen Moss – Understanding Bird Behaviour: Does what it says on the tin, and does it very well. Never again will I wonder why that blackbird is flaring its nostrils at me.
Ray Reedman – Lapwings, Loons and Lousy Jacks: Useful and interesting guide to the provenance of bird names.
Richard Smyth – A Sweet, Wild Note: Lively and nuanced tribute to birdsong and an exploration of how it has captivated us.
J A Baker – The Peregrine: Werner Herzog insists his film-making students read this book, and that in itself is enough to recommend it, I reckon.
Matt Merritt – A Sky Full of Birds: A poetic and captivating tour of the great bird gatherings of the British isles.
Mark Cocker – Crow Country: Plenty of attention is given these days to the intelligence of crows, but this is a love letter to every aspect of these easily overlooked birds. Glowing prose and a lifetime of knowledge.
Tim Dee – The Running Sky: The life of a birdwatcher, told in such a way as to send you running for the binoculars.
If your interest is piqued and you can’t be bothered to scroll back up, here’s the link to the six-book giveaway again.
And if you like this and want more birdy stuff (plus a whole lot more), why not sign up to my newsletter?
I can also recommend Tim Birkhead’s The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg. It was genuinely utterly compelling, from beginning to end, and the kind of book you want to immediately reread because it is so amazing.
Yes – heartily seconded. It was a toss-up between that one and Bird Sense.
As I live in Downunder there is no point in my entering your lovely competition. One day you must come out here and discover more bird life!