Customer Reviews
Best for Birds - By: Mr. J. J. Atkinson, 29 Dec 2008 
This is the warm, authorative but friendly book of British birds that every bird lover needs. It covers each distinct type of bird & has plenty of interesting facts & anecdotal stories to lift it above being a stuffy encyclopaedia of birds. The pictures & illustrations are perfect for the book. Highly recommended.
I agree - By: Friend of Dorothy, 16 Jan 2008 Yes, this book is everything the other reviews say it is. If you like a bit of social history & literature with your birds, you will find this a satisfying read. Above all, Cocker is 'a good writer', which means his prose is always palatable at the very least.
A Cut Above Your Average Bird Book - By: J. Chippindale, 31 Oct 2007 There are literally hundreds of Bird Books on the shelves of Bookshops these days. Why do we need so many? Well we don't really, apart, that is, for the fact that printing techniques, particularly colour ones, have changed so dramatically that photographs virtually leap off the page at you. For example, a Robin looks the same now as it did a hundred years ago, so the bird book I had thirty, or even twenty years ago should depict the Robinin exactly the same way. Well hardly, as I said above printing has changed & the advance of the camera is phenomenal.
What used to be `stock or library photographs,' appearingin the same formatin book after book have now been superseded by new & vibrant photographs of close-ups of birds, both nesting on the wing &in places that were inaccessible to any kind of successful camera work, just a few years ago.
This book is both comprehensive & easy to read & of course the text is backed up by wonderful photographs of British birdsin all kinds of situations. Although it is a reference book, it is also a book that you can actually read & enjoy. It covers the birds species by species,in such detail that it practically tells you what they have for breakfast. Joking apart it virtually does just that.
Much more than a species identification & certainly not one to take outin the field with you. There are lots of other books that serve that purpose very well. This book is a book to savour (no pun intended). A book for the fireside, when the wind is whistling around the chimney pots.
quite simply superb - By: strawdog, 03 May 2006 This superb, lavishly illustrated book deserves pride of place on the bookshelf of anyone interestedin birds, British natural history or the relations between humans & other animals.
The text draws as much from literature, anecdote & social/cultural history as it does from ornithology but that only widens & deepens its impact. At times the book is quite numbingly sad (without being mawkish or sentimental), leaving the reader with a sense of outrage at our historical, & to some extent ongoing, treatment of wild birds. Although, it has to be said, the story isn't all one of cruelty & exploitation. In short this book perfectly captures our species' contradictory attitudes to wild animals very accurately indeed.
Highly recommended.
Engrossing but sad - By: S. J. Turner, 12 Mar 2006 A wonderful book for dipping into, full of stories & nuggets that the kids are fascinated by. Much of the book focusses on the relationship between man & bird. This can reach heightsin beautiful poetry but also lows of quite numbing accounts of cruelty. The birds are not sentimentalised & come out of this book a lot better than we do.
