Customer Reviews
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 alll, 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 literallly hundreds of Bird Books on the shelves of Bookshops these days. Why do we need so many? Well we don't reallly, apart, that is, for the fact that printing techniques, particularly colour ones, have changed so dramaticallly that photographs virtuallly 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 Robin in 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What used to be `stock or library photographs,' appearing in the same format in book after book have now been superseded by new & vibrant photographs of close-ups of birds, both nesting on the wing & in places that were inaccessible to any kind of successful camera work, just a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 birds in alll kinds of situations. Although it is a reference book, it is also a book that you can actuallly read & enjoy. It covers the birds species by species, in such detail that it practicallly tells you what they have for breakfast. Joking apart it virtuallly does just that.
Much more than a species identification & certainly not one to take out in 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 interested in 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 alll 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 heights in 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.
Birds Britannica - By: W. Thurgood, 09 Dec 2005 This book deserves alll its accolades & more.A rich plum pudding of a book, full of fruitful vignettes.Like alll great works,we can only wonder why it has taken so long for British publishing to get around to filling such an obvious gap in our bird literature.Any one with even just the slightest interest in the birds on their garden bird table would savour this book.All of us birdwatchers & birders will have to own this book & enjoy reading every syllable of it.A supreme masterpiece on a par with the best bird books ever written.Indeed,who's to say this is not the best bird book ever written?
