Fans pick 100 books like Birds Britannica

The Book of British Birds is one of several comprehensive reference books produced around half a century ago for the Reader’s Digest. They were written without jargon and have become classics. The illustrations in this bird volume are excellent, with bird-by-bird descriptions, followed by a range of fascinating topics, such as how birds care for their plumage, camouflage, how they sleep, and courtship displays. Some information is now itself history – who would have thought (for example) that the ubiquitous starling is now on the Red List of UK birds?

The author was one of the earliest (if not the earliest) to write a history of a subject using a specific number of objects. In this book, he describes the development of observing birds through the medium of 100 objects, of which a surprising selection is presented, all well illustrated, from prehistoric paintings to more recent technology.  Possibly the most curious is a stuffed extinct dodo at the Horniman Museum in London. It was actually a deceptive piece made by a leading taxidermist using plaster casts, chicken wings, and swan, goose, and ostrich feathers.

Numerous books were compiled in the 19th century on birds of specific counties, which are now historic documents. My favourite is The Birds of Devon, first published in 1892 by William D’Urban and Murray Mathew, who had known each other since childhood. It has wonderful, evocative descriptions of landscapes and of the immense numbers of birds that could still be seen and heard then, though the authors do give warnings about landscapes being destroyed, in particular by the railways and by the drainage of marshes and moors. Readers today may want to skip their numerous lists, but their descriptions depict a vanished world.

Also known as The Ornithology of Shakespeare, James Edmund Harting published this book in 1871 as a detailed analysis of all the references to birds in Shakespeare’s plays. He shows that to Shakespeare and his audience, birds and field sports were second nature. His book starts with Shakespeare’s general knowledge of natural history and then tackles different types of birds, such as those with song and the owl and its associations. Harting was an extremely knowledgeable ornithologist and hawker, and his book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Shakespeare.

This is a truly lovely book. 

The idea is simple, as many good ideas are; there are 67 red-listed species of bird in the UK, let’s get 67 writers to write about them and 67 artists to depict them. The idea was that of Kit Jewitt and the British Trust for Ornithology has published the book.

What emerges is a varied book of different writing styles and perspectives with each page of text facing a piece of art with its own special character.

A book that is stimulating and informative to read but also gorgeous to behold.

This book, by Kirk Wallace Johnson tells the story of a bizarre heist that took place at the British Museum of Natural History in 2009.

The thief, Edwin Rist, was a 20-year-old American flute student who broke into the museum to steal hundreds of priceless, exotic bird specimens, many of which were collected by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century.

What first drew me to the book was that I knew Edwin’s dad back when I was in grad school. But what kept me turning the pages was the writing and story. The book explores the world of Victorian-era fly-tying and the obsession that collectors have with rare feathers.

Rist, who was also an avid fly-tier, had planned the heist to obtain feathers for his own collection, which he intended to sell to other collectors. Many of the collectors and fly-tying enthusiasts knew that the feathers probably… show more.

An unusually honest, rural memoir by the RSPB’s longest-serving female columnist. Chester’s writing has a lovely elasticity, dancing between wonder, introspection, and anger as she moves from the particular to the universal. I learned a lot about how Britain’s countryside is managed. I also enjoyed her more eccentric impulses, such as lying down in the snow on the edge of a field one night, just to see what might happen. She belongs to the disappearing English rural working class, and is intent on handing this baton to her three children. Chester also explores the familiar tension between wanting to write and being needed at home. The heady ecstasy of time carved out alone, in nature. The scrabble to earn a precarious living, and the insecurities of occupying a tied cottage. The idea of ‘home’ lies at the heart of this fierce, beautifully written, immersive book about one’s place within the… show more.

I grew up hearing curlews calling. Their evocative, haunting call is the sound of the countryside of my childhood. With curlews in steep decline, that call is rarely heard these days.

Coldwell is a beacon of curlew conservation in the UK and I absolutely adored her book. She takes us on a physical journey around the British Isles and a temporal journey through the curlew year.

Conjuring up a sense of place, culture, history, and landscape, Coldwell also weaves in a love of nature in both its grandest and most intimate sense. I found it a deeply affecting read.  

This a cracking read – I read it in just over a day, and it wasn’t a chore. So I read it again, immediately!

A book about 10 declining birds in the United Kingdom; Corncrake, Kittiwake, Capercaillie, Turtle Dove, Lapwing, Black Grouse, Bittern, Hen Harrier, Grey Partridge, and Nightingale. He talks to people who like them, study them, and/or conserve them. 

The author is an exceptional talent in that few could write so well about the species, the places, the people, the history of it all, and throw in poems, songs, and insights into shooting, farming, cookery, and eating too. There are some great conversations and a wide range of characters from a good spread of perspectives. I went away enriched and I keep returning to this book.

This is a wonderfully imaginative book. It examines how Britain, a nation of nature lovers with over 1 million members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, has become one of the most damaged and denuded countries on the planet. Although depressing in parts when looking at the depths of our global biodiversity crisis, this book explains how we can turn this around, heal our land, bring back wildlife, and ensure vibrant rural communities.