BIRD: The Definitive Visual Guide

This huge and gorgeous book has as its largest section a guide to over 1000 species of birds, with each one photographed in colour accompanied by a map to show distribution together with length, weight, migration status and habitat. A descriptive paragraph gives more information, including the bird's call, details of its colouring and behaviour, and an account of its diet. The book is divided by the classification non-passerines and passerines, and the first in the non-passerine category is the Great Tinamou, one of 47 species of tinamous, a south American bird whose diet is fruit, berries and seeds, though we learn to our surprise that it sometimes swallows pebbles to aid digestion. It lays two eggs which are incubated by just the male, and the photo accompanying a general description of the species shows the male with a chick that has just broken out of the bright blue egg. Other non-passerine categories include kiwis, penguins, flamingos, grebes, cuckoos, parrots, waders, swifts. The category passerines, birds with feet designed to grip branches, covers over half the world's birds. The first entry in the Broadbill family is the Rifleman, native to New Zealand, only just over three inches long and monogamous in family life. Moving through descriptions of exotic species like Bulbuls and Cisticolas we eventually arrive at a species that is native to the British Isles, the Grasshopper Warbler, a migrant which makes long individual flights to the Steppes of Russia and whose call is so high-pitched that it may be beyond some people's range of hearing. A comprehensive Introduction to the book as a whole covers subjects including the anatomy of birds, their nervous, digestive, respiratory and reproductive systems, their feathers and wings, the mystery of flapping flight which evolved over millions of years and is still not fully understood, the functions of the legs and feet, distinctions between walking and running, types of bill and their uses, migration, and finally bird communication, including the visual trigger in which robins will attack anything red on the assumption that it is an aggressive male rival. 400pp, many colour photos.