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RSPB Handbook of British Birds
Book by Holden, Peter, Cleeves, Tim
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 16, 2018
Really helpful guide of British birds that I really enjoyed. Recommended.
December 17, 2022
This book will never be finished, not in the absolutist, completist sense that my filing-cabinet mentality demands. It's one of those in which you dip into now and then, a little like an amateur artist dabbing the paint with a finger, and staring at the colour on the tip for some time after, imagining the painting, though unable to make it. It's one of those books. And you love it as you love birds and love colour, indivisibly.
Interestingly, while this superb 25th Anniversary anthology of resident and visiting 'British' birds includes images of juveniles - which very often are of drab colouration that makes a lot of them look like adult versions of other similar species, especially in the Corvid (crow) and Turdid (thrush) families and most warbler species - it does not include pictures of the various and often beautiful eggs. I mention this because these beautiful objects feature in the Ladybird books of British birds, and add a certain something to their own beautiful pictures. The pictures in this reference are equally beautiful, but those missing eggs cry out as a somewhat bemusing omission. I can only assume it was to prevent naughty schoolboys from coveting, seeking and stealing them. Perhaps that's for the better.
This is not a book that most people will read cover to cover, but I've pulled it out several times in the past few years. Locally, a small park with a neighbouring pond, there are moorhens (10 times more common than the coot, with roughly the same ubiquitous distribution throughout most of Britain except the Scottish Highlands), lots of corvids, blackbirds and tits, and a couple of robins, bringing enough song from the trees and activity around the two feeding areas front and back. Goldfinches are seen strafing the hedgerows in the lane in summer, and pheasant frequent the park. But there are no visiting schools of long-tailed tits, no noticeable nuthatches or tree creepers, no finch presence, not a peep of a wren - despite the feeder on the back wall - and not a single hawk or falcon has been spotted in the vicinity in the 5 years I've lived here. Admittedly, both feeding sites, the bird feeder and the neighbour who feeds the birds on the lawn in the morning, are both visible from separate windows, but apart from the sparrows and crows, moorhens and blackbirds, and the odd brief smatter of starling, I've never spotted a visiting family of woodpeckers, like I did at my last place, with the feeder directly outside the kitchen window and next to an ash tree, where they chased each other up and down the trunk and branches once, to my utter exhilaration. A whole family of spotted woodpeckers! I'll probably never see the like again.
I didn't know that Scotland had its own species of crossbill, around Inverness, and I'll probably never see a capercaillie outside of a programme on the Highlands. Nor that there was an indigenous species called the twite around western Scotland and Ireland. That the bee-eater and hoopoe visit our south coast when migrating in the transitional seasons. I don't think I've ever seen a linnet, but because the female looks much like a sparrow, I may have seen many in my life. I haven't seen a swift, swallow or martin in five years, but I remember them sweeping up and down our street in the height of summer in suburban Zürich a decade ago. I can't remember the last time I saw an owl not on television; no warbler has come within my purview, no seabird or marsh bird within my compass, within the past 4 years, but these omissions are largely my fault, having been largely sedentary while studying. And as for the kingfisher: I have a fleeting memory I saw one once - but that may well have been Ratty sculling Moley and an oar catching the water in a schism of light. Yet the population about the small park, pond and copse fascinate me daily. I wonder at their language, how they live so joyfully, so freely, it seems, even in the iron-hard cold of winter. I can't remember a day that I was not aware of the birds about the place, nor the trees, nor the nature of the sky. They all go hand in hand, part of one's daily consciousness, as sure as waking.
You see, birds take me to a place where the identification of them is not merely that of consulting this book for patterns and plumage, but of a sense of home. I have automatically used the word beautiful several times because every single one of them is beautiful. Birds occupy a place in us which might be shared by many other species for naturalists, but which is common to all of us, amateur home keepers who have a space filled in our mental imagery of these rapid little motes flitting about it. A conception of sky without birds - in a lushly verdant temperate landscape - is a gross abnormality. Birds are part of our consciousness, whether we think about them several times a day, or only every once in a while each year. It is when they are not second nature to us that we love and appreciate them most. The colour they bring, the sense of innocence (even when the sparrowhawk strikes), the song and chatter as we walk out to the car - all these remind us that without birds, the world would be a wrong place. We never just see them as biological entities, but always as life's companions. This shared conception is as ubiquitous as is their presence and variety. I love birds.
Though there are, I admit, some birds I simply cannot tolerate: namely, seagulls. Aside from a grudging respect for an un-showy colouration, there is nothing about them I can stand, not their racket, their bullying presence, nor their scavenging ways. They might be the coastal equivalent of the urban feral pigeon, aka the rats of the skies, but they are graceless thugs, and I don't like them. I cannot think of a single other avian species I feel so strongly against. The rest are lovely. The very sound of a gull makes me want to turn around and drive fast. If I have any negative double-think about any other bird, it is usually that some of them are extremely difficult to identify, hence the book. It was bought 6 years ago because, during a drive into Wales, we stopped to look at a large hawk on the edge of some woodland, but we knew not which kind. On consulting the book, it still could have been any one of a sparrowhawk, goshawk or juvenile buzzard, but from then on, not a sighting of any kind of hawk but the odd distant circling in the high sky.
However, from then on also was that love so familiar but so often unrealised: that tactile gorgeousness of holding a beautiful book in the hands. How often do we feel this during our annual reading? So rarely, I must confess, since buying my books second-hand these days instead of new, that it usually only occurs when I pick up the RSPB Handbook of British Birds, or occasionally (very rarely) a leather-bound gift from a relative. I have a tiny 'Nature' section in a library of two and a half thousand books, this and three books on trees. I get the same feeling every time I pick up one of these books. We could all spout on about the technical excellence of this reference book, but it's all the other, tactile, imagistic, colourful, audial, spatial references it automatically connotes that make it a special individual in a large collection. It communicates as much through the hands as the eyes, and I love that feeling.
Interestingly, while this superb 25th Anniversary anthology of resident and visiting 'British' birds includes images of juveniles - which very often are of drab colouration that makes a lot of them look like adult versions of other similar species, especially in the Corvid (crow) and Turdid (thrush) families and most warbler species - it does not include pictures of the various and often beautiful eggs. I mention this because these beautiful objects feature in the Ladybird books of British birds, and add a certain something to their own beautiful pictures. The pictures in this reference are equally beautiful, but those missing eggs cry out as a somewhat bemusing omission. I can only assume it was to prevent naughty schoolboys from coveting, seeking and stealing them. Perhaps that's for the better.
This is not a book that most people will read cover to cover, but I've pulled it out several times in the past few years. Locally, a small park with a neighbouring pond, there are moorhens (10 times more common than the coot, with roughly the same ubiquitous distribution throughout most of Britain except the Scottish Highlands), lots of corvids, blackbirds and tits, and a couple of robins, bringing enough song from the trees and activity around the two feeding areas front and back. Goldfinches are seen strafing the hedgerows in the lane in summer, and pheasant frequent the park. But there are no visiting schools of long-tailed tits, no noticeable nuthatches or tree creepers, no finch presence, not a peep of a wren - despite the feeder on the back wall - and not a single hawk or falcon has been spotted in the vicinity in the 5 years I've lived here. Admittedly, both feeding sites, the bird feeder and the neighbour who feeds the birds on the lawn in the morning, are both visible from separate windows, but apart from the sparrows and crows, moorhens and blackbirds, and the odd brief smatter of starling, I've never spotted a visiting family of woodpeckers, like I did at my last place, with the feeder directly outside the kitchen window and next to an ash tree, where they chased each other up and down the trunk and branches once, to my utter exhilaration. A whole family of spotted woodpeckers! I'll probably never see the like again.
I didn't know that Scotland had its own species of crossbill, around Inverness, and I'll probably never see a capercaillie outside of a programme on the Highlands. Nor that there was an indigenous species called the twite around western Scotland and Ireland. That the bee-eater and hoopoe visit our south coast when migrating in the transitional seasons. I don't think I've ever seen a linnet, but because the female looks much like a sparrow, I may have seen many in my life. I haven't seen a swift, swallow or martin in five years, but I remember them sweeping up and down our street in the height of summer in suburban Zürich a decade ago. I can't remember the last time I saw an owl not on television; no warbler has come within my purview, no seabird or marsh bird within my compass, within the past 4 years, but these omissions are largely my fault, having been largely sedentary while studying. And as for the kingfisher: I have a fleeting memory I saw one once - but that may well have been Ratty sculling Moley and an oar catching the water in a schism of light. Yet the population about the small park, pond and copse fascinate me daily. I wonder at their language, how they live so joyfully, so freely, it seems, even in the iron-hard cold of winter. I can't remember a day that I was not aware of the birds about the place, nor the trees, nor the nature of the sky. They all go hand in hand, part of one's daily consciousness, as sure as waking.
You see, birds take me to a place where the identification of them is not merely that of consulting this book for patterns and plumage, but of a sense of home. I have automatically used the word beautiful several times because every single one of them is beautiful. Birds occupy a place in us which might be shared by many other species for naturalists, but which is common to all of us, amateur home keepers who have a space filled in our mental imagery of these rapid little motes flitting about it. A conception of sky without birds - in a lushly verdant temperate landscape - is a gross abnormality. Birds are part of our consciousness, whether we think about them several times a day, or only every once in a while each year. It is when they are not second nature to us that we love and appreciate them most. The colour they bring, the sense of innocence (even when the sparrowhawk strikes), the song and chatter as we walk out to the car - all these remind us that without birds, the world would be a wrong place. We never just see them as biological entities, but always as life's companions. This shared conception is as ubiquitous as is their presence and variety. I love birds.
Though there are, I admit, some birds I simply cannot tolerate: namely, seagulls. Aside from a grudging respect for an un-showy colouration, there is nothing about them I can stand, not their racket, their bullying presence, nor their scavenging ways. They might be the coastal equivalent of the urban feral pigeon, aka the rats of the skies, but they are graceless thugs, and I don't like them. I cannot think of a single other avian species I feel so strongly against. The rest are lovely. The very sound of a gull makes me want to turn around and drive fast. If I have any negative double-think about any other bird, it is usually that some of them are extremely difficult to identify, hence the book. It was bought 6 years ago because, during a drive into Wales, we stopped to look at a large hawk on the edge of some woodland, but we knew not which kind. On consulting the book, it still could have been any one of a sparrowhawk, goshawk or juvenile buzzard, but from then on, not a sighting of any kind of hawk but the odd distant circling in the high sky.
However, from then on also was that love so familiar but so often unrealised: that tactile gorgeousness of holding a beautiful book in the hands. How often do we feel this during our annual reading? So rarely, I must confess, since buying my books second-hand these days instead of new, that it usually only occurs when I pick up the RSPB Handbook of British Birds, or occasionally (very rarely) a leather-bound gift from a relative. I have a tiny 'Nature' section in a library of two and a half thousand books, this and three books on trees. I get the same feeling every time I pick up one of these books. We could all spout on about the technical excellence of this reference book, but it's all the other, tactile, imagistic, colourful, audial, spatial references it automatically connotes that make it a special individual in a large collection. It communicates as much through the hands as the eyes, and I love that feeling.
June 25, 2010
I sat listening to a bird in the garden this evening with my friend Jack Daniels. He was singing his heart out (the bird, not Jack) to his unseen mate. It was quite incredible. It started rich and loud then went into a lower register, as if he was afraid that the clash of passionate singing would put her off. Who knows what goes through their little minds? How do birds make love? Maybe she was happily settled on her nest with her own mate and chicks and resented his advances. Maybe she was birdily flirting with him for her own amusement when her provider of worms was away on worming trips. But he seemed serious and undaunted. I think he was simply telling her that he was coming home soon as it was getting dark. A bird’s life is even shorter than ours’, and possibly this was a bird philosopher singing me a minuet on transience. All those other songs going on in the background were white noise to him, and he homed in only on her song, which I could hear ever so faintly out there in the lengthening shadows. Then he flew off to her. The Romeo and Juliet of the bird world lol. And I clearly understood that he’d never stop singing to her, even if she didn’t listen to him, because this was his entire nature.
January 15, 2021
Fantastic book! Would recommend the revised book, because it has information about rare birds that migrate to the UK which are making comebacks in some places.
Information is really detailed and even has a key and map of where about the birds are found in the UK as well as what time of year.
The thing that really made this book is the accurate pictures/drawings of each bird to go with the descriptions.
Would highly recommend for any keen twitcher or anyone looking to get into bird watching/ bird photography.
Information is really detailed and even has a key and map of where about the birds are found in the UK as well as what time of year.
The thing that really made this book is the accurate pictures/drawings of each bird to go with the descriptions.
Would highly recommend for any keen twitcher or anyone looking to get into bird watching/ bird photography.
November 19, 2017
Not entirely sure what the point of this book is. It makes clear it is not a spotters guide, having no identification key, but even if you knew what you were looking, the information offered, whilst systematic, is relatively basic and without any real behavioural colour. It is beautifully illustrated but ultimately a fairly frustrating publication.
June 15, 2023
I like the book but sadly the soundtrack missing
Lovely colour on my phone and android pad but where is the soundtrack for the bird song and calls that were on the original digital version.
Lovely colour on my phone and android pad but where is the soundtrack for the bird song and calls that were on the original digital version.
March 25, 2024
Useful, portable reference.
October 30, 2016
I bought a fantastic bird book from a charity shop for 80p (the complete birdwatchers guide), but it was terribly damaged by water from a leaky window. I decided to go digital and shopped around a bit. This book has nice clear illustrations and gallons and gallons of facts, an added bonus are snippets of birdsong at the start of each description – on my kindle it was possible to replay these in the field. It is easy to read on the kindle and not to difficult to find the information you need. It really has everything you need from a bird book and being digital makes it easy to take out and about. My husband has it downloaded on his android phone, it is not as easy to read as on the kindle but it does mean that we are rarely caught without it. I do miss, though, flicking trough a hard back book, I can flick through on the kindle of course, but it is not quite the same.
February 13, 2014
This is the latest edition of the British Bird handbook. Once again the RSPB have done a fantastic job of providing a clear, concise guide to the birds you are likely to encounter in the British Isles.
Each bird is beautifully illustrated with detailed information about their appearance, habits, diet, call, conservation status, how to find them and more.
If you are a birdwatcher this book is indispensable. The book is a little too large to take out into the field which is why the RSPB have also produced a smaller pocket version with slightly fewer birds featured for taking out on field trips (this is also excellent)
Each bird is beautifully illustrated with detailed information about their appearance, habits, diet, call, conservation status, how to find them and more.
If you are a birdwatcher this book is indispensable. The book is a little too large to take out into the field which is why the RSPB have also produced a smaller pocket version with slightly fewer birds featured for taking out on field trips (this is also excellent)
October 17, 2012
Very clear, concise guide to the birds of Britain.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews