RSPB Handbook of Scottish Birds

by Peter Holden, Stuart Housden

In this new book, the text, maps and plates of the bestselling RSPB Handbook of British Birds have been adapted to create a brand new book specific to Scotland and its rich birdlife. Over 250 species are covered in detail with a page per species. The species accounts include concise information on identification, voice, habits, habitat, food, breeding ecology, seasonal movements, population and conservation. Detailed maps have been specially created to show distribution when breeding, wintering or on migration. Superb colour illustrations from some of the world's leading artists have been integrated into the text for easy reference.

Genres: Nonfiction, Birds, Nature, Wildlife, Reference, Scotland

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 2009

Reviews

[Leon McNair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Handbook of Scottish Birds

A finely illustrated guidebook on the common-sighting areas and habitats of the birds that stay in Scotland or migrate and visit there during the Winter and Summer periods, with brief reports on each bird's protected and conservational status in Scotland, including explanations of the markers from their calls, plumage, wing-span, or shape and size, used to identify birds whilst in flight or in social groups. The sections for the voice of bird calls, songs, or alarms, are done phonetically and are a bit of a hit-or-miss without an audio file.

[Giki · Rating 5 out of 5]

How many nearly identical bird books does one person need to own....don't answer that question.... I like the style and layout of the RSPB handbooks, I find then instinctive to use and the information is clearly presented and concise. I have the DK RSPB Birds of Britain and Europe also, and the Handbook of British birds on the kindle. Whilst the kindle format is handy as I nearly always have it with me anyway, and you can play the calls and songs in the field straight from the device, I find it slower to look up and I just find it easier to flick through a real book than navigate an ebook.
This book is less robustly bound than The Birds of Britain and Europe and does not come with the cd of birdsong that the other has, but who has a cd player these days anyway, youtube is my favorite resource for bird song now.
It is a much slimmer book also - with fewer birds in it, so much easier to find exactly what you are looking for. The distribution maps are much larger too, which really helps with identification and then information on seasonality etc is much more precise as a vastly smaller area is covered. Most of my birdwatching is done in Scotland so this suits very well and is now my go to bird book. The concise one bird to a page layout with excellent drawings makes it very easy to use.

[Malcolm Morrison]

i should say that i’ve only read about 1/4 of this book; as in, i’ve read the full descriptions, taxonomy etc for 1/4 of the book but the rest i pretty much treated as a picture book (which tbh is how i think it’s supposed to be read) because all of the fun i felt whilst reading came from looking at borbs and comparing their differences to other borbs in my mind, rather than spending 80% of the time spent per page on population densities and migration patterns.

i’m going to keep it in my bag at all times though so it there’s ever a small pocket of time which i can fill with something better than scrolling on instagram, i can default to this book :)

also note to self to keep a supply of nuts in bag for feeding squirrels at lunch