ornithology
The amazing aerial acrobatics of swifts
Over the course of one midsummer’s day, Mark Cocker presents a startling picture of the breeding, feeding, fledging and migrating habits of these little dynamos of life
It’s a miracle this exhibition even exists: Audubon’s Birds of America reviewed
In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…
Bird migration is no longer a mystery — but it will always seem a miracle
Bird migration was once one of those unassailable mysteries that had baffled humankind since Aristotle. A strange hypothesis, genuinely advanced…
Will seagulls become as scary as Hitchcock’s The Birds?
Little Toller Books, in Dorset, aims to publish old and new writing on nature by the very best writers and…
The sacred chickens that ruled the roost in ancient Rome
Even the most cursory glance at the classical period reveals the central place that birds played in the religious and…
The most bizarre museum heist ever
They don’t look like a natural pair. First there’s the author, Kirk Wallace Johnson, a hero of America’s war in…
The swallows that herald spring
Sweet lovers, Shakespeare reminds us, love the spring. How can they not? All that wonderfully wanton colour, all that sensual…
Mozart’s mischievous muse
If you were to compare Mozart to a bird it wouldn’t be the starling. Possibly the wood thrush or nightingale,…
Enraptured by raptors
The fewer birds there are, the more books about them, particularly of the literary kind. Helen MacDonald’s H is for…
Jan Moir’s diary: In search of the female Viagra
Down here in west Cornwall, the days are long and summer is on the wing. Like the Tories in Scotland,…
New ways to destroy the world
Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost…
What's eating London's songbirds?
This book, with its absurdly uninformative photographs, dismal charts and smattering of charmless drawings, looks like a report. A pity,…
Falling in love with birds of prey
Is it the feathers that do the trick? The severely truculent expressions on their faces? Or is it their ancient…
Toowit-towoo! At long last, a Collins book on owls
Owls have more associations for us than perhaps any other family of birds, suggested Jeremy Mynott in Birdscapes, so it…
