Birds in England (Poyser Country Avifaunas) [Hardcover]

In a nutshell it's a collection of the histories of all the birds found in England since records began. A collation of English bird reports' species accounts together with analyses of scientific papers, surveys, population estimates and conservation issues concerning those species.

Sections include:

1. Introduction

2. The composition and character of the English avifauna

3. Bird habitats in England

4. Introduction to the species accounts

Species accounts

Stop Press: Birds in England January 1st 2001 to April 2004

Appendix I Annotated check-list of birds in England: population, conservation and legal status (with accompanying notes)

Appendix II Calculation of breeding estimates for England for selected species based on 'number of squares' method

Appendix III Scientific names of non-bird species named in the text

References

Index

Truly an epic tome in physical size and the breadth of its coverage! It will take more than a skim through to properly review this book.

I rarely start book reviews by giving my opinion of the tome in question - but I'll make this review the exception. On the surface this may look to be a stuffy book full of boring statistics, but if I had to get rid of all but ten of my British bird books, then this would definitely be one of those to remain. It is a hefty volume at over 2kg and 694 pages, detailing the status in England of 543 species recorded up to the end of 2000. Indeed it is the first attempt to confine a detailed assessment solely to England rather than Britain or the UK - but while being patriotic is fine, you don't have to wear and England shirt to admire this book.

There are three previous T & A D Poyser titles in this series covering Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and they are all written purely from a birder's perspective. However, this book has a much stronger conservation theme, and will become an essential reference to ornithologists as well as birders. It draws particularly from national surveys and ongoing monitoring projects, using data from county bird reports to add local a flavour.

The species texts vary in length from about 30-50 words for extreme vagrants, 100-250 words for rarities, while regularly occurring species and breeders are discussed in lengthy passages of up to 2000 words. Priority is also given to birds of the greatest conservation concern, again underlining the conservation emphasis that makes this such an important contribution to our literature. An extensive bibliography runs to 47 pages and indicates the extent to which this book draws on everything that has been published elsewhere.

Often I skip a book's introduction in order to get into the main text, but at 125 pages it is, in itself, a major assessment of the factors affecting England's birds. This includes descriptions of the typical habitats and significant changes in history that have allowed birds to increase, or forced them to decrease. In so many ways this is a depressing read as again and again one learns of the continuing decline of so many of our breeding species, and our apparent inability to reverse these trends.

Although the conservation and ecology themes dominate much of what has been written this is also a book for those birders whose interest drives them more in search of passage migrants and rarities. Real attempts have been made to describe the migration patterns of those species that only use England as a stop-over, and much of this information has been drawn from county bird reports.

On a national level the data used would appear to be faultless, although I suspect that on a more local scale it has been more challenging to draw together draw together a cohesive picture of trends using information from county bird reports. Many tables list the apparent trends in each county for important species, but as a Hampshire birder I turned first to the text on Dartford Warbler and saw that much recent information on this species from our local bird report was overlooked.

Also, it is a shame that despite speedy publication of the recent BBRC annual reports, rarities seen in 2001-2004 have only included in an appendix. It would surely not have been a big task to include some of these in the main text, although their absence does not reduce the book's value.

The two authors are both professional ornithologists working for English Nature, whose logo proudly adorns the cover. The book took nine years to reach completion, and would appear to have not suffered as a result of its long gestation. This is an essential reference and at a cover price which clearly makes it one of the best value-for-money books in my library.