One of the first birds I can recall seeing in Europe was a Common Buzzard seen from the window of a train traveling between Frankfurt and Nuremberg. I recall being filled with excitement – as I was then an avid lister – as it allowed me to add a new country to my life list records.
Examining the recently published The Common Buzzard monograph by Sean Walls and Robert Kenward from T & AD Poyser for his most recent Sunday Book Review, Mark Avery seems to have been a little less than excited in what he found in its pages. Not that he found it to be a poorly researched book, mind you; quite the contrary, in fact. “This is a book which is packed with information and if you seek a better understanding of this species then this is the place to start” he explains. “But I think the book is better on the facts than the explanations.”
I’ll leave it to you to read the rest of Mark’s assessment of the book for yourself.
Links to Mark Avery’s Sunday book reviews appear in The Well-read Naturalist by special arrangement. You can find all of Mark’s past reviews as well as a wide-ranging collection of his other writings on his Standing Up for Nature website. Mark’s opinions regarding the books he reviews are his own.
