Birds
Peter Menkhorst reviews 'What Birdo Is That? A field guide to bird people' by Libby Robin
Eminent ecological historian Libby Robin has produced a curious book that examines the changing interests and roles played by those Australians who ‘notice birds and feel they need our help’. She aims to examine the rise of the nature conservation movement in Australia, using ‘Australia’s bird-people’ as a sample of Australians with a love of nature.
... (read more)James Bradley reviews 'Birdscapes: Birds in our imagination and experience' by Jeremy Mynott
Jeremy Mynott begins his capacious and disarming new book with a dedication to his wife, the author Dianne Speakman. ‘In all our twenty-five or so years together,’ he writes, ‘I have never yet succeeded in persuading her to take the slightest interest in birds. This is my best and last shot.’ Any ornithophile knows this feeling: the regret that his sense of wonderment remains for the most part private, something that others regard as slightly weird or ridiculous.
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