Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 82
A Nature Book Reader
STEPHEN MOSS
Stephen Moss is a television producer specialising in British wildlife
The Shell Bird Book by James Fisher
Choosing my favourite nature
book – the one I would take to
the proverbial desert island
– is really tough. How do
you compare a great field
guide with a single-species
monograph, or a personal
memoir with the mammoth
Handbook of Birds of the
World? (If I could cheat, and
take all 16 volumes, that
would be my top choice)! But
when I came to pick my top
three it wasn’t all that hard
after all. They were all books
I read when young, and all
were written in the 1950s
and ’60s, just before I began
birding. At number three, the
novel Adventure Lit Their
Star, by Kenneth Allsop, is
particularly dear to me, as its
hero is the little ringed plover,
one of my favourite birds.
Moreover its setting, on the
western outskirts of London,
is where I cut my own birding
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teeth. If you haven’t come
across it, do seek it out: a truly
charming read. At number
two is Wild America, a ripping
account of a whistle-stop tour
of North America in the early
1950s, written by Britain and
America’s leading birders
of their day.And at number
one another book by the
Attenborough of his time,
James Fisher. The Shell Bird
Book is my top read because
it is so many books - a history,
catalogue, celebration, and
endlessly fascinating account
of Britain’s birds and our
obsession with them , all rolled
into one – simply wonderful.
Further Reading
Wild America by James
Fisher and Roger Tory Peterson
Adventure Lit Their
Star by Kenneth Allsop
