Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 90
A Nature Book Reader
JONATHAN NEWDICK
Jonathan Newdick is an artist and writer
The Birds of the British Isles
and their Eggs by T.A. Coward
This little classic from 1920
was written by a man who
was not only a respected
authority on birds but who
also possessed a love of and a
delight in his subject and who
had the added qualification
of being able to write lyrical
prose. When combined
with Archibald Thorburn’s
atmospheric watercolours
of the species described the
result is a work that would
have greater value to me than
the Bible or Shakespeare if I
were ever to be invited to the
BBC’s fabled desert island.
You just do not find this
level of joy and humility in
today’s bird books, dealing
as they do with ‘natural
history’ while Birds was all
about ‘nature study’. The
Oxford Birds of the Western
Palearctic is all very well,
90
and a commendable piece of
scholarship but its volumes
are dense and tedious – you
get the impression that its
contributors never actually
enjoyed writing them and
they gather dust on a high
shelf. Coward and Thorburn,
however, are ever with me and
part of the reason is that you
can tell that these men worked
with an enthusiastic love of
nature – and that is another
way of saying a love of life.
Further Reading
The Fishes of the
British Isles
by J.Travis Jenkins
The Butterflies of the
British Isles
by Richard South
