THE LONDON BIRD ATLAS

Ian Woodward, Richard Arnold, Neil Smith, London Natural History Society & John Beaufoy Publishing £39.99

This hefty but very handsome volume brings together years of research and bird records for the whole of Greater London, as well as parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent and Surrey, with detailed species accounts including distribution and abundance maps, graphs and excellent colour photography making up the bulk of its 416 pages. A total of 370 species have been recorded in the area covered, and just under 200 of them are covered here, so the range is impressive, and even fairly casual browsing is enough to reveal the changing state of the capital's birdlife over many years. There's some discussion of this in the introductory sections, as well as plenty of useful information on the London Natural History Society (the book was put together by members of the London Bird Club, part of the LNHS). It is undoubtedly going to be an absolutely essential reference tool for any birdwatcher living in Greater London, but it's also rewarding reading for anyone who birds there rather more infrequently (as I do myself). It can be difficult, as an outsider, to get a clear picture of the geography of some of the species' distribution simply from the maps, but then this isn't a 'where to see' guide, and it does the job it did set out to do admirably. It's not going too far to say that this is something of a landmark publication – an area as populous and thus well birded as this deserves a comprehensive and meticulous overview, and that's exactly what this is.