The Role Of Birds In World War Two

How Ornithology Helped To Win The War

Nicholas Milton

Pen & Sword, 224 pages, £25

It’s no coincidence that the most famous song from the Second World War features birds. Vera Lynn sang the inspirational words anticipating an Allied victory: there would be “bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover”.

The way that birds inspired people or kept them going during the dark days of war is a recurring theme of ornithologist and historian Nicholas

Milton’s book. Field Marshal Alanbrooke watched and filmed birds to help him cope with the stress he was under; three

British inmates of Singapore’s notorious Changi Prison wrote a secret bird book to distract themselves; and birds may even have inspired the design of the Spitfire. On a wider scale, one of the most popular wartime publications was

Watching Birds by James Fisher, which sold three million copies.

Occasionally, birds participated in the war directly. Messenger pigeons were sometimes the only means of communication available, and certain birds performed so heroically – bringing a vital message home against terrible odds – that they were decorated. Another theme of the book is the way in which wartime activities affected the population of some bird species. Flooding the East Anglia shoreline to deter invasion brought the avocet back to the UK, while peregrines were shot in large numbers to stop them attacking Allied messenger pigeons.

This intriguing and thought-provoking title explores the links between birds and many aspects of the conflict, from the home front to the front line.

EH Ware wrote a book about the birds he saw while he was in the RAF