A year of birds

THERE will be some who will dismiss Dominic Couzens’s latest offering A Bird a Day as a novelty book, an extended calendar of seemingly random birds, images and facts. Those that go beyond that and delve deeper into the 365 chosen entries might be surprised, though, and as the author hopes, be “encouraged and inspired to look at birds whenever and wherever they can”.

At first glance the entries may appear disjointed – there can’t be too many bird books in which Marsh Warbler and Great Auk appear on opposite pages, for example. In the main, though,

Couzens’s teasing, fragmentary entries lighting up moments of each chosen species, be it their reproductive lives or relevance in our culture, provide context for the association of bird and day. There are a few incongruous entries, the obvious winter

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