Beahaviour books (1 Viewer)

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to learn as much as possible about birds and I'm looking for a book about bird behauviour, I mean, a book that explains why and how they behave.

Any recommendation?

The wisdom of birds

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Bir...wisdom+of+birds&qid=1579547850&s=books&sr=1-1

"The World of Birds" by Jonathan Elphick (published by The Natural History Museum) is a good introduction to the biology and behaviour of birds and has a good overview of all the bird families of the world.

There is also a shorter version of the same text covering only the biology and behaviour bit, "Birds: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Behaviour" by Jonathan Elphick (also published by The Natural History Museum).

I'll take a look to those two. Thank you guys!

Another vote for The Wisdom of Birds. You can’t do better as a starting point.. . ..

This monograph on British Tits is a good read and can be picked up cheaply.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Tits-Collins-New-Naturalist/dp/0002195372

There is also the big, collectible set of Poyser volumes, each dedicated to a single species or family, examples below.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=poyser+monographs&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Here's another for you

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Understand...s=9781472912060&qid=1580568848&s=books&sr=1-1

Thank you guys, I'll start with the wisdom of birds and then follow with the other recomendations.

It's not exactly cheap (library loan?) but maybe Cornell's Handbook of Bird Biology?

Bird Behaviour - "The World of Birds" - my review

andreadawn said:

"The World of Birds" by Jonathan Elphick (published by The Natural History Museum) is a good introduction to the biology and behaviour of birds and has a good overview of all the bird families of the world.

There is also a shorter version of the same text covering only the biology and behaviour bit, "Birds: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Behaviour" by Jonathan Elphick (also published by The Natural History Museum).

Click to expand...

I've just finished reading this book. I've read it from cover to cover over the last few months.

Overall it's got lots of information & seems to focus very much on Europe & North America where possible - especially in the first half.

The level of detail is quite varied which can be a little frustrating. I'm not quite sure the audience that's intended - as it's not at the level of a scientific text (e.g. no references), but in places quite difficult to follow.

Although there are lots of very nice photographs, there are quite a few places in the book where they seem to link to the text or vice versa. For example there is quite a detailed explanation in the bird families about Bearded Tits (3 paragraphs which is a lot for that section) but the photograph on that page is of a different bird. There are places in the text where some more careful proof reading would have helped (references to incorrect pages for example).

Overall I enjoyed what I learned from the book but found it quite hard going -- lots of information but not much narrative to bring the information to life.