COUNTRY LIFE
Bird Watching If anyone should have been surprised to hear that curiosity about birds was something of a modern phenomenon I would advise him to spend sixpence on a new Pelican, Watching Birds, by James Fisher, secretary to the British Trust for Ornithology, of which I hope to say something more another week. There he will find the bird-lover's case, in its aesthetic, biological, eco- nomic, historical and various other aspects, so admirably put that I think it can hardly be overpraised. About twenty and twenty-five times as expensive, yet by no means proportionately important, the late R. G. Walmsley's Winged Company (Eyre and Spottiswoode) and Richard Perry's Lundy, Isle of Puffins (Lindsay Drummond) are admirable supplements, both more specialised in subject, the one dealing with 550 British birds, the other mostly with guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills, cormorants and puffins. Both have just appeared. In Mr. Perry the modern attitude is seen to perfection : patience, exactitude, keen and tireless documentation, and a fine sensibility, reflected in some excellent prose. Mr. Perry also scores with some first-class pictures, the only point on which Mr. Fisher's book may be said, perhaps inevitably at the price, to fail.
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