Good Birder?

Oh I wanted to love this book so much, but in the end it just didn't grab me.

A set of 50 short essays, with tips for birders, the promise of expert advice and humour, it felt tailer-made for me. I knew from the outset that this was a North American book, and therefore had that constant viewpoint, so I can't complain about it for that. 

But what I think my issue was with... There just seemed a lack of passion. A few of the essays managed to convey a love of the subject, but too much of it seemed a sort of academic treatment, or very much written by a 'lister' (despite a couple of essays describing the virtues of not listing, other seemed to use it as an opportunity to simply go through their best finds), and with only a few moments of self-deprecating humour (we 'are' a bit of a funny bunch us birders - though in the UK I'd say 'birder' is an intermediate stage before 'twitcher').

And that's before factoring in the overlap between some of the essays, and the dashed hope of interesting snippets of ideas that I hadn't thought of until now.

The illustrations were great though....