Bird Brain of Britain
Bird Brain of Britain
by Charles Gallimore & Tim Appleton, Illustrated by John Cox. Helm August 2004 £7.99p ISBN
0713670363
Over the last 12 years the Bird Brain of Britain contest has been a feature of the British Bird Fair events…
whereby a panel chosen by the organisers have taken part in a Mastermind type quiz with Bill Oddie acting as quizmaster; it is
he who wrote the foreword to this book, which is essentially a collection of questions [and answers] from the quiz from 1992 until
2003. It is illustrated with cartoons throughout.
Just like Mastermind
the quiz [and the questions in the book] are split between specialisms and birding general knowledge. I am sure that there
will be groups of birders who will enjoy testing themselves and each other on winter nights and days when birding is precluded by the
weather. I would be very surprised if this book didn`t find its way into a great many Christmas stockings this year! Many a Christmas
morning will find fellow nerds boring their families with birding trivia and not a few birders will be as perplexed by the specialist
questions as their non-birding relatives will be by the more general birding knowledge sections.
Maybe the organizers of the
BBF might like to set a challenge – why not get bird clubs up and down the country to organize similar contests [entrant`s fees going
to good causes] so that future BBF`s could have a real quiz at the end; four finalists from regional heats rather than one with
invited participants?
Fatbirder
Created: 30th Aug 2004
