Book, Binocular and Clothing Reviews - A Vulture Landscape

Publisher’s View:

A Vulture Landscape is more than just a book about vultures, in the same way that these majestic flyers are more than just birds. Vultures are a crucial part of many of the world’s ecosystems, and without these specialist environmental cleansers the ecosystems wouldn’t work properly. A calendar year in the lives of these gargantuan raptors is explored as they live, breed, feed and fly with effortless ease across the skies of the vulture landscape that is Extremadura in central Spain.

There are four species of vulture in Europe, and a fifth that is becoming more of a regular visitor as its own global population plummets. The serious conservation issues faced on a day-to-day basis by these species, and their relatives spread across the globe, are explored, issues that in many cases threaten their very survival. However, A Vulture Landscape is a celebration of the vulture and the landscape in which it reigns.

Using the latest science, his keen eye and his passion for the birds themselves, the author takes the reader on a journey, introducing readers to the vultures, their lives and their landscape. Along the way, much of the other wonderful wildlife of the vulture landscape, from exotic Bee-eaters and bewitching Montagu’s Harriers to rutting Red Stags as well as some very excitable cattle, are included. Ian explains how watching vultures is not only addictive, but that it can often lead to vulture gazing.

With his fine descriptions, readers can enter the world of the vulture, get to know these brilliant birds and learn how they control diseases that threaten us, why some species have bald necks, as well as how they have mastered the art of flying without expending any energy.

The Author:

Ian Parsons has spent several years living permanently in Extremadura and now splits his time between his native county of Devon and his beloved vulture landscape, where he leads bird tours introducing people to the birds and the area he clearly loves.

Other Views:

‘Photographs that could grace a glossy coffee-table book are matched with authoritative, up-to-date text in a guide small enough to pop in your backpack If you are a natural-history buff who dreams of seeing this amazing island, Garbutt just might tip you off the couch and stir you into action.’ BBC Wildlife (May 2007)

Fatbirder View:

I need to predicate what I am about to say with a thoroughgoing recommendation… this book is a great read. Yes, it’s about a place and its birds and is accurate and informative, but above all it’s a text that is a love affair with birds, nature and wild places. I’ve read hundreds of books by birders, some are scientifically accurate, some a well-paced romp about a hunt for rarities, some literate and eloquent, some, sadly, none of those things. This is among the very best because it really is beautifully written. I’ve also read hundreds of reviews telling me how well written badly written books are! Make no mistake, whether he knows it or not, Ian is a writer (and I don’t give higher praise than that) among birders who write. Every paragraph painted a scene well enough for me to feel the sun’s heat on my back and the ubiquitous call of hoopoes.

As a book there are, I feel, shortcomings. They have nothing to do with the writing. Most are about design. The book is an odd format… I assume to accommodate larger photos. However, what it does is actually use the whole page so seldom that a smaller format with photos on a whole page would have worked and meant less text on page… on such large pages with the print size used its easy to lose your place on a page. The photographic reproduction is rather dull, so photos appear quite flat. For me a more compact but fatter book sits much more comfortably in the hand… and most people do not sit at a table to read.

I hope the publisher takes this critique in the spirit it is intended, not least as they intend to publish my next book!

Buy this book from NHBS

Fatbirder