Book, Binocular and Clothing Reviews - Tales From Concrete Jungles

Tales From Concrete Jungles

The Publisher’s View: When you think about going birdwatching, you imagine visiting magnificent open countryside, rolling hills, lush woodland or waterlogged marshes. You don’t think of towns and cities. In fact, the urban environment is surprisingly rich in birds: parks, gardens, scrubland, lakes and reservoirs all harbour many species of birds. Some town gardens even have bigger lists of birds than country gardens. David Lindo has brought urban birding back into the public consciousness, promoting its virtues at every opportunity and writing about it in the birding press. He urges people to look up when walking around in cities, or to stop and close your eyes in a busy street just to listen to the birds that may be singing.

Since 2006, a long-running series of articles has appeared in Birdwatching magazine, showcasing David visiting a wide variety of cities in Britain and Europe and the birds he has encountered on these short city breaks. These articles are collected here for the first time; most of them are expanded with new material, but a few never before published are also featured. They cover visits to many cities throughout the world and these cities are surprisingly different, with striking variations even between cities in Britain. Each urban centre has its own personality and this is reflected in the people that David meets and the birds that he sees.

Tales from Concrete Jungles is not a compendium of birding sites within many of the world’s cities. It is a series of adventures featuring birds and inspiring stories. Along the way, David meets some amazing conservationists whose commitment to urban wildlife conservation, no matter how small their projects are, is unwavering. Their work and successes are celebrated within the pages of Tales from Concrete Jungles. Above all, it is hoped that Tales from Concrete Jungles will inspire you to look at cities with different eyes and realise that is is probably more important to spread the conservation message here than anywhere else in the world. But it will also inspire you open your eyes wherever you are, and to appreciate the diversity of wildlife to be found in our urban environments.

The Author: David Lindo is the Urban Birder. He has passionately promoted the virtues of birding in the urban environment at every opportunity, and especially through frequent articles in the birding press and on his appearances on television and radio. He was brought up in London and has been a birder all his life. His first book, The Urban Birder, chronicled his transformation from baby birder to fully-fledged superstar of the urban birding world.

Fatbirder View: I’ve often wondered whether urban birding was more dangerous than the rural kind and David answers that question early on in the book. As always he demonstrates that you don’t have to be in wild and remote places to see birds and his own aphorism that ‘anything can turn up anywhere’ is proven over and again. An enjoyable and informative read.

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