All birdlife is here

摘要

When I was a child, my parents subscribed to an encyclopedia of birds. In weekly instalments, this slowly revealed the diversity and splendour of the avian world. I was very happy to find that The World of Birds from the Natural History Museum looks like its direct literary descendant. The book reminds me how even the most familiar birds are full of surprises. Owls, for example -surely some of the most easily recognisable feather-bearers - turn out to have a surprisingly opaque evolutionary history. Their closest relation is a small and obscure family of fruit-eating birds from Africa. By glorious irony, given the diet of most owls, these avian cousins are known as mousebirds.