Around the World in 80 Birds

by Mike Unwin, Ryuto Miyake

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 224
Rating:

Synopsis:

This beautiful and inspiring book tells the stories of 80 birds around the world: from the Sociable Weaver Bird in Namibia which constructs huge, multi-nest 'apartment blocks' in the desert, to the Bar-headed Goose of China, one of the highest-flying migrants which crosses the Himalayas twice a year.

Many birds come steeped in folklore and myth, some are national emblems and a few have inspired scientific revelation or daring conservation projects. Each has a story to tell that sheds a light on our relationship with the natural world and reveals just how deeply birds matter to us.

Around the World in 80 Birds features text by Mike Unwin and illustrations by Ryuto Miyake. The illustrations are, as typical for this series, beautifully done and brightly coloured. I feel like they’re a bit more… exact to life, less inclined to fill up the page with fanciful designs, than in some of the other volumes of this series — the birds are generally accurately represented, sometimes with scenes where they interact with human landscapes, etc, but it felt a bit less exuberant than some.

As for the stories about each bird, it’s much like the other volumes as well: each bird is given a page, or sometimes two pages, of text explaining the significance of the bird. It doesn’t feel super organised in some ways: less of a sense of a structure of “here are the birds on [continent]” than some of the others in the series (which makes some sense because birds can have such huge ranges, but you could come up with some organising principle like where birds breed or where the largest populations live, or types of terrain they frequent). It’s hard sometimes to know what prompts the inclusion of one bird over another.

Overall, a beautiful and interesting book.

Rating: 3/5