A bird book that ticks all the boxes

FOR the weekend birder, the peripatetic birder (the travelling salesman, say) or the twitcher, Finding Birds in Ireland, The Complete Guide, by Dempsey and O’Clery is the book to buy.

For the bird-widow or widower, glad to see the back of their twitching partner for whole days at a time, there is no Christmas present they could better give them.

The guide — a mind-boggling achievement in the amount of information it contains, and the amount of research it entailed — will send even the most knowledgeable ‘tick’-pursuer to wetlands, forests, moorlands and seashores new, for it gives directions to every place in every county in Ireland where one may see birds.