Take flight with superb nature books

TWO new, outstanding nature books from Gill & Macmillan arrived in the post this week.

The first, The Complete Field Guide to Ireland’s Birds, written by Eric Dempsey and illustrated by Michael O’Clery, is perfectly timed to coincide with autumn migrations. Birds are on the move – our summer visitors going south, our winter visitors arriving from northern Europe and North America. We may wake to find a rarity in our garden.

If such a feathered phenomenon should visit us – saving us the cost of seeking it abroad – this volume will not only help to identify it but tell us something of its story. Some 420 species are described, all the birds we see commonly, occasionally or only rarely in Ireland.