Birds Britannica

by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey

Birds Britannica is an encyclopedic work and it’s arranged on a taxonomic basis, so it treats each bird both as part of a family and individually. Each entry has a little history of the part that bird has played in our culture. It’s a wonderful book of stories about these birds, which also gives you a lot of good scientific information about them. If you want one reference work on the shelf, this is the one I’d recommend.