Getting to Know the Birds in Your Neighbourhood: A Field Guide by Darryl Jones

On the fifth day of Christmas, here’s a perect gift idea for the bird lover in your life.

This is a fabulous book for those of you who are beginning to twitch like twitchers, searching the ground, scrub, trees and sky for the source of that bird call you don’t recognise.

While we have displaced or destroyed much of the native mammal life around cities, the birds still offer a noisy and vibrant landscape, despite the loss, in cities, of many small species such as fairy wrens.

When you stop to observe birds – their habits, their behaviours, relationships, their calls, their relation to other species – you realise their lives are far more complex than you thought.

And all this is going on around us as we carry on our lives in urban and suburban Australian cities.

In fact, this book only covers birds in the top 20 cities in Australia, from Sydney to Albury-Wodonga.

It’s gorgeously illustrated and presents information in an easily readable format.

If there’s no other bird book you ever get, this will be the one that satisfies your need to know about our feathered friends.

And it’s a great Christmas gift for the budding twitcher!