Bearded Tit: Confessions of a Birdwatcher

Well this was an unexpected pleasure. This charming little book is about Rory McGrath's adventures in birdwatching. No, stop yawning, this is actually a very funny, informative and in the end quite touching book. McGrath takes us from his days at Cambridge, where his fascination with a girl in the local bookshop leads him to learn all the Latin names of the birds of Britain to impress her. He falls head over heels for her but it all ends badly and then there's a leap forward of 25 years or so and we catch up with him again with his second wife and their forays into the world of ‘twitching'.

McGrath also ropes in his chain-smoking, hard drinking friend, Danny, to try and get him to stop smoking and take up bird-watching instead. Easy to read, wittily written and with loads of really quite informative stuff on British birds, this is well worth a read. There's even a twist at the end which reveals McGrath to be an inveterate romantic.

Recommended.