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Birdscape by Bruce Pearson and Robert Burton, Harper Collins, pp 160,
£15.95

Conservationists have shifted their focus from species to the habitats
critical for their survival. Bruce Pearson and Robert Burton have aptly
coined the word ‘birdscape’, the title of a new Channel 4 series and accompanying
book, to marry the two: bird and landscape.

Pearson looks at the combination with an artist’s eye: the effects of
light, time of day and season on the plumage and behaviour of his avian
subjects. Burton, biologist and writer, describes the ecological interactions
between species and habitat. The two visit six of Britain’s best bird watching
sites and together they weave a visual and verbal story shown in the six
episodes of the television series and the corresponding chapters of the
book.

Readers and viewers begin in the ‘avian Serengeti’ of the East Anglian
fens where ‘eels were almost a unit of currency’, and we learn about swans
and ducks and the black-tailed godwit. Then it’s on to the red kite country
of Wales, and the oak woodlands that are the summer home to the migrant
insect eaters: pied flycatcher, wood warbler, redstart and tree pipit.

The Flow country in Scotland is the next stop with its specialist waders:
dunlin and greenshank, and British rarities, wood sandpiper, red-necked
phalarope and Temminck’s stint. There is a taste of the Cornish cliffs to
view the magnificent peregrine falcon, and to catch between hunting bouts
the ravens, jackdaws, fulmars and gulls.

The Dorset heaths follow, ‘perhaps the most exquisite of the six landscapes’,
along with their special heathland birds: nightjar, Dartford warbler and
hobby. The final destination for the painter and writer is North Norfolk
to find out what has happened to the barn owl in one of its remaining British
strongholds.

Birdscape is illustrated throughout by Pearson’s paintings and sketches,
which capture beautifully the mood of the scene and the activity of the
birds. His art is characterised by soft colours and subtle light that together
create a tranquil effect. Burton’s complementary text is full of detail,
anecdote, comment and quotation-even Winnie the Pooh gets in somehow.

There are little gems scattered throughout: for example, the differences
between falcons, hawks and eagles simply explained (a small digression while
describing the peregrine), a reminder of the derivation of the name ‘Plantagenet’
from Planta genista (the broom plant to be found on the Dorset heaths),
and local sayings such as ‘Any fool can appreciate mountain scenery but
it takes a man of discernment to appreciate the Fens.’

Overall, the book is a pleasing vignette of some of Britain’s most diverse
birdscapes. But to dismiss it as nothing more would be misleading. There
is a central theme to the book, namely the appalling destruction and mismanagement
of our countryside.

The devastation of the Flow country, our last great wilderness, is described
in Burton’s heartfelt lament as perhaps the most massive single loss of
British wildlife habitat since the Second World War. It is particularly
shocking to discover that when Thomas Hardy was writing a century ago, the
Dorset heaths covered more than 20,000 hectares; today only a fragmented
1700 hectares survive.

Many losses result from less spectacular and obvious changes. The drive
by farmers to profit from every scrap of land has taken the plough to the
edge of many a Cornish cliff, and this loss of wild land contributes to
the demise of the chough.

The barn owl, which has been driven back into linear habitats, such
as roadside hedges, river banks or the uncultivated borders of fields, has
declined as even these remnants are destroyed by modern agricultural practice
and degraded by the overzealous use of pesticides.

Despite its interesting juxtaposition of complementary images from art
and text, the book does not offer any novel insights or assessments. Its
main appeal is likely to reflect the extent to which the television series,
with its third dimension of immediacy, succeeds in involving the viewer.
If it achieves this, many may buy the book as a reminder of the images that
they have seen and the conversations they have heard.

Alison Stattersfield is a research officer with the international Council
for Bird Preservation.