Book Review

The Birds at My Table: Why We Feed Wild Birds and Why It Matters

By D. Jones

2018, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney

pp. 352

Price AUD $27.99, ISBN 9781742235974

Professor Darryl Jones has been investigating the interactions between birds and people for over 30 years. He has published a litany of scientific papers, but more recently he has focused on books, his books include: Feeding the Birds at Your Table and Getting To Know the Birds in Your Neighbourhood: A Field Guide; and Curlews on Vulture Street: Cities, Birds, People & Me; all are from NewSouth Publishing. His expertise in urban birds and their interactions with people makes him the correct choice for books on feeding birds at his table or your table.

This book’s subtitle succinctly tells us what this book is about ‘Why we feed wild birds and why it matters’. Yet the book is much more than that. It explores, rather deeply, the complex human activity of feeding birds; it also makes a serious attempt to understand why. Thus the book’s aim is to explore the what and how, and explain the why. Along the way it also provides a complex history of bird feeding. Other critically important questions addressed are: it is safe to feed birds – and how to do it correctly.

The book opens with a critical preface, which acts as an introduction to the book. It answers many questions before you get into the body of the book. The book is split into nine detailed chapters. Abbreviating them by function they are: Why bird feeding matters; The history of bird feeding; Winter or always; The feeder effect: pros and cons; What happens when we feed – consequences; Tainted table – more consequences; Feeding for conservation; Reasons; and Feeding matters even more now. There are four appendices: A list of birds mentioned, Notes (13 pages), References (12 pages) and an Index. The vast bulk of the book, 281 fine printed pages, is devoted to the nine chapters and intentions outlined above. It is more than enough. The notes section provides relevant information where necessary by including the critical references on the subject.

The audience addressed by the book is a global one. Examples have been taken broadly from around the world; an in-depth reading of the book quickly highlights that all the examples are relevant in bringing about a holistic understanding of the subject. When combined with high quality notes and being fully referenced this book becomes a critical read for post-graduates studies of urban birds and particularly bird-feeding: locally and globally. Thus the audience addressed is both general and academic.

To me the greatest strength of this book was in the author’s 30 plus years of research. His research and knowledge are evident throughout the book. All of the important pros and cons of bird feeding are addressed in knowledgeable detail. To me, the only weakness was a lack of figures: tables and graphs and sketches of the birds, which may have lightened the formality of the book. But this is a finicky complaint as the book has all the text to answer the questions I proposed before reading it.

The text has clearly aided the understanding of the discipline. While I found it an easy and general read, I found the notes and references took the book further into being an academic tome on the subject. It has all the leads if I need to dig deeper. Those with the most to gain from reading it include postgraduate and more senior researchers working with urban birds and urban bird-feeding. It will be a starter helping them into the literature they need to read and giving them enough information to provide them with an holistic over-view of the subject. Beyond the specialists the main group of readers to benefit will be the general readers who feed or are thinking about feeding birds.

The organisation of the text lends itself to a cover to cover read and is written in an appropriate language to make this a worthwhile exercise. The organisation of the chapters allows for an easy-access revision if required. The level of referencing, particularly with the inclusion of so many useful notes highlights the author’s expertise in the area and is entirely pertinent to this informative book.

The writing style is easy and engaging, which will suit general readers. It is interspersed with anecdotes that keep the subject informal and spiced with a broad spectrum of practical knowledge. There are no supplementary figures so I can make no comment beyond the contents, index, notes and references, which are all fit for purpose.

I would recommend this book to the intended audience of people who feed birds or those who are thinking of feeding birds, but also to academics studying the subject or those studying urban birds from another viewpoint. Any lab such as the author’s old lab that studied urban birds must have their own copy.