Sunday ebook overview – Robin Prytherch A Life with Buzzards edited by Lyndon Roberts – Mark Avery

Robin Prytherch died in 2021 and we misplaced a stalwart of British and Bristol ornithology. As I grew up in Bristol as a teenage birder Robin Prytherch was a number one gentle within the Bristol Ornithological Membership, he had designed its brand on the membership’s founding in 1966 and the topic was a Pied-billed Grebe which Robin himself had discovered, a brand new chicken for the UK, at Blagdon Lake in 1963.  His day job was within the BBC Pure Historical past Unit in Whiteladies Highway.

My first radio interview was on the newly launched BBC Radio Bristol with a few schoolmates with Robin asking us questions on our pastime of birdwatching. He was very light with us as 12 or 13 yr olds and we thought he was a really variety, good previous man – I realise now that he will need to have been 31 on the time!

This quick ebook collects collectively 26 Christmas playing cards, all Buzzard-themed with illustrations of the Buzzards in his examine space of the Gordano Valley simply southwest of Bristol – it’s the world you cross by way of on the M4 south of the River Avon. These Christmas playing cards  contained data on the person Buzzards which have been illustrated. Robin’s examine documented an  improve from 19 territories in 1988 to 120 in 2020 – maybe the best density of this species wherever in its broad worldwide vary.

The examine was an excellent achievement of dedication and skilful remark, the findings have been essential and attention-grabbing, his drawings have been in a recognisable fashion and confirmed the broad variation in plumage between birds.

Robin was on the board of the journal British Birds for a few years, for one thing over three many years, and each Fowl Truthful I might search him out for a chat about birds, Bristol and Buzzards.

I broke my pretty agency behavior of claiming ‘no’ to requests for endorsements for ebook jackets (I write opinions – I don’t must see my identify and 5 phrases of mine on someone else’s ebook) for this ebook. This can be a charming ebook of collected writings about Buzzards by a captivating man.

The quilt? I can’t see that there’s something fallacious with that. I’d give it 8/10.

Robin Prytherch, A Life with Buzzards is compiled and edited by Lyndon Roberts and printed by Bristol Books.

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