Button books £12.99
IBN: 978-1-78708-183-3
www.buttonbooks.co.uk
The Factology series is going from strength to strength. They tend to alternate between the natural world and historical topics and in Birds we run the gamut of things avian.
It’s only in recent decades that a once laughed at theory has become pretty much accepted in that dinosaurs evolved into birds and that now they are categorised as avian or non avian. So just think that what we see today are different branches of the tree that would feature the T-rex.
There are 10,000 species today and many are featured in colour illustrations and photographs.
There are three main sections (Evolution, Birds in action, Species) and these have multiple sub sections.
In evolution we come up against the terror birds, and I would not like to meet a phorusrhacid. Thankfully that is one of the ones that have fallen by the wayside.
We also see the anatomy of a wing and how they can fly as well as which species can fly the highest and the fastest.
There is even a small section on beaks and how you can determine what a bird eats from the size and shape of the beak. Of course they can also be used for digging and nesting.
Also we all know what a trick the cuckoo pulls but the term is called Brood Parasitism. Then there are decorated carrier pigeons, and the weird and wonderful.
Just before the glossary is the big quiz (a standard feature in this series) with twenty questions gleaned from within the 90 odd preceding pages. So what was the extinct bird featured in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Although aimed at the 8-12 age range this highly colourful series has pride of place in our library