‘John Henry Gurney: A Passion for Birds’ was published in 2025 by John Beaufoy Publishing in association with the British Ornithologists Club. It was authored by Clive Slater, Peter Munday and Ray Williams. Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne interviews the lead author, Clive Slater. Clive Slater read Zoology at King’s College, University of London (1966-1969). Following a career in environmental and public health as a chartered practitioner and university lecturer in the UK and overseas, he […]
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BOC Blog
Introducing Sam Thompson
I am a DPhil Biology student at St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford. This year, in partnership with the British Ornithologists’ Club, I’ll be starting a PhD at the Edward Grey Institute, with the aim of developing a better understanding of the many facets of bird behaviour and physiology that lead to incidences of avian collisions with human-made structures. The project will seek to identify common traits between the most collision-prone species, with […]
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Nils van Duivendijk, ID Handbook of European Birds
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne interviews Nils van Duivendijk on his book ‘ID Handbook of European Birds’ published by Princeton University Press. The book is published in 2 volumes. It was Birdwatch magazine’s Book of Year for 2024. Nils van Duivendijk has been involved in birding since his childhood. It was in his younger years when his interest in ID started. Studies of the species of the Western Palearctic (Europe, North Africa and the Middle East) […]
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Richard and Barbara Mearns, Biographies for Birdwatchers, The Lives of Those Commemorated in Western Palearctic Bird Names
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne interviews Richard and Barbara Mearns on their book ‘Biographies for Birdwatchers, The Lives of Those Commemorated in Western Palearctic Bird Names’. Privately published in 2022. 2 softback A4 vols with over 250 portraits (396pp & 266pp). ISBN 978-0-9556739-3-1. £69.99 plus P&P, www.mearnsbooks.com. Reproduced with permission from the Quarterly Newsletter (Issue No. 272, March 2024) of the London Natural History Society. Barbara Mearns was born in Greenock, studied in Edinburgh, and then […]
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Conor Mark Jameson, Finding W.H. Hudson: The Writer Who Came to Britain to Save the Birds
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne interviews Conor Mark Jameson on his book ‘Finding W.H. Hudson: The Writer Who Came to Britain to Save the Birds’ published by Pelagic Publishing. Reproduced with permission from the Quarterly Newsletter (Issue No. 272, March 2024) of the London Natural History Society. Conor Mark Jameson has written for the Guardian, BBC Wildlife, the Ecologist, New Statesman, Africa Geographic, NZ Wilderness, British Birds, Birdwatch and Birdwatching magazines and has been a scriptwriter […]
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Dominic Couzens, A Year of Bird Song
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne interviews Dominic Couzens on his book ‘A Year of Bird Song’ illustrated by Madeleine Floyd published by Batsford. Reproduced with permission from the Quarterly Newsletter (Issue No. 271, December 2023) of the London Natural History Society. Dominic Couzens is an award-winning nature writer, with over 40 book titles to his name, as well as many hundreds of articles for magazines and the national press. He has regular columns in Bird Watching […]
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