Greenshanks

Complete natural history with illustrations by Donald Watson.

Desmond Nethersole-Thompson has been studying his favorite bird, the greenshank Tringa nebularia, since May 2931. He told the story of his early research - much of it in Spey Valley, Inverness - in Th Greenshank, published in theNew Naturalist series in 1951. That class, long out of print, is now a collector's item.

This new book owes much to the interest, almost an obsession, of the Nethersole-Thompson family. The two girls and four boys, as well as both parents, now work as a team in the wild and beautiful north-west Highlands of Scotland.

Greenshanks has drawn heavily on the team's field notebooks. In the gneiss country of Sutherland, so different from the forest bogs of Spey Valley, Fenno-Scandia and the Soviet Union, they have particularly concentrated on the greenshank's displays and breeding, food and feeding behavior and its remarkable voice. There can be few long-term projects on waders to equal this made by the Nethersold-'Thompsons, and there are valuable specialist contribution by other eminent ornithologists.

Greenshanks is a major contribution to bird studies and takes its place beside Desmond Nethersold-Thompson's four earlier monographs.

The illustrations in color and monochrome by Donald Watson have all the veracity and atmosphere that one has come to expect of this gifted artist.