"Birds of Wood, Park and Garden" is the first volume of a
five-volume work, covering all birds of Europe. This volume is intended as a
field guide to the birds of woodlands and parklands in Europe north of the Alps
but south of the boreal forest zone. In other words, the usual boring feathered
critters hopping around outside my window...or at least further out in
"my" strolling area. They are all in there: house sparrow, tree
sparrow, fieldfare, blackbird, green woodpecker, wood pigeon and the
super-abundant corvids. Gee, I constantly have to remind myself that these are
supposed to be close evolutionary cousins of the T-rex, lest I surely die of
boredom! Only the bluecrow and the hoopoe stand out but, alas, they never seem
to show up outside my apartment building...
The Swedish edition of this book was the first thing ever published by Lars Jonsson, the famous Swedish bird painter. He was only 24 years old! The text, penned by Jonsson himself, sounds extremely mature, so I always assumed the author was at least in his fifties... Jonsson's illustrations are, of course, excellent but still feel "rough" compared to his later forages into bird painting. I don't wish to sound ungrateful to the Master, but this basic-basic bird guide somehow didn't rock my world in the way Jonsson's later works tend to do. Therefore, I only give it three stars. Still, it is strange that Jonsson was flunked by the Swedish Art Academy. What did they want him to do, a Pollock?!
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