RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds

A compact, lightweight and informative guide to 310 of the most common birds found in the UK.

RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds is a compact, lightweight and informative field guide, featuring 310 bird species regularly seen in the UK. Species are illustrated in all distinct plumage forms likely to be observed in the wild by renowned bird artist Stephen Message, and a detailed distribution map for the British Isles is also provided.

Concise text covers appearance, behaviour and voice - focusing on key identification points - and also outlines where you will find the species, describes its seasonal movements and includes the latest UK population data. Finally, confusion species are cross-referenced, with their most important and easily noted differences from the subject species described. A comprehensive introduction provides a guide on how and where to find birds, and how to make the most useful and rewarding observations for newcomers to birdwatching.

Uniquely, this guide also provides images and descriptions for not only a selection of rarer visitors, but also for a range of domestic species and certain commonly observed aberrant forms of more familiar birds, all of which are omitted from most field guides but can cause great confusion for beginners when encountered in the wild.

Marianne Taylor is a life-long wildlife-watcher who lives by the sea in south-east Kent, UK. Since 2007 she has worked as a freelance writer, photographer and illustrator, focusing on wildlife and nature and, particularly, British birds. Her books include RSPB Pocket guide to British Birds, RSPB Garden Birds, The Way of the Hare and Dragonflight. She has a particular fondness for seabirds (even gulls) and is also a keen year-round sea-swimmer, at home and in other locations around the UK coast. Because of this, she has impressive tolerance to cold, a large collection of neoprene gloves and socks, and permanently messy hair.

Stephen Message is one of the UK's foremost bird artists as well as an experienced birdwatcher. He studied graphic design, then specialised in natural history illustration at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and has worked as a freelance artist ever since.

Stephen has twice been runner up for the Bird Illustrator of the Year, and he was the Birdwatch Artist of the Year in 2017. He has illustrated many books in his career, including Waders of Europe, Asia and North America, and Field Guide to the Birds of South-East Asia, and painted the cover artworks for all four editions of the RSPB Handbook of British Birds.