T Ad Poyser imprint: 14 books

With its colourful beak and fast, whirring flight, the Atlantic Puffin is the most recognisable and popular of all North Atlantic seabirds. Puffins spend most of the year at sea, but for a few months of the year the come to shore, nesting in burrows on steep cliffs or on inaccessible islands. Awe-inspiring...

The Mandarin Duck is a small and (in the case of the males) spectacularly colourful species of waterfowl. Widely kept in aviaries around the world, populations often escaped to form wild colonies. One of the largest and best-studied is in southern England. Although declining and nowadays surprisingly...

The Snowy Owl - possibly the world's sexiest bird - needs little introduction. This massive white owl breeds throughout the Arctic, wherever there are voles or lemmings to hunt, from Scandinavia through northern Russia to Canada and Greenland. Southerly movements in winter see North American birds...

This comprehensive monograph is a second edition of one of the most popular Poyser monographs; it covers all aspects of this spectacular eagle's biology and ecology, including a full review of the literature and incorporating the considerable body of research on the species since the publication of...

The Barnacle Goose, a distinctive, handsome black-and-white bird, gets its name from a mediaeval myth that the birds hatched from barnacles – how else to explain their sudden appearance each autumn in northern Britain? We now know, of course, that the birds migrate from Arctic Russia, Norway and...

Returning to its breeding sites in the spring after a winter spent far out at sea, the Kittiwake is a familiar sight around the coasts of Britain and Europe. A pale, medium-sized gull with a 'gentle' expression and bright yellow bill, the Kittiwake has been the subject of behavioural research since...

Small, noisy and colourful, the Teal is a familiar duck throughout the wetlands and waterways Europe and Asia. Once hunted extensively for the pot, its numbers have recovered and it is now one of our commonest species of waterfowl. A flagship species for wetland conservation, the Teal is also...

he way wild birds have been exploited over the centuries forms the focus of this remarkable new book by Michael Shrubb. It looks at the use of birds as food, for feathers and skins, for eggs, as cage birds, as specimens and for hunting, focusing on Britain, northern Europe and the North Atlantic....

The impacts of global warming are of concern to all of us. The potential responses of birds to climate change have come increasingly to the fore, and are of particular interest to the ornithological community. Are birds sensitive to climate change and how will they react to a world of global warming?...

A common sight around the more northerly shores of the British Isles, the Common Eider is the largest duck in the northern hemisphere. The eider is particularly well adapted to cold-water environments; the insulating properties of eider down are iconic. The species is taxonomically interesting, with...

This is the first comprehensive review of the hundreds of bird species that have become extinct over the last 1,000 years of habitat degradation, over-hunting and rat introduction. Covering both familiar extinct birds and more obscure species, some known from just one specimen or from traveller's...

Sporting a mix of blue, yellow, white, green and black, the unmistakable Blue Tit reflects the colours of a planet affected by a burgeoning human population. Fortunately, Blue Tits are adapting well to modern humanity, taking advantage of our propensity to feed birds in our gardens and provide boxes...

This companion volume to The Atlas of Breeding Birds of Britain and Ireland is derived from surveys of birds present in Britain and Ireland during the three winters, 1981/82, 1982/83 and 1983/84. The surveys were organised by the British Trust for Ornithology and the Irish Wildbird Conservancy, as...

The Eagle Owl is one of the largest owls in the world, and is considered the most eclectic in terms of habitat, nest site and diet. An undisputed top predator, it can prey on a range of mammals up to the size of a fox, and almost every species of bird, reptile, amphibian and fish, as well as a wide...