calissa

What the Robin Knows is a non-fiction book about studying bird calls and behaviour to gain a better understanding of the natural world. Written by an experienced naturalist and tracker, the book is a wealth of information.

I admit that I was initially sceptical about how useful the book would prove. Being American, Jon Young's experience is largely (though not exclusively) with American birds and the examples he uses are almost entirely American. I rather expected that the writing would be very much keyed to a particular locale and not at all applicable to an Australian landscape. However, I was very pleased to discover that while Young takes examples from a very specific biosphere, the book focuses on broad principles that can indeed be applied to different biospheres. Already, I have found it has changed the way I see and hear birds, even though I haven't yet found the significant amount of time it will take to complete the exercises suggested in the book.

The style was a bit of a weak point. There were times when a sense of smugness crept in and I rather got the impression that Young can be a bit of a show-off. He also had a few axes to grind and even though I agreed with some of them it got a little tiresome after a while.

This book isn't going to be for everyone. As I mentioned earlier, the practices it outlines require a considerable investment of time--especially so, if you live in a different biosphere and have to work out what your equivalent species are. However, this is not a flaw of the book or even of its teachings. Rather, it is the cost specialist knowledge requires. And this is definitely specialist knowledge.

Four stars out of five