Birds of Wiltshire by Wiltshire Ornithological Society. 2007. 850 pages, with 33 colour photographs, 300 maps and numerous black-and-white illustrations. Hardback £45.00.

The culmination of six years survey effort, with over 160 observers spending nearly 5,000 hours in the field, this book presents an impressive amount of information on the status of birds in Wiltshire at the turn of the millennium.

An initial section on Wiltshire's habitats outlines the nationally important areas of the county, such as the calcareous grasslands of Salisbury Plain and Porton Down. Further interesting chapters include those on Wiltshire's early birds and ornithological history. The methods used for fieldwork, production of maps and data analysis are then clearly explained. Whilst the authors admit that some of the methods used to calculate population estimates are not ideal, the real strength of the data is the information on distribution and abundance. This will prove essential when targeting future conservation efforts.

The bulk of the book is taken up by the species accounts, which are all illustrated with attractive vignettes. Maps and survey information are included for regularly occurring species. These ably demonstrate the importance of Wiltshire for several nationally declining species, such as Corn Bunting, and I was pleased to see information given on the efforts to conserve Stone Curlews. Information is also provided from a national and European perspective. Whilst this sets some context, perhaps this could have been edited down in a few cases to make it easier to extract the county-specific information. Vagrants are well treated with a good level of detail, such as the sole record of Cory's Shearwater described as 'found grounded amongst chickens'!

Money raised by the sales of this book will be used for future conservation projects, and data is already being used for bird conservation in Wiltshire. Anyone with an interest in Wiltshire's birds should purchase a copy of this excellent publication.

(Reproduced with kind permission from British Birds - www.britishbirds.co.uk).

Compiled by James Ferguson-Lees, Paul Castle, Peter Cranswick, Stephen Edwards, Pete Combridge, Rob Turner and Linda Cady for the Wiltshire Ornithological Society. WOS, Devizes, 2007. 848 pages; 30 colour photographs; 300 maps. ISBN 978-095552700-5. Hardback, £45.00.

This is the first fully authoritative avifauna of Wiltshire since A. C. Smith's in 1887. The initial impetus for the book was provided when the Wiltshire Ornithological Society (WOS) set up a Tetrad Atlas Group in 1994, led by James Ferguson-Lees. The group planned and organised a tetrad breeding survey carried out during 1995-2000 and a tetrad winter survey covering the winters of 1998/99 and 1999/2000. It was not until later that it was decided that the book should also include a full review of the records of all 309 species recorded in the county up to 2000.

The detailed systematic list takes up approximately two-thirds of the book. It breaks new ground for county avifaunas in that it includes maps of distribution and relative abundance in both summer and winter for all species of regular occurrence, and population estimates for both seasons. The summer data, produced at the tetrad level, are particularly revealing when the distribution maps are compared with the relative abundance maps. Areas of high density can be clearly associated with particular habitats by using the set of eight overlays available from WOS (www.wiltshirebirds.co.uk). You see real evidence of the massive importance of Wiltshire to farmland bird populations if you combine this with the population estimates calculated for every species, for example 2,500 pairs of Grey Partridge Perdix perdix, at least 43,800 pairs of Sky Lark Alauda arvensis and at least 4,510 pairs of Corn Bunting Emberiza calandra, with Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs emerging as key areas for these and other species. The survey also revealed other surprises, most notably an increasing population of several hundred pairs of Yellow Wagtails Motacilla flava breeding in cereals on the Marlborough Downs; this is in contrast with their disappearance from the river valleys of the county. Breeding records are summarised for several scarce species (mostly raptors) and published here for the first time.

For commoner species, the winter survey data concentrates on the use of timed visits to a randomly selected sample of 48% of the tetrads, and casual records have been excluded. These data are extrapolated to produce relative abundance maps on a 10-km grid. The winter maps do not work as well as the summer ones, the coarseness of the grid often preventing distribution and abundance from being related to habitat. It is unfortunate that the methodology used, clearly limited by time constraints, prevented the creation of tetrad distribution maps. These have been produced for 11 scarcer species, however, such as Peregrine Falco peregrinus and Great Grey Shrike Lanius excubitor, based on all records received.

Recent records of all migrant and vagrant species are analysed, and data are presented in tabular or graphical format. The authors also scrutinised the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine for 1900-73 and other even older sources which had been overlooked by the authors of previous Wiltshire avifaunas in 1959 and 1981; this produced a wealth of additional data. All species have been placed in their national and European contexts, although the information presented is unnecessarily detailed and often a brief summary would have sufficed. This is particularly true of vagrant species, where the actual information relating to Wiltshire records often takes up only around 25% of the text presented. All the accounts are illustrated with attractive vignettes, drawn by a team of local and national artists.

The book also contains chapters on Wiltshire's habitats, weather, archaeological records and ornithological history, an update to 2005, a detailed explanation of the survey methods and a comprehensive 32-page bibliography of Wiltshire publications on birds.

This is a Herculean effort of which WOS can be justifiably proud. It sets a new standard in the quality of the data presented. As well as being of great interest to birdwatchers both locally and nationally, it provides strong evidence which can be used by conservation agencies in the county. As the WOS press release states, the Birds of Wiltshire may be regarded as a Domesday Book of the avifauna at the turn of the millennium - a firm basis on which all future surveys in the county can build.

Bringing together the results of six summers and two winters of fieldwork, and information on historical occurrences, this is an impressive book. Its maps are very clear, and well produced, showing breeding distribution and summer and winter abundance. With graphs, tables, trends and an informative text, there is just so much information in there. This book is worthy reward for the hard work of the surveyors and researchers.

FERGUSON-LEES, J., CASTLE, P., CRANSWICK , P., EDWARDS, S.,COMBRIDGE, P., TURNER , R. & CADY, L.
[WILTSHIRE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY].
Birds of Wiltshire.
850 pages, with many illustrations.
Devizes, UK: Wiltshire Ornithological Society, 2007.
Hardback, £53.00 including postage from www.wildguides.co.uk ,
ISBN 978-0-9555270-0-5.

This is the longest single-volume county avifauna. The 1994 plan envisaged a complete survey of 915 tetrads for the summers from 1995 to 2000: to this was added a sample winter survey from 1998 to 2000, and eventually also a reassessment of the historical records of all species. A chapter brings the story up to 2005. Wiltshire is the second-largest of the old English inland counties, though it has not much attracted outside birdwatchers, apart from the interest of its past and present Great Bustards, Otis tarda Until the 1950s, it had, only modest park lakes and canal reservoirs, but its list of waterbirds has been greatly boosted by gravel diggings in what is now the Cotswold Water Park. The feature of international importance is the 20 000 ha of the Ministry of Defence estate on Salisbury Plain, of which 13 000 are unimproved chalk downland with Eurasian Stone-curlews Burhinus oedicnemus and Hobbies Falco subbuteo, 1000 pairs of Whinchats Saxicola rubetra , and many wintering raptors.
The book follows the usual atlas pattern, but is remarkable for its presentation of summer and winter abundance maps, with estimates of populations. Such maps are the first for an English county (though the recent Manx Atlas, reviewed in this issue of Ibis, also has them), and they are now proving their worth in conservation planning. The extent of the information provided may initially be a deterrent to the non-specialist reader, but the text is highly readable, and the layout is of handsome clarity, not least in the key maps on the endpapers, which are much better than those in most recent county avifaunas. Readers should savour Ferguson-Lees's excellent Introduction on the genesis and gestation of the book. All will admire the organization of the team and its 'tetradders', whose work was brought to a triumphant conclusion.