by Sean Dooley
I have a personal passion for books you dip in to, rather than read cover to cover. Yes, I dip into dictionaries, into Fowler’s English Usage, and into my Guide to Tracking South African Animals. It was with great pleasure that I spotted this book and now commend it to you. Dipping books actually last longer than cover-to-cover books, and they can be useful when your day or evening is too full to allow yourself the luxury of stretching out for a good read.
Sean Dooley is an Australian writer and journalist. In Anoraks to Zitting Cisticola he bares his private obsession... for bird watching.
I was lucky enough to have seen The Big Twitch on television, an entertaining documentary about bird watching that Sean devised. This book has the same delightful blend of straight information and wry, self depreciating humour. He knows it is an odd obsession, with its own code of conduct, its own history of scandal and its own boulevard of stars. Sean is one of them, holding the Australian record of the most birds seen in one year.
The book is laid out as an alphabetical encyclopaedia... entries that caught my eye include “Captain Twitchpants”, Parabolic Grot” and “Armchair Ticks”. The Zitting Cisticola of the title is in fact a type of marsh warbler. Don’t think, however, that this is about ornithology. There are plenty of birds discussed, but so are the bird watchers, their clothes (anorak) and accessories (binoculars), their tribal habits and customs. If this book had been written by a mocking outsider, it would not work. As it is written by a real insider, he can entertain us with his gentle digs at the idiosyncrasies he is only too familiar with.
Recommended for Middle School and up, a different type of book but thoroughly enjoyable in its own quirky way.
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