In the original dustsheet. Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

The book had a lot of nice diagrams but reading it was literally like reading someone’s diary. If you were not part of the events listed in the book then it was difficult to be involved. If you had seen many of the birds that the author had seen in that year, then its worth the purchase to have a trip down memory lane.

Review: This book was first published in 1981, and is exactly what it says on the tin: the diary (about birdwatching only) of a twitcher. I bought it when I was 15, to pad out the introductory order of my book club, and it immediately hooked me on a new hobby. Intrigued by the introduction’s comment that to see 300 different types of birds in one year in the UK was a difficult task, I immediately resolved that I would some day do so’; thirty years later I succeeded. Reading it today, of course, in the days of the internet, it all seems so different from twitching today; twitchers had to phone one another, or a long-lost café in Norfolk, to find out what rare birds were around; now news is available in seconds anywhere on mobile phones. But the essential thrill of the sport hasn’t changed.