The Wonderful Mr Willughby –The first true Ornithologist by Tim Birkhead

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, hardback, 356 pages, Price £25.00

This is the story of Francis Willughby who had been lost to science with little written about him in modern times. Tim Birkhead had a chance encounter with distant relatives of the man when working on another book. These relatives were sure their relative had been written out of history by a good friend John Ray who had taken all the credit for the work done by Francis producing books on birds and fish. Tim went to work to unearth lots of new interesting information about Francis and his family from all those years ago in the 17th Century. Will there be a change in one of our bird names due to Tim’s extensive investigations? Read and find out.