Familiar Wild Birds by W Swaysland

It is January and winter grips the fine city of Glasgow with its frozen touch. Though frost still rimes the city rooftops, the dream of spring is on its way and with it the return of the birds that nest in the trees and bushes on street corners.

Birds have long been celebrated in books and in our collection we have a beautiful example of a passion project determined to document the birds of Britain for the education and enjoyment of the city dweller. The four volumes of Familiar Wild Birds were written by W. Swaysland in 1883, a ‘pleasant task’ to ‘pourtray the many varieties of birds’ alongside detailed paintings provided by the talented Eliza Turck and Archibald Thorburn.

Familiar Wild Birds is considered a seminal work of ornithology (the study of birds) as it contains scientific details about each species to help with recognition, including size, colouring, and number of eggs – these are often paired with advice on how to capture and keep the birds as pets, a practice that has been thankfully left in the past. Each bird is also given the ‘Swaysland’ treatment with funny anecdotes and observations on each bird’s personality that make the book accessible to a wide audience. While the Starling is ‘more or less gregarious’, the Robin is ‘an efficient member of [the] self-constituted bird police’, and Swaysland even warns that the Jay is ‘naturally inquisitive and somewhat mischievous, and should therefore be carefully watched’. The house sparrow, on the other hand, is ‘thoroughly republican in its nature, considering itself to have an equal right of existence with other members of this creation’ – a big personality for such a small bird!

Common birds that you might recognise in the pages of this book include Jay, Kestrel, Magpie, Robin and Starling.

There are 160 chromolithograph plates over the series, one for each bird, with a handy note to explain the size of the bird in comparison with the picture. Each chapter also contains black and white wood-cut prints for details like eggs. Archibald Thorburn was considered one of the great Victorian nature painters, and Eliza Turck was similarly distinguished having exhibited at the Royal Academy and the International Exhibition in 1871. Together they bring the joy of Swaysland’s writing to technicolour life.

If you’d like to find out more about the birds around you, why not sign up for the RSPB Garden Birdwatch and record what birds you can see out of your window for one hour between 24-26^th January.

Or if you’d like to read more about urban wildlife, why not borrow one of our books on the subject, such as Wild City: Encounters with Urban Wildlife by Florence Wilkinson (GC 591.756 WIL) or Wildlife Around Glasgow by Richard Sutcliffe (GC 508.41443 SUT), both found in the Glasgow Collection on Level 5, and can be requested to be delivered to your local library.