British Birds and the British Trust for Ornithology announce the winner of the Award for BEST BIRD BOOK OF THE YEAR. All books reviewed in British Birds or the BTO publications BTO News and Bird Study during the year 2004 were eligible for consideration for this Award.xcluding CDs, DVDs, and other titles that were clearly not `bird books', an exceptional crop of 80 books were eligible for this year's competition. Each of the six judges began, as usual, by compiling a ranked shortlist of their six favourite titles, taking into account the reviews published by BB and BTO during the year. We employ no formal criteria for judging, but are looking for special merit in books that we believe will appeal to the readership of BB and BTO News. Seventeen booksmade it to the combined shortlist, a high total that reflects both the breadth of interest represented on the judging panel and the difficulty of selecting just six from the variety of highquality books that appeared during the year. The judges met at Swanwick, Derbyshire, in December, just prior to the BTO's annual conference. After further detailed inspection of the shortlisted books, and much discussion and debate, we decided upon a clear winner and two runners-up.By Ian Newton. Academic Press, London & San Diego, 2003 (see Brit. Birds 97: 149). We settled quickly on this as our winning book. While ostensibly a book for students and postgraduate academics, it covers a subject so close to the heart of the average