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 2005 were eligible for consideration for this Award.nother bumper crop of books (79 in total) were available for consideration in this year's competition, seemingly a reflection that the bird-book publishing business remains buoyant, like the demand for their products from birdwatchers. Each of the six judges initially (and independently) compiled a ranked short-list of their six favourite titles, on the basis of the reviews published by BB and BTO, and their own experience. No formal criteria for judging are laid down, but we look for special merit in books that we consider will appeal to the readership of both BB and BTO News. An extraordinary 26 of the 79 made it to the initial short-list, which in particular reflects the difficulty of selecting just six books from the diverse array of high-quality books on show.The judging took place at the BTO's annual conference in December 2005, where (thanks to the BTO library and Subbuteo Books) all the books on the first short-list were made available to us for the afternoon. After considerable debate, and settling on a final short-list of eight books, it became clear that we had two strong contenders for the top prize. It is often apparent before we vote for the final time what the winning book will