BEGUILED BY BIRDS: IAN WALLACE ON BRITISH BIRDWATCHING By Ian Wallace. Christopher Helm, A&C Black, London, 2004. 272 pages; 170 photographs; 182 colour illustrations. ISBN 0-7136-6535-1 Hardback, £29.99. fans will particularly enjoy the accounts of St Agnes in the early days. The role and effectiveness of the RSPB is subject to a piercing review of its strengths and weaknesses. The various contributors to modern birdwatching, right up to the variety of stalls and products at the British Birdwatching Fair, get comment and attention. And, with snippets from the responses by his peers to a survey scattered throughout the book, there is added colour and a check to this becoming a one-man monologue. The reason I found the book so hard to review is that there is really so much purposeful (to highlight the author's favourite word) information that it requires slow and deliberate reading if one is to engage fully with all the subjects covered. Wallace is not slow to be self-effacing and you cannot help but feel for him as he bares his soul over his troubled discipleship under Meinertzhagen. He is a great wordsmith, and eloquent and expressive phrases (such as the `hydra-headed development in dynamic taxonomy') are frequently used to describe his take on some aspect of ornithology, though I found myself reaching for the dictionary on some occasions. I felt that with the recent plethora of identification and photographic guides, it was about time that we had a really good read. I hoped that this book