Returning alone to the Shetlands two years after his first visit, Selous kept a daily journal of watching birds rather than shooting them. He records the courtship, bathing, quarrels and flight of skuas, gulls, terns, guillemots and other seabirds in patient detail, adds notes on the seals of the islands, and digresses freely on animal behaviour and the cruelty of collectors.
A founding classic of field observation by one of the first naturalists to make watching, not killing, the point. Download the free EPUB.