‘You will find no lack of superlatives among our Indian birds’ writes Douglas Dewar in this superb and idiosyncratic book about some of the most interesting birds to be found in the country. From the common crow, ‘splendid in sagacity, resource, adaptiveness, boldness, cunning and depravity; a Machiavelli; a Shakespeare among birds, a super-bird’ to the scavenger vulture, ‘the ugliest bird in the world’, wagtails ‘who dress most tastefully’, ‘mad babblers’, ‘upright cuckoos’, the night heron which ‘only sleeps when it has nothing better to do’, hawks ‘the bandits of the air’, the drongo, who ‘is the embodiment of pluck’, and dozens of other species, well-known and rare, Jungle Folk will make you see our birds in new and arresting ways. In his closely observed sketches, the legendary naturalist explores in detail every significant element of the bird in question including anatomy, physiology, behaviour, lifestyle and habitat.

Intended for the amateur naturalist as well as the serious ornithologist, this is an eye-opening, intriguing and original account of Indian birds.