Vernon R L Head

This book had so many aspects that I love to read: travel, adventure, nature, Ethiopia, discovery, birds. And because of those I enjoyed the book. Like other reviewers, the descriptions were over-flowery for my tastes, but it didn't detract too much from the book and I still enjoyed the story. There is sort of an unnatural shift from the narration to backstory and side stories about other rare birds, the history of their discoveries and their current status. I appreciated the information and it led to many happy hours googling for more information about those species, but I think the narration would have flowed better if formatted differently or with some sort of transition.

Pet peeve: the original printing of this book had a clever painting of the Nechisar Nightjar on the cover. This is the bird at the center of the story. The cover on the book I purchased (and the one shown on goodreads) has an outline of a bird that is a generic perching bird, nothing like a nightjar. It bothers me that someone who probably knows nothing about birds made the decision to produce a more appealing cover, but one that is at odds with the content of the book. It would be like having a book about a rare giraffe and putting an outline of a donkey on the cover. Uhhh... yeah that's also a mammal and an ungulate, but it's all wrong.… (plus d'informations)