Bearded Tit: A Love Story with Feathers - Tapa dura

"Funny and surprisingly moving" (Griff Rhys Jones)

"Rory has pulled off something rather special" (Simon Barnes, author of How to be a Bad Birdwatcher)

"McGrath's tale of fumbled romance and birding evangelism is ultimately a sweet and elegiac read" (Mail on Sunday)

"a gentle, warming, nostalgic and gag-ridden memoir...His self-deprecation is not only disarming but occasionally very moving, and he pulls off a romantic twist at the end that will thaw the heart of the coldest Icelandic puffin." (Simon Garfield Daily Mail)

"There is far more to Rory McGrath than meets the eye. Yes, he can be very funny, basic and boisterous, but beneath the stubble is a countryman and birdwatcher... lyrical and beautiful" (Robin Page Daily Telegraph)

Bearded Tit is Rory McGrath's story of life among birds. From a Cornish boyhood wandering gorse-tipped cliffs listening to the song of the yellowhammer with his imaginary girlfriend, or drawing gravity-defying jackdaws in class when he should have been applying himself to physics, to quoting the Latin names of birds to give himself a fighting chance of a future with JJ - the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

As an adult, or what passes for one, Rory recounts becoming a card-carrying birdwatcher, observing his first skylark - peerless king of the summer sky - while stoned; his repeatedly failed attempts to get up at the crack of dawn like the real twitchers; and his flawed bid to educate his utterly unreconstructed drinking mate Danny in the ways of birding.

Rory's tale is a thoroughly educational, occasionally lyrical and highly amusing romp through the hidden byways of birdwatching and, more importantly, a love story you'll never forget.