The East Bristol Bird Guide

Most bird guides are built for experts: dense, comprehensive and a bit intimidating. I wanted something for the birds you actually see around East Bristol's parks, rivers and back gardens, and a reason to keep looking.

So the guide is also a scorecard. Common birds like the blackbird, pigeon or duck are worth a point. A kingfisher or treecreeper is worth more. The barn owl, sparrowhawk and green woodpecker top out at five. Points give a casual walk a goal, and they quietly teach you what's rare.

The look borrows from antique ornithology plates. The cover frames a classic illustration of woodpeckers, a kingfisher and a roller on warm off-white stock, and each bird inside gets a circular portrait cropped from the same style of artwork.

The layout itself is modern and strict. Every entry is the same card: a condensed serif name, the points value aligned right, and a two- or three-line description. Alternating tints separate the rows, so a page of eight birds still scans in seconds outdoors.