His previous journalistic obsessions have included tearooms and steak, but a year ago award-winning journalist Steve Braunias took up a new interest - bird-watching. Enchanted by a gull that flew past a balcony where he was standing, Braunias was struck by a sudden and unquenchable desire to know more about birds; How to Watch a Bird, published by Awa Press, is the result.His previous journalistic obsessions have included tearooms and steak, but a year ago award-winning journalist Steve Braunias took up a new interest - bird-watching. Enchanted by a gull that flew past a balcony where he was standing, Braunias was struck by a sudden and unquenchable desire to know more about birds; How to Watch a Bird, published by Awa Press, is the result.Braunias's previous bird-watching efforts had been confined to not very much. Now he bought every bird book he could get his hands on (including one that cost $150, money wheedled out of his publisher after several cups of coffee and a very good breakfast), interviewed many of New Zealand's legendary bird-watchers, joined the Ornithological Society, and stalked New Zealand's estuaries, beaches, woods and sewage ponds in company with birders he befriended along the way.

Next he went international, taking advantage of a journalistic scholarship to Cambridge to become closely acquainted with British birds, in the unwitting company of a member of the British National Front.

"A great book, compelling to the end," says Lloyd Jones, author of the award-winning bestseller Mr Pip. "All the hallmarks of Steve Braunias' distinctive voice are there - curiosity, quirkiness, a fantastic reportorial eye for the telling detail, all packaged with a warmth for humanity in all its foibles.

"I got to the end of the book and wondered how I'd got to my age without becoming a birder, with a pair of bins slung around my neck, wandering the shoreline for a sighting of the first godwits staggering about like drunks after their 11,000 kilometre flight."

Artist Grahame Sydney says: "With affection and characteristic honesty, Braunias describes a significant year in which he steps from bird-watching to fully-fledged 'birder', one of the birding tribe, taking notes, doing things on behalf of birds - and experiences a giddy event in his personal life as well.

"He trains his 'bins' on personal birding milestones, the surprisingly rich history of NZ's ornithological society, both avian and human, and finds there a wonderful subculture and an extraordinary wealth of Things We All Should Know, told with all his trademark wit, warmth and sharpness."

Television's Jeremy Wells sums up: "Steve Braunias has done for feathered New Zealand what Kerry Packer did for cricket. Even though they don't know it, birds will never be the same again."

How to Watch a Bird is available at all good
bookstores. Click here to buy - $24.99.