This week our Wild Things columnist Eric Brown discusses an essential tool for birdwatching enthusiasts, which is also the perfect Christmas gift.

There’s a certain audio highlight of the wildlife year I anticipate like no other. No, it’s not the call of the first cuckoo, the sweet song of the nightingale, or the night scream of foxes.

It’s the thud on the doormat made by the annual arrival of The Birdwatcher’s Yearbook, often described as the birdwatcher’s bible. It is indispensable.

Tucked within its 328 pages is a treasure trove of information vital not only to birdwatchers but to all wildlife enthusiasts. There’s a 112-page section featuring major British nature reserves from Marazion Marsh in Cornwall to Noss on Shetland with location and contact details plus examples of what you may see from badgers and seals to puffins.

Included in the Kent section are facts about Cliffe Pools, a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reserve near Gravesend where nightingale and black-winged stilt reside in summer.

In winter the book says there are spectacular gatherings of up to 10,000 dunlin and 9,000 black-tailed godwit. Butterflies recorded there include common blue, marbled white and the wall.

Tide tables allow calculation of the best time for observing seals around coasts and estuaries, there are useful lists of best wildlife websites and the diary section is arranged so daily wildlife sightings can be recorded.

There are checklists for birds, butterflies and dragonflies with tick boxes.

Each year an article on the state of birds brings good and bad news. This year it reveals the decline of kittiwakes, now globally threatened after a 40 per cent population crash around our coasts since 1970. It has ceased to breed on Kent cliffs.

However, bittern, crane and peregrine populations have all increased nationally.

The book is a perfect Christmas present for wildlife fans.

The Birdwatchers Yearbook 2019 is published by Calluna Books. Price £20.