I seem to have difficulty keeping birds out of my books, from my illustrated version of Aristophanes' The Birds to John Yeoman's Featherbrains to Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger...' Quentin Blake's appointment as the first Children's Laureate acknowledged half a century spent bringing characters - his own as well as those of Russell Hoban, Roald Dahl, Joan Aitken and dozens of others - to life on the page. The pictures in The Life of Birds are bigger, broader and more sombre, but no less lively than his much-loved and hugely admired children's book illustrations. Here Quentin Blake follows in the path of the great illustrators, such as Daumier and Lear, and of fabulists like Aesop and La Fontaine. Wonderfully acute observations of how birds behave become a commentary - kindly, but penetrating - on human nature.