Look out of the window. See a bird. Enjoy it. Congratulations. You are a bad birdwatcher. According to Simon Barnes, even the “baddest birdwatcher in the world knows something about birds.”

The sports editor of The Times, London, believes that birdwatching starts, simply, with a habit of looking. You let birds into your life a little at a time. And if you share your looking and listening with other people, so much the better.

As Barnes points out, you actually know more birds than you think you do. “Even if there are 10,000 bird names to be mastered, you can get to know more bird names than people you’ve enjoyed meeting,” says he. Drawing heavily on writers from Woody Allen to John Keats to Orhan Pamuk, Barnes recounts his favourite birdwatching adventures from England to Asia.

According to him, we are drawn to birdwatching because we secretly nurture a dream to fly. That’s the best of all dreams.

Barnes manages to make an obsessive theme into a soothing read, taking out all erudition and infusing a lot of fun in the hobby. Sample this: House martins are dapper little chaps, navy blue with white bums, and they are one of the sights and sounds of the English summer: doing things like whizzing round church steeples and catching flies in their beaks.

Barnes’ novel approach to ornithology will give others confidence to get pleasure from the cheapest and most rewarding pursuit. Despite his freewheeling approach we get glimpses his expertise on wildlife, conservation and travel.

This is a refreshingly irreverent and enjoyable book for all those who love staring out of windows.