A PAPERBACK from a small press in the far north of Scotland is one of the most arresting nature books this year. A Life of Ospreys by Roy Dennis (Whittles, £18.99/offer £17.09) is the story of the return of this great fish-hawk to Britain, by a man involved in it almost from the start. The eyrie of the first pair of ospreys to nest in Britain for 40 years was discovered in 1954 in a venerable Scots pine beside Loch Garten, Speyside. That tree is now famous in bird history, and Dennis started guarding it as a young warden in 1960. By now there are almost 200 osprey nests in the Highlands and he is responsible for monitoring them all, with a lifetime's experience of the osprey saga behind him. His book has excellent photographs and also information on where to see osprey eyries.

Another enterprising small press has published The Bristol Downs: A Natural History Year by Geraldine Taylor (Broadcast, £9.95/£9.46). The author has for years been bringing out a delightful newsletter, Eye on Nature, about the rich wildlife that Bristol people - especially schoolchildren - have reported to her, and this is her own monthly diary, with excellent notes on such things as “the kerfuffle of blue tits”, the “sunshine yellow” of gorse, and the watermarks on conkers.

Two surveys of regions have come out in the New Naturalist series. Southern England (Collins, £30/£27) is by a geologist, Peter Friend. It is a stout and learned work, but he clearly loves his landscapes, and with this book in hand you can stand on a Chiltern slope or the top of the Downs and trace the ancient earth movements that have produced them.

If you only buy one book this Christmas make sure it's...

Michael Parkinson, Sheila Hancock, Roger Moore, Elaine Paige and Andrew Castle pick out some perfect reading for the festive period

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Gifts

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Fiction

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Crime

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Biography and memoir

• Christmas bestsellers

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Art

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Food

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Music

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Travel

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Children's audiobooks

BACKGROUND

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Film & theatre

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Graphic Novels

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Back to basics

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Poetry

• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Children's 2-10

Wye Valley (Collins, £25/£22.50) is by George Peterken, a scholarly forester. He offers an intimate guide to a beautiful and largely unaltered countryside that Wordsworth loved. Most remarkable are the tiny fields that survive there with their wild orchids. Incidentally, the smallest Site of Special Scientific Interest in England is in the valley - a little stone barn on St Briavels Common that holds one of the largest roosts of lesser horseshoe bats in Europe.

Two new books report on our current understanding of birds and their behaviour. The Wisdom of Birds by Tim Birkhead (Bloomsbury, £25/£22.50) puts the story in its historical context, showing clearly the steps by which birdwatchers and biologists have come to our present knowledge - but he ends each section with the up-to-date picture on matters such as singing, migrating and, most important, sperm competition.

Consider the Birds by Colin Tudge (Allen Lane, £25/£22.50) begins with the evolution of the birds themselves, provides a nicely laid out guide to the resulting family tree of the world's birds, and ends, like the previous book, with contemporary views on their behaviour. However, his chatty style tends to slow the book down rather than help it along.

The RSPB Guide to Birdwatching by Mike Unwin (Christopher Helm, £12.99/£11.69) is a useful beginners' book, not omitting such matters - not always so easy for first-time users - as how to handle a telescope. The British Trust for Ornithology's guide, Garden Birds and Wildlife, by Mike Toms and Paul Sterry (AA, £20/£18), includes not only the usual avian suspects, but also the winter moths that can now be seen at lighted windows, and wild flowers such as cat's-ear that are too often dismissed as weeds.

A new series, Black's Nature Guides, has titles on Birds, Trees, Wild Flowers, Mushrooms & Toadstools, and - more originally - Medicinal Plants (A&C Black, each £9.99/£9.49). All of the books have excellent photographs and descriptions, but they strain rather hard to add interesting titbits, such as that wild majoram is “excellent for pizza toppings”.

Finally, there is the usual pile of large, glossy photographic books. Arctic Fox by Garry Hamilton has dazzling white-on-white pictures by Norbert Rosing (A&C Black, £16.99/ £15.29) and a good account of how these tender-faced animals survive the permafrost. Albatross by Tui de Roy, Mark Jones amd Julian Fitter (Helm, £35/£31.50) has equally fine pictures of these giant wings with optional body, and reveals that there may not be 13 species of them, as was thought, but up to 25 - yet almost all of them in danger of extinction.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 18 (BBC, £25/£22.50) assembles the winning shots in 2008 in this competition sponsored by BBC Wildlife magazine and the Natural History Museum. Most of them are of birds, fish and animals on the move.

Pheromone: The Insect Artwork of Christopher Marley (Pomegranate, £39.95/£35.96) combines nature and art. Marley, a serious entomologist, has collected numerous startlingly coloured insects, arranged them in patterns and mosaics, and had them photographed with the help of Lynn Howlett. A “pheromone”, his title, is defined as “a chemical signal from one animal to another that may produce a subtle or dramatic reaction”. Many of Marley's amazing assemblages of insects do produce exactly that.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy