How many species of birds are there in the world? A new checklist, The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World by James F. Clements (Christopher Helm, £40) gives a total of 9,930. This massive book lists them all, along with the places where they are found, and the new, up-to-date sixth edition includes all the subspecies into which they have been divided, too.

An enormous number of them have exotic names and live in very exotic-sounding places, especially in South America — “Velvet-Fronted Euphonia: W. Colombia (upper Magdalena Valley)”, “Great Kiskadee: Amazonian Brazil to E. Bolivia and chaco of Paraguay” — and they brought to my mind a poem by W. J. Turner that was once taught in schools:

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi,

They had stolen my soul away!

Birders now go all over the world to add new birds to their list, and this checklist is especially intended for them. In fact, when the first edition of this book appeared in 1972, it revolutionised birdwatching, especially in America, leading to an explosion of international bird tours and birdathons (in which the participants compete to see the highest number of birds).

Jim Clements, the American mastermind behind the book, was himself an indefatigable traveller in pursuit of new species. However, competitive birding has now reached such a pitch that some birders are happy enough to be told that a bird they are shown by a tour guide is a such-and-such, and to move on without really seeing it at all.

There are also lists in the book of the number of birds recorded, and of the number of endemic birds in different countries and regions. Peru has the highest bird total at 1,793. Britain’s total is 576. New Guinea has the highest total of endemic birds at 746. We have only one endemic bird — the Scottish crossbill.

However, our birds figure quite respectably in another new book, Remarkable Birds by Stephen Moss (Collins, £17.99). This contains excellent colour photos of 100 of the world’s “most unmissable birds” — in the sense that if you could manage to see them you could hardly fail to recognise them.

There is the kakapo, a flightless New Zealand bird that lives like an owl and booms like a bittern. There is the South American hoatzin (pictured) and there is the North American greater roadrunner. But there are also the puffin, the gannet, the cuckoo and the nightingale — all of which, fortunately, we can see with a bit of effort.