You might thing a book about the birds that lived in London 75 years ago would make for gloomy reading. Nothing could be further from the truth.

75 years ago, Richard Fitter published the seminal book ‘London’s Birds’. Jack Watkins takes a look inside to see what it tells us about the changing face of the capital’s avian population — and comes away marvelling at how our winged friends have thrived despite the march of metropolitan progress.

When Richard Fitter’s London’s Birds was published in 1949, it became the first book to deal exclusively with its eponymous subject for 25 years. Despite such a…