Birds of Australia A Photographic Guide

I am very lucky to have had the opportunity to travel extensively around Australia and over the years I have collected every field guide to the continent that has been produced. Mostly these have contained paintings, and if I have the space in my backpack I choose The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia (Harper Collins) by Graham Pizzey and Frank Knight. At 624 pages it is quite a tome, but it contains everything you need. First published in 1980, it is now in its ninth edition! However, if I need to keep my pack light I choose The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds (New Holland) by Peter, Pat and Raoul Slater. This has appeared in various formats since the 1970s, but the latest version came out in 2010 and is considerably lighter at just 343 pages.

The only photo field guide to have been published was Photographic Field Guide: Birds of Australia (New Holland) by Jim Flegg. That appeared way back in 1994, and was updated several times until 2004. While it was well designed, it has now fallen behind with the many taxonomic changes made by Australian ornithologists.

So now we have Birds of Australia: A Photographic Guide. This follows the latest IOC taxonomy and so you are looking at 714 species. Excluded from the book are those birds only found in remote Australian dependencies such as Lord Howe and Norfolk Island that only the most intrepid travelers will see, and also excluded are rare vagrants that even Australian birders don’t see! So you get what you really need.

I like the way that the photographs are mainly placed on the right, but additional images are positioned on the left – and they are mostly a good size. The text is brief – giving you the main identification features and a quick line to describe the preferred habitat. A small distribution map is included for each species – and sadly these fall below my expectation. With a black country outline the gray tone of the wash showing distribution really struggles to reveal itself for those species that hug the coast or are of very limited range. Given that the pages are in full colour these could easily have been printed with a brighter (and more useful) colour. However the book pleases me in every other respect.

The color photos are terrific, and to have 1100 of them in a relatively lightweight book is a triumph. These are primarily by Geoff Jones, but Iain Campbell has contributed many, as have about 20 others. To my eye a photo is worth two paintings as it shows the bird the way it really is, and not just through the artist’s eye. However in a few cases you just can’t get the bird to pose in a helpful way – so having a field guide with paintings as a back-up is always a good idea. With some species you really do need them all facing the same way for comparison!

In some cases subspecies are illustrated, and given that the book is right up to date with taxonomy, in some cases I was looking at a photo of a recently-split species for the first time. I particularly like the grasswren images – and indeed that is where most of the recent splits have been! A lot of field guides tend to skate over seabirds but these are prominently included – which is important because Australia has some of the best pelagic birding opportunities in the world!

Apart from the species texts there are brief chapters covering the main habitats – marine, coastal, tropical, temperate, arid, semi-arid and man-made.

This is a very useful addition to the range of books on offer, and given that it includes all of the recently-split species you really need it if you are visiting Australia.