Birds of Australia: a Photographic Guide

If you prefer a photographic format as your field guide over an illustrated one, then this is the book you should choose for Australia, containing superb photographs of all 714 resident and regularly occurring migrant birds.  The birds are shown in over 1,100 good colour photographs, typically with 5-6 photos per page.

The one drawback I always find with photographic guides is the range of images and plumages can be restrictive, especially when showing particular features of birds which can help in their identification.  The majority of the birds are shown with only one photo, though this book does try to account for this for the species where the plumage varies between genders or regional variation, and a second photo shows the female or immature birds and different subspecies too.

As in a typical illustrated field guide, the text and range maps are across from the respective bird. The text is a standard one-paragraph outline that focuses primarily on identification. Although the descriptions do a good job at describing the bird, they do not compare or mention similar species. For species such as honeyeaters where many species look very similar, these pointers can be very useful.  A few lines of the text are also given on voice, habitat, and status.

The range of each bird is shown on the same all-Australia map, which is a bit generic and does not contain the boundaries of the various states, which for the visiting birder can help them work out exactly where the range extends to.

Book reviewed by Neil Calbrade

buy this book

---