May I have some opinions on bird books i.e. Field Guides please?
What book(s) do you have? what would you buy? and why?
I know "Birds in Backyards" is an extremely useful site for info, IDs etc but I would like to purchase some sort of Field Guide book.
There are field guides and "field guides" covering birds, depends on what you wish to do with it, ie:
1. Take with you on walks and use as a reckoner.
2. Leave on the shelf at home as a reference guide.
Some are well layed out, many are a logistical nightmare to find something. One of the best guides ever published was the Gould League series pocket guides (circa 1983) of which I have five of the series.
Australian Birds by Donald & Molly Trounson (2002, reprinted 2004) is a larger field guide of some 400 pages with many colour photos which I find quite good to use.
Know Your Birds by Louise Egerton (2004) 175 pages is not as detailed as the two previously mentioned, more for children/teens starting to take an interest in birds, many lovely colour photos. Covers "main" species and not variants.
Birds of Australia by Peter Rowland (1998) 96 pages is another very basic pocket style book and best for children starting out. Again, just covers the "main species" and little else.
Secondhand book sales/markets are good to find bird books too, t reasonable prices plus discount booksellers in shopping centres.
I have 6 field guides & my favourite is Michael Morcombe's "Field Guide to Australian Birds". While it doesn't have the detailed information of Graeme Pizzey's "A Field Guide to the Birds of Australia" the illustrations are excellent & the section on breeding also.
See also this thread:
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/forum/messages.cfm?threadid=36C13E7E-BED9-484B-E15B0B2B3FD12DCC
- soakes
soakes
Olinda, Victoria, Australia
I also have a number of field guides,my favorite is the readers digest complete book of Australian birds,but the one i go to first is the Simpson & Day Field guide to the bird of Australia 7th edition
I have three guides and here are some comments.
1) Pizzey & Knight, probably the best for paintings of different stages of birds, though from memory not all will have all life stages. Nice info and useful.
2) Simpson & Day has lovely color paintings, though I think my edition is a little dated. I like this the least of my guides. Distribution maps are good.
3) Michael Morecombe for me is the best of the guides. There is a fair bit of flack I've read about colors this and colors that being not quite right, but to me the best part is the pointers to particular ID features. It also has nests and sites at the back of the book. I also have his compact version, which I no longer take anywhere since I don't really need to carry one in the field.
I have heard that the CSIRO is working on a new book of Birds of Australia that is being put together by people, who have worked on the HANZAB series. If you don;t know what HANZAB is, then you better google it and save the pennies to buy them, if you can afford to of course. Around 300 bucks a volume and from memory there are seven volumes!!!
I used to refer to the Reader's Digest birds of Australia (huge) book and found it not too good generally. Much harder to get good, publishable quality photos of wild animals of different life stages than to have paintings.
In our household the Reader's Digest "Complete Book of Australian Birds" is known as a coffee table guide. I only take it into the field if I'm able to borrow the neighbour's truck. It's rather dated now but I think it has very useful information. A lot of the photos don't help much with identification because of the light or shot angle & there isn't room for shots of birds' life stages.
Thanks everyone for your helpful recommendations - I will take a list of your recommendations to the Library and bookstore and have a look at any they have in stock. Just interested to read about each bird that visits us.
Jeanne
Brisbane QLD