Australian Bird Guide

by Peter Menkhorst, Danny Rogers, Rohan Clarke

A new in-depth field guide to Australian birds

The Australian avifauna is large, diverse, and spectacular, reflecting the continent's impressive habitats and evolutionary history. Looking at more than 900 species, The Australian Bird Guide is the most comprehensive field guide on Australian birds available, and contains by far the best coverage of southern seabirds. With 249 color plates containing 4,000 stunning images, this book offers a far more in-depth treatment of subspecies, rarities, and overall plumage variation than comparative guides. The artwork meets the highest standards, and the text is rigorously accurate and current in terms of identification details, distribution, and status. The Australian Bird Guide sets a new bar for coverage of Australia's remarkable avifauna and is indispensable to all birders and naturalists interested in this area of the world, including the southern oceans.


Brand-new guide with an attractive look and design
249 color plates containing 4,000 superb images by some of the most talented illustrators working in Australia today
Every bird species in Australia is covered (more than 900), including subspecies and rarities
Up-to-date maps reflect the latest information on distribution
Accurate and detailed text

Genres: Birds, Nonfiction, Guides, Nature, Natural History, Field Guides, Australia

576 pages, Paperback

Published May 4, 2017

Reviews

[Sportyrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been less active here recently…because I recently completed my Marine and Antarctic Science degree…and have been busy volunteering in the field. Last week I was on a week-long turtle conservation project. And today, I just finished a bi-annual bird count at Moulting Lagoon, Tasmania.

Since I’ve been slow on the reading lately, I thought I might include this one, although technically I didn’t read every page. In preparation of the field trip I went to the book store and there were two rows of options. I sat down for an hour and compared them for usefulness for the purpose so I thought my review might help narrow down options. I needed a comprehensive guide, good ways to identify birds, a super-quick way to find the type of bird I was looking for, diagnostic tools crucial for identification, and a snapshot index. This guide provided all these things.

Having just finished the bird count I can confirm that this guide was exactly what I needed. I tagged/bookmarked all the potential birds in preparation which helped. Basically, some birds were easy to identify without a guide eg black swans, but many weren’t. At least to species level. While one person using the binoculars described the key features, the other person used the book and asked pertinent questions eg bill colour, plumage, wing structure, the way it flies etc until it was narrowed down to species level.

For posterity, I counted: black swans (300+), musk ducks, black-faced cormorants, little pied comorants, great crested grebes, hoary-headed grebes, pacific gulls, silver gulls, crested terns, caspian terns, white faced herons, eastern curlews, pied oyster catchers, australian pelicans, and forest ravens.

Nerd Out.

[Scott Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a newly published birding field guide for Australia. It is well-illustrated, and the "notes" section for each species provides valuable information. The index is not easy to use if you do not have the exact common or scientific name for the bird. For example, there is no "parrot" listing, with all the common names of each parrot species provided beneath . . . that would have been helpful. The introduction provides an excellent section on "Plumage sequences and ageing birds," however I found "Figure 2: Key to symbols and shading used on the distribution maps" (p.7) to be a little confusing. Overall, this was an excellent field guide, one which I heartily recommend.

[D.K. Mok · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisitely illustrated and comprehensive identification guide to the birds of Australia. Each recto page features illustrations of the juvenile and adult forms of the species, and each verso page includes a description of the birds' appearance, voice, habitat and geographical distribution.

It was an absolute pleasure to leaf through this book on a sunny afternoon, browsing succinct information on barn owls, palm cockatoos, bush curlews and currawongs. It also proved a handy reference for identifying several mystery birds around my neighbourhood. A must-have for bird enthusiasts and a delight for anyone wishing to be awed by the magnificent diversity of avian wildlife in Australia.

[Nathan Swick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent field guide, one of the best bird books of 2017. Seabird illustrations are particularly good. Only knock is that that index is not great and a bit confusing.

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully bound & illustrated. Excellent reference book & great price.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

nice drawings and pictures and stuff but i feel like its unnecessary to have so many birds like isn't one type of bird enough? like they all fly and eat worms and have nests so like it just seems a bit OTT to have so many. idk.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mostly love this book. The plates at the front make it easy to find the bird you’re looking for even with rudimentary knowledge of bird groups. The one thing I hate about this book is that the index in the back is by specific common name. So if you’re looking for the New Holland Honeyeater, you look under “n” for “New” and not “h” for “honeyeater”. It’s very difficult to search anything by name unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.

[Samuel Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannot recommend this enough. The most comprehensive and digestible guide to Australian bird species. It's easy to find and learn about that bird you just saw, the species cleverly organised by the authors. If you love birds, buy it.

[Nick Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!

[Andrey Vlasenko · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thing I dislike very much in this book is that there is no info in the species account whether the species is endemic to the region or not. This annoys me very much in this book.

[Pebsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most comprehensive reference guide to our local (and visiting) boys. This beats google - definitely a worthwhile purchase.

[Krysta Halye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite useful !

[Callan R · Rating 5 out of 5]

My current top Australia-wide bird book. Illustrations show everything that's useful. It's just generally above average.

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

After taking on peoples complaints about the somewhat problematic index, CSIRO publishing issued a revised index for The Australian Bird Guide (see PDF link below):

http://www.publish.csiro.au/ebook/sup...

This index lists species under both their scientific name but also their common name as well.