Even the earliest HANZAB is some 15-20 years newer than say "Birds of  
Australia" or the two volume Slater, so I wasn't intending to dismiss  
the series with my somewhat tongue in check comment about last century.
 That said I have come across a comment made by Don Roberson claiming  
that Volume One was out-of-date at publication. It seems fairly  
uncharitable to dismiss the entire volume on the basis of updated  
information being published on some of the petrels. For the record   
I've appended the comment and a link to the site it is taken from.
cheers
Paul
http://www.montereybay.com/creagrus/australasia.html
 "There is a handbook series on-going (Marchant & Higgins 1991 et al.)  
entitled Handbook of Australian, New Zealand, and Antarctic Birds. It  
is modeled closely after the Birds of the Western Palearctic (Cramp &  
Simmons 1978 et al.), published by the same publisher, and of the  
same general high quality. Alas, the first volume appeared in 1991  
and therefore just missed incorporating all the new identification &  
distributional information on small Pterodroma petrels published by  
me and others (Roberson & Bailey 1991, Spear et al. 1992). Since many  
of these originate in New Zealand or vicinity, the first volume was  
immediately out-of-date when it appeared. I admit it turned me off to  
read numerous errors in the Pterodroma sections, and I ended up not  
buying this set (it is also incredible expensive, even for a  
handbook). I have used other folk's copies for research since,  
though, and the more recent volumes seem quite good."
 (1991 Cookilaria petrels in the eastern Pacific Ocean: Identification  
and distribution. Part I: Am. Birds 45: 399-403. Part II: Am. Birds  
45: 1067-1081; as senior author with Stephen F. Bailey.)
On 15/03/2007, at 12:38 PM, Robert Inglis wrote:
 I just thought I would point out that half the volumes in HANZAB  
were published last century.
Volume I was published in 1990.
 I will leave it to others to decide if the information therein is  
"out of date" or still relevant but my set will be remaining within  
easy reach for the foreseeable future.
Cheers
Bob Inglis
Sandstone Point
Qld
  
---------------------------------------
Paul Jacobson
mob: 0434 534 161
email: 
                  Mactrix
- mac-centric support services -
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, 
send the message:
unsubscribe 
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to: 
===============================
 
 |