Greetings. A couple of days ago I received my copy of the newly-published
The compact Australian bird guide by Davies, J, Menkhorst, P, Rogers, DI, Clarke, R, Marsack, P & Franklin, K (CSIRO Publishing, Clayton South, Vic.). Now, I appreciate that some people would question why anybody would bother to publish, and would buy,
a field guide in printed form! They argue that the apps to the job as good or better than the printed field guides. Well, call me old-fashioned, but I really like the latter! This is especially so when I go to a new place where I have little knowledge of the
birds. To be able to turn to just one or two pages showing a group of similar-looking birds I find much faster than scrolling through images on an app.
If you have not already seen it,
The compact Australian bird guide is a cut down version of the 2019 edition of the same authors’
Australian bird guide. It uses the same illustrations, although not nearly as many. It has very limited information about subspecies. The binding is terrific, it is printed in beautiful colours on heavy paper, and to me it feels good in the hand.
I have not yet given it a trial run in the field in a place where I am not familiar with the birds, but did check it out with respect to a couple of pairs of birds that many find
a bit tricky in the local area, namely the leaden and shining flycatchers, the two ravens, and the five thornbills. I thought that the illustrations and text work really well in each case.
It will be interesting to hear what others think about having a new national field guide in printed format, and this one in particular.
Best wishes – David
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David McDonald
1004 Norton Road, Wamboin NSW 2620, Australia
Mobile: 0416 231 890 | Tel: (02) 6238 3706
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