Ralph and all,
The problem with plants is that there are so many species there can be no
one book that covers the whole of Australia, or even NSW, in any depth. In
the Sydney region we are lucky to have several excellent plant ID books,
such as the Robinson text already mentioned by Chris Ross. My personal
favourite is Alan Fairley & Philip Moore's "Native Plants of the Sydney
District" (Kangaroo Press, 1989 - there is a new edition, 2000 I think).
This has a photo of each species with user-friendly descriptions, and
covers an area extending from Newcastle to Nowra and west to beyond Lithgow
(unlike Robinson, which is just Sydney and excludes Blue Mountains etc).
For eucalypts I like to use Brooker & Kleinig, mentioned by Lawrie Conole
in an earlier post.
Echoing Ralph's comments, I believe that some knowledge of plants and
habitat is absolutely essential for anyone interested in bush birds. It
almost goes without saying that many of our birds' distribution, movement
patterns, anatomy and behaviour are determined by their associations with
plants. Apart from that, it helps enormously when describing the position
of a bird to someone else ("it's in the lowest branch of the large
casuarina" etc).
Cheers
Carol
Carol Probets
Blue Mountains NSW
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