Aus Field Guides

[Penn Gwynne <>]

Thank you Chris for a very well compiled email. It's always nice to know what other birdo's think just like it's nice to know when they are setting fire to French island in times like these eh?

texterd:

Dear Birdnetters

Thank you so much for your GREAT response to my field guide RFI. I got very useful e-mails from MANY people. Because there was so much information, I actually collated it in a word document. I have copied this summary into this e-mail (below), as at least a couple of people asked whether I could forward the comments of other people. Thanks specifically to Paul Coopmans, Alastair Smith, Lawrie Conole, Craig Doolan, John Gamblin, David McDonald, Laurie Knight, Bob Forsyth, Jon Hall, Mike Mules and Chris Ross, all of whom gave good comments (I really do hope I didn't accidentally leave off a name or two - EVERYONE who replied to me actually had some unique useful things to say, although I did get one e-mail with just a little too much about the cricket - a sore point for us South Africans - jokes).

The field guide users' survey sounds very good. Lawrie, could you perhaps point me to a website where I can find the results of your last survey?
Well, here are my summarized notes that I prepared:

http://www.ausbird.com/ - yes, a (very) good source of information
See also http://birdsqueensland.org.au/

*LAWRIE HOW ABOUT OZZIES COMMENTS ON OVERSEAS BIRD BOOKS/GUIDES?*

FIELD GUIDES:

Australia has a wealth of field guides. The 4 high quality ones each has its followers.
The photographic ones as usual don?t do the job well. Two people who replied to my RFI said they birded with Slater in their pockets, but had the other guides available in the car.

*WARNING*

This can not be true Chris? watch out for Miss Information, I know for a fact how tall young Slater is and most self respecting birdo's only take one bird guide with them at a time. I think that is mainly due to the cost of hiring bird guides. Take young Tony Russell for instance? he is highly knowledgeable about Oz birds but is not cheep, .... cheep cheep perhaps but not just cheep.

Yours sincerely JAG De Whag caring for a male and female Australasian White backed magpie. I think Eggy has already named him? Nay~fen?

Good luck to "Pele" what a pleasure your honking company was.

Oodlepip to all.

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