dear fellow birders
I have just caught up with recent postings about the new edition of P&K. Thanks
for all the interest and encouraging words. I feel the need to make a couple of
general comments before answering the particular questions.
1. a field guide is not a taxonomic checklist and field guide authors are
usually not taxonomists [I certainly am not]. So please don't read too much
into the taxonomy followed by guides. We will all have to be patient for a
little longer and wait for Christidis and Boles 2007, which is due in November,
before revising our personal lists.
I can assure you that C&B 07 provides a comprehensive coverage of Australia and
all its territories, including all the accepted rarities. Thus it will provide
for the needs of all listers, no matter what their choice of area to list
within. Most importantly, it provides detailed explanations for each taxonomic
decision, although they are necessarily technical.
The timing of production of the 8th ed unfortunately turned out to be a bit
early relative to C&B 07 to allow complete consistency in nomenclature and
taxonomy. Publication timetables are driven as much by commercial needs as
other considerations.
2. I take the view that a field guide should be more than a list for twitchers
to tick [and so of course is a checklist]. So, I am keen to convey as much as
possible about the diversity of our bird fauna, even if that means including
taxa that are essentially indistinguishable in the field without taking
detailed measurements eg the Wandering and Tristan Albatrosses, not to mention
Pin-tailed and Swinhoe's Snipe and the 2 diving-petrels. This apparently seems
incongruous in a field guide to some, but anything that raises awareness about
our biodiversity seems justified to me. It really makes little difference
whether taxa are considered species or subspecies - they are all worth
understanding and conserving! Anyway, the decision about taxonomic level
[species/subspecies] is pretty arbitrary - lets just enjoy them all!
By the way, the supposed conservation gains from splitting are more imagined
than real, at least under Australian legislation - its no more difficult to
list a subspecies as threatened than it is to list a full species. Take a look
at the birds listed under the EPBC Act - there are more subspecies listed than
species!
3. Laurie Knight is correct in pointing out that a strictly biogeographic
coverage would include New Guinea, but reality has to be invoked eventually, so
I made the somewhat arbitrary decision to make the cutoff the 'Australian'
Torres Strait islands. In any case one would still not include Christmas Is. or
the sub-antarctic islands, as was so beautifully explained by David Adams.
4. A field guide is most definitely not a political statement, its just a book
that hopefully helps people enjoy the hobby of birding!
If you are planning to go birding on Christmas Is. [and I thoroughly recommend
it to all who haven't] then you don't need to take a guide to the birds of
Australia - for a few $ you can pick up a copy of David James' neat guide at
the visitor info centre.
Likewise, if you are going to Macquarie Island you don't want to hump around a
guide to mainland Australia's birds - there are a couple of ripper guides to
birds of the Southern Ocean.
Now to the specifics:
I state in the Introduction, immediately after the much quoted bit about
taxonomy used, that 2 species have been deleted because there appear to no
longer be self-sustaining wild populations. These are the Red Junglefowl and
Mute Swan. I understand that 'Junglefowl' populations on Great Barrier Reef
islands have been removed by Qld authorities, and since neither Christmas nor
Cocos-Keeling Islands are included there would appear to be no populations that
meet the criteria.
The Mute Swans at Northam are dubiously self-sustaining, they are artificially
fed and have not expanded at all. ie they cant survive outside that one
waterbody. So I made a decision to remove the species to make way for the
Canada Goose - for which there are now 2 accepted records of wild vagrants.
Travelling birders would likely know a Mute Swan anyway.
The Barbary Dove population in Alice Springs [first mentioned in ed. 7] has
been successfully wiped out by the conservation authority - good on them for an
excellent job. Now they should turn their attention to the birds at Tennant
Creek.
David Adams stated that I had removed the Christmas Island species from Ed. 8 -
this is not true, they have never been included in any ed. of Pizzey.
I hope this clarifies a few things - and keep the feedback coming.
Peter Menkhorst
Melbourne
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