Yes, I remember my father in law ( SD) who was a bird fancier in the sixties
and seventies had one of those Slater books, I think he had the passerines
one since he kept finches and doves. He also had a book called "What bird is
that" by someone or other which was a rather simplistic approach to bird
recognition. It guided one to categorise a bird by size, colour, shape etc,
and (sometimes) led you to what the bird might have been. Based only on
physical appearances it completely ignored taxonomy as used today. This was
way before I got into bird watching so I have no idea what happened to the
books.
Tony.
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Peter Shute
Sent: Tuesday, 22 February 2011 9:27 PM
To: Birding-aus (E-mail)
Subject: Two volume Slater field guide
I came across a reference to a two volume set called "A Field Guide to
Australian Birds", divided into "Passerines" and "Non-passerines", published
in the early 70s. I assume this is the forerunner of the more recent "Slater
Field Guide to Australian Birds"?
It seems to be about the size dimensions, but twice as many pages. Why twice
as many? More text? Bigger pictures?
I also note in the Wikipedia article** about it that
"... it covers the political dependencies Norfolk, Lord Howe, Macquarie,
Heard, Christmas and Cocos-Keeling Islands. This is commendable; for, often
these outposts of the Commonwealth have been sadly neglected
ornithologically and for the first time a fully illustrated guide is
available...".
The inclusion of these islands on the Australian list (not Macquarie?) was
discussed here recently, so I thought it might be worth pointing out that it
may have been Peter Slater who started it.
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Field_Guide_to_Australian_Birds_(Slater)
Peter Shute
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