Growing up in the sixties "What Bird is that?" by Neville Cayley was the
only bird book available. Our family's copy was a second edition, printed
in 1958 and sold for 40/- (40 shillings, or 2 pounds), which would have been
a lot of money in those days. (I have that copy now.)
It was organised quite differently to current field guides, but for its time
was quite useful. Illustrations were clustered together on coloured
'plates' and sections grouped birds approximately into habitats, which can
be useful to compare all the 'open forest' or 'heath and undergrowth' birds
on one page.
Drawbacks for me as a child using the book included the lack of detail in
the illustrations and the poor colour reproduction of the plates.
The Slater and Slater double volume came out in the late sixties, I think.
That had several advantages and taught me the differences between passerines
and non-passerines. They were smaller than Cayley, but illustrations were
still grouped together rather than side-by-side with the descriptions. This
time all the illustrations were grouped together in a section in the middle
of the text. A couple of good innovations were the (b&w) illustrations of
underwing patterns of birds of prey and the inclusion of distribution maps
for each species. Once again these were grouped in a separate section, at
the back of the book.
Looking up about a bird involved looking at the illustrations in one
section, reading the descriptions - and these were particularly good,
especially behaviour, then checking the maps to see if the bird you had
decided on was likely to be in the area you saw it in.
Later my father (Noel Shaw) started working at the Gould League of Victoria
and instigated their publication of the "Birds of Victoria" series of
guides, also grouped on habitats. Dad became editor.
These books were smaller and true field guides, in that they were small
enough to carry in a pocket or haversack without weighing you down.
Sometimes though you'd need to carry two or three with you to cover all the
habitats you would be in for the trip. The illustrations were wonderful,
especially those done by Sue McInnes in the later volumes and reprints on
the earlier three.
I used these for many years and often had a set in the car to refer to until
quite recently when Morecombe put out a more compact volume and the others
had disintegrated from wear and tear.
Elizabeth Shaw
Phillip Island
Victoria
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