Two Serious Bird Handbooks

Forest and Bird, Issue 302, 1 November 2001, Page 7

Two Serious Bird Handbooks

—GORDON ELL

: he monstrous bird books /_ of BirdLife International (with which Forest and Bird is allied) are published by Lynx in Spain and delivered to New Zealand in something resembling a sugar sack. The volumes of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds are born in Australia but are just about as big. These volumes are ‘the ultimate word’ in reference books on birds. BirdLife’s Handbook of the Birds of the World volume six, covers ‘Mousebirds to Hornbills. It is 310mm x 240mm weighing in around four kilograms: some handbook. In 589 pages, there are 385 colour photographs and 45 comparative colour plates, pus 270 distribution maps and around 6000 bibliographical references: cost 145 Euros. The only part of this volume

which seems to include New Zealand species is that dealing with Kingfishers, a most useful review of status and distribution of our subspecies, and an accurate arrow pointing to the lower Rodney district for the distribution of introduced kookaburra. Each of the 12 sections has a general overview of a Family, dealing with systematics, morphological aspects, habitat, general habit, voice, food, feeding, movements and relationship with people. The accompanying illustrations are superb, indicating key features of adaptation and behaviour; including in the case of the kingfishers sequences of diving and life in the breeding tunnel as part of a richly illustrated introduction of some 60 pages. Species accounts with comparative plates for all

_-_-- species follow these Family introductions. The Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds will run for seven volumes: the latest is volume five "Tyrant flycatchers to Chats’ (Editors, P.J. Higgins, J.M. Peter, W.K Steele, publisher Oxford University Press, Sydney, $A355 plus postage). Sponsored by Birds Australia, it’s an even more technical book than Birds of the World. Detailed references are embedded in the text, much of which is written in a scientific shorthand of abbreviations, managing to compress an immense amount of information. More than 900 species of birds have been recorded in this region, and volume five records 118 of them. Its packed pages cover field identification, habitat, distribution and

population movements, food, social organisation, voice (often illustrated with sonograph print-outs showing the pattern of calls), breeding, plumages and external morphology. This book is obviously the place to go for the details of accumulated research, critically examined. It should be valued by students and referees. By comparison with the Birdlife series, illustration is minimal but adequate, being limited largely to distribution maps, some sketches of behavioural postures, and colour keys to each of the Families reviewed. The HANZAB series aims to synthesise the collective knowledge about all the birds in the region. It will be essential for serious workers.