Australian Bird Guide: Concise Edition
- Australian Bird Guide: Concise Edition (Bloomsbury, 2022).
- 252 pages; many colour illustrations and maps.
- ISBN: 9781399406291. Flexibound, £25.
- Buy at BirdGuides bookshop from £22.50
I probably have more field guides to Australia than any other country, and I have used them all at some point. The arrival of the Australian Bird Guide in 2017 (known to Aussie birders as 'ABG') moved the quality of those guides up a notch. I really like the illustrations by Jeff Davies, Peter Marsack and Kim Franklin, and they are both realistic and easy to compare against each other – all are positioned right next to text and a map.
The original book was revised in 2019, and this concise edition covers more than 700 species that are residents of or regular visitors to Australia. The extensive descriptions in the ABG have been cut down to provide just the key facts to enable visual or audible identification. Each species has a distribution map indicating presence through dark and light green – the former representing the core areas (although this is not explained). Your chance of seeing each species is indicated by a circle divided into shaded quarters. So, a full dark circle is an easy bird and one with just a single quarter will require a lot more effort, and you'll definitely need to plan your attempt to see it. Vagrants are not included, and only distinctive subspecies are featured.
At 20x13 cm and with a thickness of just over 1 cm this book is truly portable, weighing only 400 g despite good-quality paper. The species are grouped into broad habitats: marine and coastal, freshwater and land birds – this still sorts them into something close to the normal taxonomic sequence. The nomenclature follows that of IOC. The decision to combine Graceful Honeyeater and the newly split Cryptic Honeyeater on the same map was presumably due to lack of time. Publication of the book last year also just missed the three-way split of Crested Shrike-tit, although these are shown as subspecies. Meanwhile, Opalton Grasswren is described as being very close to Rufous Grasswren, but does not get illustrated.
The ABG is the new benchmark and this concise edition is also the country's first really compact bird guide. For the birder visiting Australia this book provides everything you need and fits neatly into your pocket.
