New Aussie guide (reposted) (1 Viewer)

This is a repost of an excellent thread that went missing in the February 9th disaster. I seem to have found most of the thread in my browser cache, so I'll repost as much of it as I can. unless it all gets too difficult, I'll split it so that the extended discussion of Australian ecology that grew out of it goins into a thread of its own, but link to that thread from here.

keenbirder1 wrote:

Hi all

Wondering whether any of you are aware of a new Aussie guide, actually a new edition of an existing guide, but in smaller true field guide format, new presentation, and updated. Published only about a month ago, but probably not available outside Aust. yet. Its mentioned on several sites, a US reference at:

http://www.worldtwitch.com/books_australasia.htm

And from Australia,

http://menura.cse.unsw.edu.au:64800...1/msg00024.html

May be worth investigating, for those planning and Australian trip.

May be another alternative for an Australian birding trip.

John Cantelo wrote:

Thanks for highlighting this "new" field guide.

I'm planning to visit Oz for the first time in 2006 and, although I've travelled fairly widely in Europe & had a couple of trips to the USA, this will be my first venture to the southern hemisphere. With so many bird families being familiar (or vaguely so) I didn't find it too difficult to get to grips with American species. However, even though I've not really started my homework yet, I can see that I will have much greater problems with Australian species.

I already have the latest edition of 'Slater' (whose plates I think are superb) but feel it lacks detail. My oldish edition of Simpson & Day is, I think, too big and clunky for field use. The plates in my Pizzey and Doyle version of the Collins guide are frankly too poor (should I get the Pizzey & Knight version?). I thought the original Morcombe field guide's plates were disappointingly amateurish (although better than Pizzey & Doyle and similar in standard to Simpson & Day's). That said Morcombe's plates are pretty workman and an online peek at the layout of his compact guide suggests it is very handy and well set out. I rather like the 'preview' plates for each family, the heavily annotated plates and colour coded maps. (But does it also make seasonal distribution clear?)

So three basic questions -
1- Which guide is best for learning Oz species?
2- Which guide would be best for 'in-field' use?
3- Which guide would be the best back up to the 'in-field' guide?

John

Tim Allwood wrote:

Hi John

i used the previous edition of Simpson and Day in the field and found it very useful. You almost always have a car nearby due to the amount of travelling needed so size of the book isn't too much of an issue. The newest edition looks excellent

if you can afford it The Handbook of the Birds of Australia and New Zealand is a great investment. There are several volumes now and it's referred to as HANZAB. You can very rarely pic up copies in cheapo book stores. This woud be great for reference at home per and post trip

Tim

John Cantelo wrote:

Come on, Tim! I like bird books as much, probably more than, the next man, but paying £865 for the 6 vols of HANZAB (plus a further sum for Vol 7) seems a bit OTT even to me. I'm only planning to be there for a couple of weeks and certainly won't get to NZ. You'll be giving the impression that us teachers are rolling in money! Mind you, I am hoping that they produce a compact edition a la BWP and then flog it off at a fraction of the list price, John
PS - yes, I do know what HANZAB stands for!

Edward wrote:


I'd be interested to look at the new Morcombe guide. Unfortunately, it came out just a few weeks after I was there, otherwise I'd have probably bought it.

As for your question John I would recommend the Pizzey and Knight guide as the best for learning Australian birds. It has, in my opinion, easily the best plates of the Australian guides and the text and layout are good. However, the plates do seem a bit dark in the new 7th edition, don't know if that was just the batch I looked at in Brisbane. The drawback of Pizzey & Knight is its size. I always left it in the car but had done a lot of homework before I left and that didn't really cause any problems. It is probably my favourite world field guide after Collins. Highly recommended.

Simpson & Day is the one you always see visiting birders with but I didn't meet a single Australian birder who rated it. It also contains the strangest illustration I've ever seen - the dead White-throated Needletail.

Morcombe (original) I found a very useful back up for Pizzey and Knight. The text is well written and distribution maps are better than P&K, and annotating the plates (a la Collins) is a great step forward. The obvious drawback of Morecombe is the variable (a euphemism for "often wretched") quality of the plates. The illustration of Pechora Pipit (granted, you're unlikely to see one) is the most amateurish drawing I've ever seen in a top class guide. Waders and ducks are hopeless too. However, the annotations, which draw your attention to key ID features, makes it worth considering.

As for in-field use, and if size is the limiting factor, then I think the new Morcombe and Slater are the only options.

I'm not sure any Australian guides show seasonal distribution, a bit strange really.

So Pizzey and Knight gets my vote as the best all round guide.

E

PS John, you'll love Australia.

John Cantelo wrote:

Thanks for the advice, Edward, but did you never see Arthur Singer's dreadful illustrations of pipits (and much else) in the old Hamlyn guide? I hope I do like Oz although it wouldn't be my first choice destination - I'm tempted largely because an old birding friend lives there, John


Katy Penland wrote:

John, may I ask what part(s) of Australia you'll be seeing?


John Cantelo wrote:

Summer 2006 is a long way off as yet so my only firm plan is to visit am old friend who lives near Cairns (Kuranda to be precise). Indeed, the whole object of visiting Oz is to visit my friend rather than go birding per se ..... though it does help that he's well travelled and expert birder! Other than that my schedule is entirely dependent on the cheapest route from the UK to my destination. Anything extra will be a plus! John

Tannin wrote:

You won't go too far wrong with any of the non-photographic guides, John. They are all competent and usable. Please yourself.

But with that said, I'm going to disagree with Edward on several matters. First, he is way too disparaging of Moorcombe's illustrations. Yes, they are not perfect, but then neither are those of any of the other guides. The differences he claims are, in my view, much less black and white than Edward writes it. For any given bird, chances are you will find that one, sometimes two of the guides have the best picture, and that the illustration in one of the other guides really isn't all that helpful. There is, in short, no such thing as a perfect guide. For the keen birder who plans to be here for any length of time (i.e., not you as you are only visiting for a while) no single guide is sufficient.

There is no real consensus between Australian birders as to the best guide. In the east, Pizzey & Knight seems to be number one, but it's closely followed by both Moorcombe and Simpson & Day. In the west, Moorcombe seems to be a clear #1, with both of the other two also well represented. (This is probably no coincidence: Michael Moorcome is a West Australian. I suspect that a regional bias has something to do with it.)

In everyday use, we use all three constantly. We frequently find that Book A isn't as clear as we would like about bird X, but that Book B or possibly Book C is better. But in our (reasonably extensive) experience, there is no particular pattern to this: for any given bird, the "best" illustration is equally likely to be in any of the big three guides.

Many Australians claim that Simpson & Day has the best illustrations overall. That's a fair comment in its way, but it is certainly not always true. Added to that, the text in S&D is sparse to the point of being cryptic. S&D has a grim and austere flavour that many people don't much like, and is certainly the slowest guide to use as you need to fiddle about matching the illustrations up with numbers to find the name of the bird. Very old-fashioned.

Moorcombe is clearly the easiest to use. It's beautifully organised, and if you can live with the size of it (a little smaller than P&K and about the same as S&D), it is the obvious best choice for use in the field. More birds per page without making the pictures smaller, better distribution maps, truly excellent text which gives clear descriptions, lots of detail about (e.g.) plumage variations, and (like Pizzey but unlike S&D) conveys the flavour of the bird, gives some of the context, and provides better hints about where you might see it, what it might be doing, how it walks, feeds, flies, and calls. Moorecombe probably has more "dud" illustrations than the two older guides, but not all that many more, and has many other strengths.

For learning Australian birds, Moorecombe is (in my view) clearly your best choice.

Once you have learned the majority of the birds, then you might lean more towards Pizzey & Knight. This is a superb guide: wonderful illustrations (on the whole), and Graham Pizzey's superb text, which manages to be brief, comprehensive, and evocative. The layout is practical and although not as fast and easy as Moorcombe, nevertheless very usable. Of all the guides, Pizzey probably has the most information (closely followed by Moorcombe).

Having recommended Moorecombe to you, it might surprise you to read that my own favourite guide is Pizzey. Well, possibly. I'f I'm only going to take two guides, it's always going to be those two. If I had to choose just one, then it's a really tough decision. Most of the time, I take both books and three or four others as well, but usually pick up whichever of the two falls to hand.

What about the new revised Morcombe? I didn't know it was out yet, but I'll lay odds it's even better than the old one. My 1st edn is just about ready to fall apart, it's done a lot of kilometres, so I'll slip down and grab the new edition soon.

The other one to consider is Slater, Slater & Slater. It's very old and although it's been updated, it hasn't been revised completely and it's showing its age. The most annoying thing about it is that even the latest revision still lists many of the birds in the wrong order, which makes it a pain to find things in. (I suspect that this is because they would need new plates, and Peter Slater died a year or so ago. His son Raoul (a wonderful photographer) is still around, but I don't think he works on the pictures, just the text, so we are stuck with the old order.

Slater is quite a bit smaller than the three big guides but still has lots of information, and is certainly good enough for any visitor to use to learn the birds of Australia. It fits in a pocket (just!) and despite its size has good illustrations and informative texts. I particularly like the way that Slater introduces each group of birds. When you are learning, this is a huge help. I mean what's the use of saying "an active, relatively large thornbill" if you don't know what a thornbill is yet? Slater tells you this stuff, which none of the others do. (Except Pizzey, and to some extent Simpson, but you have to look that up in the back of the book: it's not in the main text where you can find it when you need it.)

Actually, Slater is particularly good for thornbills, which is perhaps why that (made up) example came to mind - and, as it happens, thornbills tend to be among the most difficult of Aussie birds to identify.

There are also some photographic guides. I have two of them, and can't tell you much about either, despite having owned them for a year or two. That says it all, really: I don't use them. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing someone in the field using either one: it's always Slater or one of the big three.

PS: having verged off the track a bit, let me return to your original question. Although I disagree with Edward on the details, my recommendation is that you buy the same bookjs that he recommends. Buy Moorcombe for in the field use, buy Pizzey and Knight as the back-up text that gives you extra depth. You'll miss Slater's pocket size and family introductions, but if you are going to buy two, make it those two.

Edward wrote:

A very fair summing up Tannin, although I was trying to be less disparaging than I have been in the past about Morcombe's illustration in this post! In fact they are growing on me. Glad we reached the same conclusions though!

E

Tannin wrote:

Edward said:

I'm not sure any Australian guides show seasonal distribution, a bit strange really.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that it's possible to show seasonal distribution here, Edward.

(Err ... I know that you know most of this stuff I'm about to write already, but for clarity I'll just write as if you'd never been here.)

There are certainly some, indeed many, species that it's possible to clearly define the summer-winter distribution of. The Siberian waders that arrive and depart every year are obvious examples. Most of the cuckoos and woodswallows, ditto.

Similarly, there are quite a few that tend not to move around too much at all: yellow robins, wrens, magpies, quite a few of the others rarely move outside of a relatively small home range.

But the reality is that a vast number of Australian birds have unpredicatable, varying, or very complex migration patterns. Often these have no real relationship to the calendar. In many (perhaps most) of these cases, we don't actually know what the pattern is; or we have observed some sort of a pattern but there are so many exceptions and variations that we really have to admit that we need a lot more research before we can make any sort of useful statement.

The guides, as a rule, bug out of this thorny problem by saying something really vague like "nomadic and migratory". Translated, this means "they do seem to move in some sort of organised way, but I'm damned if I know what it is".

I think the thing that most northern hemisphere people fail to understand about Australia (and which, regrettably, most white Australians don't understand yet either) is the nature of the climate. Everybody "knows" that Australia is a dry continent. But this is so gross an oversimplification that it would be probably better not to say it at all.

Yes, it is a dry continent: we get about one seventh of the average rainfall that other continents get (excluding Antarctia), and if we exclude the small tropical fringe on the north and north-east, it's about one 14th of average rainfall.

But it is not low average rainfall that determines the peculiar biota of this continent. It's a factor, but not as big a factor as you might think. Even the great arid interior is, in the main, much better watered than some other sizeable parts of the planet - notably northern Africa and the Middle East.

Nor is it our old, tired soils - though this is a very significant factor indeed.

The biggest single determinant is the variability and unpredictability of the climate. Largely because of the Southern Oscillation (AKA El Nino) in the Pacific currents, there is very little predictability of rainfall in the major part of the continent, and only a moderate level of predictability even in the south-east and south-west. We talk glibly about having "average rainfall of around 10 inches per anum" but that really means a pattern over the years like, for example:

7, 8, 2, 3, 2, 5, 3, 25, 12, 17, 5, 6, 3, 5, 7

Outside of the coastal fringe, we really need to talk about averages over 5, 10, and 20 years periods. (Even within the coastal fringes, to a fair extent.) It would make a lot more sense to say "Ballarat has 200 inches per decade" (which is about right) than "Ballarat has 20 inches per year" (which, even here in the well-watered south, is often hopelessly wrong). The last few years on our place have been (roughly and from memory) 16, 12, 14, 15, 31. In the interior, the pattern swings wildly - much more so than here, where we still benefit from the moderating influence of sea only 80 or 100 kilometres away.

To summarise so far, yes, Australia is a very dry continent, and it is (in the main) as infertile as it is dry (because of the great age of the continent). But above all, it is unpredictable. The northern hemisphere concept of "season" as something that comes around in a fixed and generally predictable sequence at a set time doesn't really apply here. At least it applies, but you are never quite sure when and in what way it will apply.

So why, for example, did the marsupials do so well here and die out everywhere else (except South America, where they are only a minor part of the fauna at best), while the placental mammals that took over the rest of the world failed to thrive here and ended up dying out? Doubtless there are many reasons, but one of the primary ones advanced by the people who study these things is that marsupials are so good at dealing with long-term climate fluctuations. By investing very little in the task of producing offspring (where a placental mammal invests a very great deal) marsupials cope much more easily with bad times. (I'm resisting the temptation to say "bad seasons" as that's a northern hemisphere term that doesn't fit: a "bad season" implies (e.g.) poor winter rains, where what I'm talking about is bad periods that last a lot longer than that: seven years of poor rain in row is not uncommon, and as likely as not, that will be followed by massive floods and sometimes two or three years of substantial rain.)

Further, these events are rarely continent-wide. It's commonplace for (e.g) NSW and Queensland to be in the grip of drought while Western Victoria or parts of South Australia are doing it easy. Rain falls where rain falls, and there is a great deal of nomadism.

But within this follow-the-rain nomadism, there is often also some sort of regular, structured movement as well. Sometimes we more-or-less understand what that is, often we are reduced to guesswork.

Additionally, lots of reasonably well-understood species have fairly predictable but complex movement patterns that you couldn't sensibly show on a map. Silvereyes, for example, fly north for winter. But quite a lot of them stay home (even in Tasmania), and the northern-most ones are sedentary. In-between, the Tasmanian ones come to Victoria, the Victorians go to southern NSW, the southern NSW population heads for southern Queensland, and so on. And in WA, it's different again!

Blossom nomads, such as many of the honeyeaters, follow the richest eucalypt flowers and - as any beekeeper can tell you - the eucalypts don't simply have good nectar-flow years when it rains more than normal, they follow some more subtle rules of their own.

Or what about the Square-tailed Kite? It seems to breed more-or-less regularly during the cooler months in the south of the continent, but no-one seems to quite know what happens after that. I've just been reading up on this species, and after reading everything I could lay my hands on, the most I can say about its seasonal movements is "don't know".

Anyway, my guess is that people looked at the idea of esasonal mapping for a bird guide and, after a little thought, threw up their hands and said "it's too hard, let's do something else".

keenbirder1 wrote:

Probably the reason for lack of seasonal variation on Australian guidebook maps is that there's much less seasonal exodus of whole populations of birds to escape...theres no bleak snows of winter! Secondly, what there is of movement, is typically small scale, often localized, and seems not so well researched I think. So maybe theres more useful stuff to put onto those tiny guide maps, such as the density of recordings of species , as on Morcombe's triple density maps, where darkest colour indicates best chance of sighting success, plus also colours to show subspecies. Adding migration would make for a cluttered map, where there is also indicated range of subspecies. Would usually need a second map

The new Morcombe compact edition, which has many new maps to include more subspecies, does include migration on a few, eg Shining Bronze Cuckoo, and Grey Fantail.

Other books have tried to show breeding range, trouble is, that's so poorly known especially for birds of arid interior, that for some species the few known nest records have given rise to maps that can give a false impression for some species. There are some sedentary species covering a huge range, which MUST breed over that range, yet their as-yet recorded breeding range map does not show that.

Most other have only basic maps, nothing but the outline of range, no sub species or any other additional information.

On art quality, each has its better sections. While some of waders and seabirds may be better in Pizzey, I think Morcombe's may on average be the best on the passerines, and those are the species that are unique to Australia.

In the compact guide the illustrations are re-arranged and slightly smaller, and have as seem to be drawing no adverse comment yet in reviews.. As for Pechora Pipit, well I suppose its one illustration in 3500 (fortunately is not in Compact Guide), a N Hemishere bird apparently only ever seen once in Aust, and probably existing here only as a stuffed museum specimen. You should see some of the illustrations of Australian birds in various books that find their way here from other parts of the world!

Hope this throws some light on why little is shown of seasonal movement in Australian guides...so much less of it than in N hemisphere.

MORE: Tannins lengthy explanation seems to have arrived while I was typing mine. Yes I would especially agree with him about the unpredictability of much of the movement, so many species wander across the vast dry interion, somehow able to fins the areas that are best, So one region of the interior that has had rain can have incredible congregations of birds, that usually breed there, no matter waht time of year. Elswhere where these been no rain, far fewer birds. So this kind of movement is really not able to be mapped, but probably on a much greater scale than any regular seasonal movements .

For those visiting Aust., to research on rainfall, that occurred couple of months prior to the planned visit, in arid regions, and head for those areas for their sightings of the birds of the Aust interior.

MORE AGAIN...another edit. Looking again at Tannins contribution, he mentions that Peter Slater had died, Fortunately, not so (unless in last few days) ; but sadly, it was his wife Pat, who was co-author of his guide, and author of quite a few books in her own name. So she is greatly missed by many who knew her.

Peter seems mostly concentrating on big paintings, acrylic on canvas, and had a large format book of these published, and these really show his art ability ( Called simply Australian Birds , and published by Steve Parish , Brisbane (www.steveparish.com.au). Usually $49.95, but Angus & Roberson had plenty just before Christmas at $19.95, well worth getting even at full price. Seems public just don't appreciate this superb work. Their son Raoul, the third name on that field guide, has done a great deal of bird photography with Peter since childhood, and continues to make superb creative photographs of birds and natural scenery. These are often published in the Birds Australia magazine Wingspan.

Also, Tannin, when replacing your copy of MM guide, there 2 new editions. Theres the second edition of the large-size book, which has 7 improved replacement colour plates ( about a year ago) and now there on called "The Complete Compact Edition", similar page size as Slater, claimed to have over 3000 pics, many new maps and does not have the nest/egg section or the island birds section. So its the latter you would want I think.... and $10 cheaper too!

Swissboy wrote:

Tannin said:

....To summarise so far, yes, Australia is a very dry continent, and it is (in the main) as infertile as it is dry (because of the great age of the continent). .....So why, for example, did the marsupials do so well here and die out everywhere else (except South America, where they are only a minor part of the fauna at best), while the placental mammals that took over the rest of the world failed to thrive here and ended up dying out?

Click to expand...

Tannin, let me first thank you for this great summary. I knew about the unpredictability in the climate of Australia, but I guess that most of us from the northern hemisphere are not aware of the EXTENT of this unpredictability. I certainly was not.

Now to two things you mention as well:
First, that infertility of the soil. Is is really infertile (I would then assume due to leaching), or is it just that lack of water? I.e. is there even poor productivity on irrigated soils (compared to what one can produce in the deserts of Israel, for example)?
Second, I have always been of the opinion that more advanced mammals simply never made it on their own to Australia (with the exception of some bats), due to the fact that the Australian continent split from the rest of the land mass before modern mammals had evolved. That is certainly the way I learned it, and so far, it's what I have been teaching my students!

Robert

John Cantelo wrote:

Thanks to all, but esp 'keenbirder' and 'Tannin' for their very detailed comments. I looked at a copy of Pizzey & Knight today, but the plates looked very dull and 'muddy'. I assume that this was just a 'one-off' or an old edition, John

Tannin wrote:

Pat, not Peter. I really am getting scatterbrained in my old age. I knew that. (Knocks sawdust out of head, feels glad that Peter Slater is still with us on one hand, sad about Pat Slater on the other.)

I suppose given that we both typed in a great slab of text, it's not surprising that we cross-posted, Keenbirder!

I rarely carry a guide with me in the field (too much camera gear to cart around already) but keep them in the car. This predisposes me to replace my Moorcombe with the full-size version Hell, if there was such a thing as HANZAB in paperback, I'd carry that in the car too for the longer trips - I often miss it. For example, I was in the Shark Bay area a month ago (maybe 4000 kilometres from home) when I met Chimbing Wedgebills. I didn't know anything at all about them and - as you do - I wanted to know more background than you could possibly expect in a field guide. As it was, I had to wait till I got home. (And as it happens, with this particular species, HANZAB soon told me that no-one else knows a great deal about them either! Lots to learn.)

Anyway, I guess I'll look at both the new Moorecombes before I decide. Just for once in my life, I'll try not to buy both of them.

Swissboy wrote:

Tannin said:

Just for once in my life, I'll try not to buy both of them.

Click to expand...

Well, doesn't that sound familiar! Greetings around the globe.

PS: As a result of reading this thread, I just ordered the non-fieldguide Slater, which I had not known to exist.

Robert

Tannin wrote:

Now to Swissboy's questions. First, fertility. Yes, there are some (fairly small) relatively fertile areas here, but in the main, Australian soils have very low nutrient levels.

Australia is very, very old. The continent itself has been more-or-less stable (in the geological sense) for an extraordinarily long time. This is why it's so flat: the massive mountain ranges have all been worn away, and turned into sedimentary deposits. In some places, these sedimentary rocks themselves then became mountain ranges (as the surrounding materiel was eroded) and have eroded in their own turn. The McDonnell Ranges in central Australia are an example of this: the Finke River (which drains the East McDonnells) is said to be the oldest living river bed on the planet - 470 million years old, from memory. I mean a "living" river bed in the sense that it still carries water on, more or less, the original course. Naturally, there would be many "fossil" rivers that are older still, but which for one reason or another no longer flow. The Finke drains the McDonnells and the bed of the Finke is made up of sand and stone eroded from the hills above - but this stone itself is sedimentary rock which was originally eroded from another mountain range up in the Pilbara area in Western Australia. I forget how long ago that was: a very long time.

But I'm rambling around the point. Yes, Swissboy, leaching is the main factor. Leaching, I understand, doesn't just apply to the upper strata. Deep weathering through the very gradual passage of rainwater and groundwater occurs down to great depths (in the order of hundreds of metres), and results in a paucity of usable minerals in even freshly exposed rock. I assume that the exact same processes take place in every continent, but that it takes a very long time to have a noticable effect.

More importantly, there has been little disturbance to the landscape through the two great soil-renewing forces: volcanic activity and glaciers. Only in the south-east has there been recent volcanic activity, and that on a fairly modest scale. Nevertheless, it was enough to make parts of the eastern states much more fertile than the average.

I live in an area which is composed of old, infertile soils of sedimentary Silurian origin but which had some volcanic activity in the recent past (from about 10 or 15 million years ago until about 30,000 years ago). This makes the local soils a patchwork of Silurian clays and gravels on the one hand, some granitic intrusions, and wonderful rich red volcanic and black volcanic areas, which support an entirely different flora. Well, used to support a different flora: nearly all the volcanic soil areas have been cleared and used for intensive agriculture, of course.

Most of northern America and Europe was scoured and turned upside down during the ice-ages. This brought fresh rock to the surface which has broken down to make wonderful rich soils. Bar a couple of very minor exceptions, Australia was too warm and too dry to support extensive glaciation, so the soil remains largely untouched, and largely infertile.

The result is two-fold: first, it isn't very productive for agriculture. Crops grow, but grow more slowly unless you add artificial fertilisers. In some areas (notably the eastern wheatbelt of south-west Western Australia, and parts of NSW) you can't grow crops at all without artifical fertilisers.

Second, we retain a very rich diversity of wonderful different plant species: plants that have evolved and diversified and become specialists in low-nutrient survival. The diversity comes about because of the small variations in soil nutrient level, rainfall and drainage, salinity, and so on from spot to spot. Every little biological niche has its charecteristic flora. (Perhaps something a little similar applied in Europe once, but if so, it was all wiped out by the ice ages; the flora of modern Europe is, in broad, the fast-growing, fast-colonising weed species that managed to be first out of the blocks when the ice retreated. It's not difficult to find more different tree species in a few square miles of Australia than you get in the whole of Europe. (Over time, of course, this will change. European species wil gradually diversify and specialise once more, but we are talking a long time.)

To generalise, Australian plants are very, very good at metabolising phosphorus, and have developed a whole range of strategies to absorb it from soil (particulary through symbiotic associations with soil microorganisims), retain it in the plant structure, and preserve it against loss (through extracting it from leaves before the leaf is shed, for example). Quite a number of species are so adapted to low P levels that a handful of garden fertiliser kills them stone dead.

Naturally, this adaptation hasn't gone on in isolation. Of particular interest to us is the partnership that has grown up between the flowering plants and birds. It is no accident that we have so many species of honeyeater!

So, in broad, yes, the fertility really is low. Also, salinity is a very significant factor. The continent is very old and very flat, so the water table tends to be close to the surface, and the ground water tends to contain a lot of salt. Much of the continent is internally drained (i.e., rivers don't flow to the sea, they exit into saline lakes). Relatively small changes to land use can produce massive surface effects, and vast areas have been turned into saline wastelands by agricultural activity. (Clearing vegetation and/or adding irrigation.)

Tannin wrote:

Slater's Australian Birds is beautiful. You won't regret it, Swissboy.

I'd better address the marsupial/placental question later on. I have to go to work. But the short version is that, yes, we now know that there were placental mammals here in the late Cretacious (date from memory), but they seem to have died out.



Swissboy wrote:

Edward said:

...I would recommend the Pizzey and Knight guide as the best for learning Australian birds. It has, in my opinion, easily the best plates of the Australian guides and the text and layout are good. .....It is probably my favourite world field guide after Collins. Highly recommended.

Click to expand...

Edward, I agree about the "Collins" (or as it should be better called, the "Svensson" as there are other publishers as well). But how about Stevenson and Fanshawe (Birds of East Africa) for second place?

Robert

keenbirder1 wrote:

Hi Tannin.

Actually, I think you will find that the smaller compact guide is the more detailed as an IDENTIFICATION book, with a colour dot system linking subspecies drawings and text to the same subspecies range colour on maps, and most subspecies covered to some extent . It also anticipates some changes foreshadowed in Directory of Australian Birds and the next (last volume of Hanzab. )
Eg Little Wattlebird now Western Wattlebird, and a number of distinctive races, eg "Paperbark Flycatcher", "Silver-backed Butcherbird", races of Shriketit, that I can think of, all seem potential full species, are in guide not elevated to species, but are given their own space, own map, and it would be simple to rule a line thru and modify thir name without expense of re-arrangement if they become species.

Also new arrivals such as Grey Heron, Oriental Honey Buzzard for example. So it goes to just over 800 species (not counting those "probable" species.
So the smaller version seems more the serious birder version, the larger for general public.

But does not have the latest arrival, 2 Jan '05. A Black-capped Kingfisher, first for Aust, now in WA Museum. Details should soon be on Frank O'Connor's
http://birdingwa.iinet.net.au though seem not to be there yet. Might also be in Birding-Aus site soon I suppose.

Anyway, the compact goes into a large pocket, which helps when lugging binocs, camera etc etc. which meant I always left the large guides behind.

Edward wrote:

Many thanks to Tannin and keenbirder for their fascinating and invaluable input to this thread.

As I mentioned above John, the latest edition (7th) of P&K was very "muddy" when I saw it, so much so I decided not to buy it to replace my battered 6th. By the way John , your message box needs emptying!

E

Tannin wrote:

Swissboy said:

I have always been of the opinion that more advanced mammals simply never made it on their own to Australia (with the exception of some bats), due to the fact that the Australian continent split from the rest of the land mass before modern mammals had evolved. That is certainly the way I learned it, and so far, it's what I have been teaching my students!

Click to expand...

Yup. That was the state of understanding up until fairly recently, Swissboy. Since then, two things have come to light.

First, we have had to redefine our concept of "advanced". It simply doesn't fit. In general, we define an "advanced" creature as one which is more highly modified to deal with its environment. We (i.e., the early European settlers here in Australia) looked at the local fauna and immediately decided that they were "primitive" - that kangaroos were less "advanced" than sheep, for example.

There were several grounds for this, but one of the ones that carried the most weight was metabolic rate. The theory went like this: "Advanced" creatures (placental mammals, birds) have a high metabolic rate: they consume more resources and are able to be more active. "Primitive" creatures (e.g., reptiles, insects) have little or no control over their body temperature and their metabolic rate, and are thus less able to consume resources (fuel), and less able to adapt to a harsh environment, especially the cold of the Arctic.

So the early biologists studying marsupials soon "discovered" that they run cooler body temperatures and lower metabolic rates. Clearly "inferior". Today, of course, we can reason a bit more effectively, now that we have thrown out a lot of 19th century deterministic stuff and have a vast amount of extra data to inform our theories.

It turns out that the key survival factor in most of Australia is not so much the ability to grow fast or run fast or think effectively (though none of these do any harm, of course), it is the ability to survive on a shoestring. When a sequence of bad years hits, the creature that can cut down on its "expenditure" to match its "income" is at an advantage. We are not talking about hibernation here, Polar Bear style, but the same general idea. Hibernation is an excellent method with which to survive very harsh conditions for a relatively short and (importantly) known length of time - i.e., the northern winter. It is not well-suited to very long harsh periods which endure for an unknown and unpredictable length of time - i.e., dry periods in the Australian interior.

Let me put it this way. If animals were cars, the fauna of Europe-Asia would be designed for speed and horsepower, designed to compete hard for the abundant resources that their evironment provides. In contrast, those of Australia would be designed for low cost and fuel economy, designed to keep on going even though there is often a severe shortage of resources.

Of course, there are many exceptions: this is a very broad generalisation. But let us consider some examples. We will start with two iconic herbivores: the kangaroo and the sheep. (Or cattle: either one will do in this context.)

Sheep evolved as specialist inhabitants of lowland areas near the foot of mountains. They have advanced digestive systems (to digest large quantities of low-grade fodder), hooves for traction, and flock together for (not very effective) mutual defence. A young sheep must be able to run with the herd as soon as possible, so lambs (or calves) are born as large and as adult-like as possible. For the mother, bearing offspring is a huge investment: she must carry it for months, devote a large portion of her diet to nourishing it, and live with the substantial extra weight and bulk it adds to her while pregnant. In short, childbearing is a big gamble for a sheep or a cow, it adds substantially to her chance of being taken by a predator or just starving to death, but she can take that big risk on because she is "confident" that in six months time the rains will arrive as usual and there will be plenty of food. It's a big risk, but the predictability of the seasons makes it a good bet just the same.

Now, consider the kangaroo. The larger kangaroos (Eastern Grey, Western Grey, Euro and Red) evolved as nomadic inhabitants of the grasslands and open woodlands - much the same "job description" as a cow. Kangaroos also have advanced digestive systems to cope with poor quality fodder, but not as complex and as heavy as a cow. Instead, they avoid having to expend as much energy.

But the roo has another difficulty to face: it can't rely on the seasons. Next year it might rain, it might not. If it does rain, it might rain here, it might rain 500 kilometres away - there is no way of knowing. So the kangaroo does two things. First, it is the supreme long-distance traveller. That graceful hop is almost (but not quite) as good a way of travelling at high speed as running on four feet. Yes, a big kangaroo can out-run a Horse, but not a Cheetah or the fastest antelopes - it's pretty close, though. But hopping isn't just a way of going fast in case of need. Much more importantly, it is an astonishingly efficient way of travelling long distances at medium speeds. The kangaroo hop is the most energy efficient form of land transport ever invented. (Not counting bicycles, of course!) On a given amount of food, a kangaroo can travel about 30% further than any four-footed animal. And it can do this at quite high speed: the difference in energy expenditure per kilometre between a slow hop and a fast hop is practically nothing.

(How does it do this? The secret is in the huge tendons in the legs: they act as great big springs, allowing the roo to bound along on, effectively, a pair of pogo sticks: most of the energy for each spring is provided "free" by the gravity-fed tensioning and relaxation of those massive leg tendons. Additionally, the hopping action is tied into the diaphram and the breathing: a roo is physically unable to hop without breathing at the same time. This provides another small economy.)

So, to return to my theme, kangaroos are unable to predict the seasons because the seasons are entirely unpredictable. But they can move to wherever the rains have fallen and the feed is good, and do so quickly and without needing a great deal to eat along the way. That's the first great adaptation.

The second one concerns reproduction. Remember the massive investment that a cow or a countess makes in bringing a baby to term, the major risk to life and health that it involves? A roo, in contrast, produces a baby the size of a peanut. It costs her practically nothing, and involves no risk to speak of. If the season turns out bad, so what? She can grow another peanut as easily as you can grow your fingernails. And if the season is good, she has reproduced successfully.

Of course, she needs to provde milk and carry the youngster around in her pouch for quite a while. But this too is a low-risk activity. She can hop almost as well with pouch young inside as without (the extra energy is trivial - it's all done by springs and gravity, remember), and if by any chance she can't provide milk, then no hu-hu, she simply starts growing another peanut.

The net result of these and other economies is that it takes only two-thirds as much grass to grow a kilo of kangaroo meat as it takes to grow a kilo of sheep or a kilo of cow. In addition, kangaroos don't destroy the fragile soil surface the way that sheep and cattle do. (In arid Australia, the key driver of vegetation health is the thin layer of mosses and lichens that coat the surface of the nutrient-poor soil: these produce much of the nutrient that plants feed on, and bind the soil surface so that it doesn't blow away. Sheep, goats and cattle all destroy this layer with their hooves, and cause massive destruction of the landscape. Roos, with their soft pads, don't.)

Chris D wrote:

This is good stuff. My two trips to Australia found me mesmerized by everything. I think it's not appreciated enough for it's incredible and unique biodiversity. Any book by Tim Flannery is a worthy read. Watching honeyeaters in Graviellias and Banksias sums things up. not sure of that spelling


Swissboy wrote:

Tannin said:

Remember the massive investment that a cow or a countess makes in bringing a baby to term, the major risk to life and health that it involves?

Click to expand...

WOW, thanks Tannin for this free lesson in exciting Australian ecology! So the marsupials play along the lichen strategy, in a way. I mean by the way they are adapted to unpredictably long periods of harsh times. Now, when I said "advanced" in my earlier post, I mainly meant "having evolved later". I fully realize that so called primitive organisms only exist today because they have pretty good adaptations to TODAY'S conditions.

I thought the quote above was rather funny, but it is certainly correct. Except that humans may have found some more elaborate means to try to cope with those uncertainties, like storing food and digging holes for wells.

But there is still the most puzzling part (to me) of your original post: You did not deal with your previous mention of placental (land) mammals having made it to Australia on their own.

Robert

farias wrote:

Hi there john, From another foreigner that come to Australia without any idea of Aussie Birds...

1- Which guide is best for learning Oz species?
Simpson & Day = the best art work and you really recognize the bird on field.

2- Which guide would be best for 'in-field' use?
Slater= Because it size and simplicity
3- Which guide would be the best back up to the 'in-field' guide?
Michael Morcombe = Detailed texts... (but if you never saw the bird befor make it really hard by just looking the drawings)

Simpson and Day for the pictures (realistic paitings, real coloration)
Morcombe = for text
Slater = for you back pocket...
Pizzey & knight is not bad as backup to....

Most of this books can be found in any normal bookshop here in Australia, and even K-mart...

Let me know if you come to Melbourne...
Cheers
Alex

farias wrote:

Michael Morcombe's guide have very good key text and lot of good explanatory content...
However the drawings are pretty bad, if you never see the species before it make hard to distinguish by just looking at the drawings.

Some drawings are very amateur and I whish Morcobe left the job of drawing to a professional.

He's knowledge it's impressive.
If you put the contents of Morcombe with the drawings of Day. we would have the perfect Guide.