Best bird guides by region...Australasia? (1 Viewer)

[delia todd]

WHAAT?!?!

• Structured by the broad habitat where a species is most likely to be encountered: marine, freshwater and land.

🙁🙁🙁
👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻
Unbelievable. What on earth possessed them to do this.

What's your problem Butty?

It's not a new concept, the very first bird guide I bought, back in the late 60's was in this format. The Collins Pocket Guide to British Birds by R.S.R. Fitter.

As a complete newbie to birding I found it extremely useful, I still have it and still refer to it on occasion.

In those days I had no concept of the meaning of taxonomy, orders, families etc etc. I could just go to the relevant habitat section, then to the small / medium / large size area.

 

[Butty]

As it includes every regularly-occurring species in Australia it's clearly not intended - and would be inappropriate - for beginners. So it (apparently) tries to be both things at once and will thus (presumably) fail to be either. What a terrible wasted opportunity.

 

[Swissboy]

As it includes every regularly-occurring species in Australia it's clearly not intended - and would be inappropriate - for beginners. So it (apparently) tries to be both things at once and will thus (presumably) fail to be either. What a terrible wasted opportunity.

It might just be the opposite. Finally a "new" approach. With all its shortcomings, of course. But that holds for the present customary systematic approach as well. Particularly when whole groups are shifted like waterfowl all of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the book instead of the previously customary placement up front.

 

[Butty]

The question of a chosen taxonomic sequence is entirely different from that of dividing a field guide up by habitat.

 

[mjh73]

Australia is so large and ecologically diverse a 'landbird' section is next to useless in terms of workable field guide subdivision.

 

[Murray Lord]

If you have a look inside the cover of the current Australian Bird Guide you will see it too is divided up into marine and coastal, freshwater and land birds sections. So I am not sure anything is changing. And this is exactly the order which was praised in an earlier post as "Finally a sensible species sequence for a FG".

 

[Mysticete]

As it includes every regularly-occurring species in Australia it's clearly not intended - and would be inappropriate - for beginners. So it (apparently) tries to be both things at once and will thus (presumably) fail to be either. What a terrible wasted opportunity.

I have the book, and while that is not my preferred method of organization, the quality of illustrations, degree of comprehensive coverage, and lots of cool little features (I love the "likelihood of encountering" symbols) more than makes up for it. And to be perfectly honest, it still ends up being a mostly taxonomic organization anyway: It doesn't try to split similar species by habitat type, so all the ducks are together, all the cormorants together, all the rails together, and so on.

If I have any gripes, its that some of the shades of color used on the range maps are completely undecipherable for me, so I often have to turn to the text to figure out what subspecies is where, despite them being "different" colors on the map.

 

[Butty]

I have the book

You mean you have the big version rather than the (forthcoming) compact one I assume. Anyway . . .
Phew - what a relief. I take it that all they've done (in both books) is to invent/adopt a sequence that very-loosely lumps together all the orders (or whatever they're called this week) that have vague habitat similarities: tubenoses, cormorant-types and gulls together (marine), waterfowl, rails and waders together (freshwater), near-passerines and passerines together (land) - that sort of thing? In which case it seems so vague and loose as to be pretty pointless but no great harm done (and ⅔ of the book will then be in normal taxonomic order anyway).

 

[Mysticete]

You mean you have the big version rather than the (forthcoming) compact one I assume. Anyway . . .
Phew - what a relief. I take it that all they've done (in both books) is to invent/adopt a sequence that very-loosely lumps together all the orders (or whatever they're called this week) that have vague habitat similarities: tubenoses, cormorant-types and gulls together (marine), waterfowl, rails and waders together (freshwater), near-passerines and passerines together (land) - that sort of thing? In which case it seems so vague and loose as to be pretty pointless but no great harm done (and ⅔ of the book will then be in normal taxonomic order anyway).

Yeah the big version.

The orders are still together. You are not going to find Australian Reed Warbler in with the waterbirds...it's with all the other songbirds.

 

[njlarsen]

It sounds almost like they have done what Howell has preached: return to an order that is similar to field guides from 50 years ago.

Niels

 

[Butty]

Bring back the Voous list of my youth! - and make it law 👍🏻

 

[P T Treloar]

Bring back the Voous list of my youth! - and make it law 👍🏻

Here, here!

 

[MJB]

Bring back the Voous list of my youth! - and make it law 👍🏻

I appreciate the irony in your post, but I very much doubt if Karel Voous would have agreed with anyone taking that view seriously. I had the privilege of corresponding for a short period with Karel Voous in the mid-1990s concerning the taxonomic changes that were to feature in The EBCC Atlas of European Breeding Birds. His letters were an absolute delight and his style was almost courtly, but he was keenly interested in the development of molecular techniques in obtaining taxonomic insights, not merely for splits and lumps, but also in group relationships within and between bird families.

The only strong statements he made were about how ridiculous it was to be regarded as some kind of infallible deity because he had published via the BOU the 1977 List of Recent Holarctic Bird Species! That it formed the basis of national lists in many countries was one thing, but to regard it as unchanging and a final authority was abhorrent.
MJB