Customer Reviews

Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just returned from Australia and used this guide exclusively for bird watching in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne! It is easy to use, both logical and very informative. The paintings of each and every bird are exquisite and very, very accurate!

If you want a comprehensive and user friendly bird guide, this is THE ONE to get...It's lightweight, sturdy and an overall excellent source while out and about either in the city or in the Outback bush! FIVE STARS for this one...you will love it!!!

A really nice bird book. This is designed to be small enough to take around with you, and big enough that the pictures used for identification are actually usable for most people. In general, this field guide has struck a happy medium, and is quite a useful book to have for the bird fancier. A very handy publication.

I bought 3 of the 4 recommended bird books for Australia. I think any would be fine, although they do differ. For a comparison, I opened up the three books to the page on Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo with the following results.

Slater includes 6 cockatoo species on that page, illustrations opposite, with crude maps and about 90 words of text per species. This book would fit in a back pocket. 413 pp.

Simpson & Day includes 7 cockatoo species on the page, illustrations opposite, including flight drawings, detailed maps, and about 70 words of text per species. It relegates breeding information to a separate section at the back of the book. It is compact, but would not fit in a back pocket, but might fit in a raincoat pocket. 382 pp.

Pizzey & Knight includes 3 cockatoo species on the page, acceptable maps, about 250 words of text per species. It is the largest book, best carried in a backpack. 575 pp.

The fourth book is by Chambers and although I have not seen it, I am told it has the most detailed descriptions and information, but is lacking in illustrations.

Slater's Field Guide to Australian Birds is one of the best Australian bird guides there are, running second only to the compact edition of Michael Morcombe's field guide with a similar title.

Strongly recommended for birders traveling to Australia who can only find this guide available from overseas.

I'm very happy with this book. It's a good size for taking into the field and has a sturdy cover. The colors and detailed pictures are great. Each bird has it's own range and identifying information right with it's picture, so there's no hunting around to match pictures with information. I'd recommend it.

While this book seems to be the only such field guide, this second edition is better organized and contains several added features to help the novice locate a new species which has been sighted. There is a seven-page full color "Visual Index" which allows the user to categorize a new species. Then all of the information on a specific species, picture, map, description, etc. is on one page. No need to search though separated map, picture, and description sections.

The reason I bought this book despite the fact that I already have several Australian bird field guides, and do not plan to go there again in the foreseeable future, is because this new edition mentions all the species of the outlying islands. These islands usually get a very much reduced coverage or are neglected alltogether in the other field guides. I should say that the quality of the illustrations of the newly illustrated species is not always optimal, but it is very much better than not having any illustration. And the pictures are such that there is no potential for confusions.

Overall, it strikes me that the new edition has got quite a facelift. Not only has it increased by around 70 pages without losing the advantage of being very compact. There have also been many changes, but it's not all that easy to get an overview. Part of the reason is the fact that the new book has a completely different (or so it seems) sequence. In the first edition, many illustrations seemed rather oversized on the pages. In the new edition, many illustrations have been just a little reduced in size. They are still far from being diminutive. So the overall impression has gained quite a bit. To this comes the fact that now all the birds are faced towards the spine. In the old edition, some faced inward, some outward, giving a somewhat incoherent general impression. In many cases the same (or slightly reduced) illustrations have simply been mirrored. In many other cases, there are completely or partially new page compositions. And many species have been drawn new by Sally Elmer, a new artist who also did the various other corrections in the plates. Finally, the new edition features slightly glossy paper instead of the previous matted one.

So I think this second edition has really gained a lot compared to the previous one.

I am not commenting on the text or the range maps, as I can't judge the changes there. So my review concentrates on the optical changes only. And I would like to show where there is room for improvements.

The book comes with a transparent plastic cover/sleeve. Others may comment whether this is a good solution. It may just be a dust and moisture collector.

First of all, I must say that I am really delighted with the improvements. I could now easily consider taking this book out into the field, whereas I never felt comfortable with the first edition. The main reasons for this change are the better overview one can gain now, thanks to the more consistent arrangement and separation of the illustrations.

This does not mean that there is nothing to criticise, however.

To start, for the Brown Honeyeater, there is a wrong distribution/range map. It is the same as for the Pied Honeyeater above it. I copied the more correct range map from page 298 of the first edition and glued it over the wrong one in my copy. To do this, one needs to reduce the size of the map to about 85 percent for a good fit.

As I had mentioned previously, my main incitement to get this book at this time was the chance to get an overview over the many island species, but also over the introductions there. Overall, I think the book fulfills this quite well. What is lacking is a map that shows the location of all these islands. There would be room on one of the empty "notes" pages for this, or on one of the inside covers. It would not have to be a detailed map, but the immediate rough info would be helpful.

The book does considerably more than to just offer an ID help in systematic sequence. There are also some additional attempts to help, like a special spread for "dry-land waders". This results in a certain amount of redundancy, but I think this was not overdone. The only species I noticed that occurs three times because of this is the Plains Wanderer. It shows up with the quail-like species as well.

As not all the info is duplicated in some cases, it would be helpful to have the page numbers where the same species is dealt with right with the text. This is particularly needed for the flight pictures that are often on separate pages, and not always right in front or following a plate. An extreme case are the woodswallows. Their flight illustrations are on page 257 together with those of some other aerial hunters, but there is no reference to these illustrations on the main woodswallow spread p 344/45.

But even in those cases where the flight illustration is nearby, it would be helpful to get the page number and thus to know that a particular species does have more illustrations. Examples being the quails, button-qualis, kingfishers.

Because there is no such cross-reference, it takes a while before one realizes that this fine guide is lacking some important illustrations. There are quite a few terns that did not get flight pictures. Despite the fact that this would have been possible on the same page if the other illustrations had just been reduced a bit more. And the overly large illustrations (taken over from the first edition) of the "Commic" terns on page 89 could have been reduced so that there would have been space for those species that could not have been fitted on to the other plates.

A range map for the duplicate entry (systematic and by habitat) of the Banded Lapwing is only present in one entry (p 175), but not on the other one (p 98), again without a cross-reference. In addition, I miss some flight illustrations (upper and lower views) for this "common" species. Finally, in this case plus the Masked Lapwing, there is an additional confusion because the same birds are called Plovers on one illustration page (p 175).

Some confusion can also arise from incomplete names like in the case of the flight pictures of the ducks (spread p 144/45, where the addition of "whistling-duck" would be welcome).

One thing that has irritated me from the start, is the fact that the index of the common names is no longer at the end. Instead, there is now an index of the scientific names at the end, with the one for the common names preceding it. As most users are likely to need the index for the common names more often, it would be more convenient if that one were at the end.

Compared to this, it is a rather minor gripe that the sequence of the illustrations on a particular plate does not always follow the sequence of the adjacent text page. As an example, on pages 270/71 the treecreepers are at the bottom of the illustrations but at the top of the text page. Systematic sequence would hardly have been reason enough for this inconsistency.

There is some welcome additional biological information in those cases where room was available. I particularly liked the info on coloration of parrots on pages 224 and 228.

Some species got additional illustrations, like the juv plumage for the White-bellied Sea-Eagle (name changed from the first edition where it is named White-breasted.)

It is interesting to compare the page on the introduced finches of the two editions. Apparently some of the species shown in the first edition, such as the Black-headed Mannikin, the White-winged Wydah, and the colorful Grenadier Weaver have since disappeared again.

It has been mentioned that the new edition includes even species that are only "potentials" for Australia. But I think the number of such cases is so small that omitting them would not have decidedly reduced the size of the book. It does, however, reduce the need to lug along additional guide books for Asian and North American species.

So once again, I really like this new edition. I particularly think the shorebird section has gained tremendously with the new layout.

Despite my critical remarks, this book clearly deserves five stars. The authors and publishers are to be congratulated for the feat that they were able to keep the book really compact despite the many additions and improvement. Well done indeed!

This guide was invaluable during my first birding trip to Australia. Although I've birded for a number of years, Australian birds have almost no overlap with American birds, so virtually everyone of the 215 species I saw were new. The guide helped me quickly identify birds in the field. A few birds are listed in more than one place, which I first thought was an error, then I realized it wasn't and actually helped a lot when a bird could easily fit into more than one category.

This guide is really nice...it is very helpful if you are going to Australia, or you just want to learn about the birds there for personal enrichment.Very pleased with it!

This book is just fine for almost all level of birders. The index is clear, the photos are colorful and generous, and the bird detail writeups are standard. The book's dimensions are fine for a backpack, though it's a little heavy for a pocket. I never did like the book's cover design, but, it's just as the old saying goes...