I came across a reference to a two volume set called “A Field Guide to Australian Birds”, divided into “Passerines” and “Non-passerines”, published in the early 70s. I assume this is the forerunner of the more recent “Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds”?
It seems to be about the size dimensions, but twice as many pages. Why twice as many? More text? Bigger pictures?
I also note in the Wikipedia article** about it that
“… it covers the political dependencies Norfolk, Lord Howe, Macquarie, Heard, Christmas and Cocos-Keeling Islands. This is commendable; for, often these outposts of the Commonwealth have been sadly neglected ornithologically and for the first time a fully illustrated guide is available…”.
The inclusion of these islands on the Australian list (not Macquarie?) was discussed here recently, so I thought it might be worth pointing out that it may have been Peter Slater who started it.
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Field_Guide_to_Australian_Birds_(Slater)
Peter Shute ===============================
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Gary, I haven’t checked but doubt that you are right when you say that some information contained in the original Pizzey illustrated by Roy Doyle was omitted in subsequent volumes illustrated by Frank Knight? I doubt that very much. I was at the launch of the first Pizzey & Knight in Melbourne and after the launch when Graham was mingling with the crowd over drinks, I asked him did I need to keep the previous version because it appeared to me that there was less text and therefore less information. He returned to the speakers dais, grabbed the microphone, relayed my question to the audience and assured everyone that this latest version contained all the information that there was in the earlier Field Guide.
Mike Carter 30 Canadian Bay Road Mount Eliza VIC 3930 Tel (03) 9787 7136
Peter
I had the good fortune to go to a birdweek at Mallacoota with Graham Pizzey in 1995 and a very enjoyable and memorable week it was too. Graham was the person who encouraged all of us to learn the calls of birds and until that point although I had been birding for six years by then, I hadn’t put any work into learning the calls.
At the time he was working on his revised field guide with the text alongside the pictures, which has become the modern way for ease of reference between the text and pictures. The cost is that a lot of information has to be left out, due to space limitations. If you can get to look at Graham Pizzey’s, A Field Guide to Australian Birds with illustrations by Roy Doyle, you will not only get extra information but get to read some of Graham’s beautiful prose and turns of phrase in relation to the birds.
Gary
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Thanks for the replies, everyone. I got a surprising number of private replies too – maybe people don’t like to admit they’re been birding for that long?
It seems that it was the predecessor or the current Slater. Fairly obvious, I suppose, but I was intrigued to come across the reference to a two volume set, as I’d never heard of it. I assume he did it in two volumes so that he could get something onto the market before completing the second half (they were about 5 years apart).
That I had never heard of this set is no surprise. I had no idea there was anything other than the “What Bird Is That?” that I found on the classroom bookshelf in grade 5 until I came across a remaindered harcover copy of Simpson and Day about 20 years ago, and bought it on a whim. It was to sit unopened until about 5 years ago, when I quickly realised how impractical a book that size is.
The explanation I was given for the extra pages in the original Slater was that the current text has a more efficient layout of the pictures, and smaller text (and maybe less text).
Interesting comments about the positioning of the colour plates in the book. Moving them to every second page must have been a major improvement, and I note that HANZAB has them in clusters throughout the book. I assume it’s more expensive to do it any other way, and that’s why that kind of arrangement persisted for so long.
Peter Shute
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Hi Peter
That two volume set and the 7 Gould League bird books are probably as responsible as anything for getting me into birds. From about the age of 5 I used to pour over them continually.
You can pick them up cheap on ebay these days… certainly a forerunner to the newer Slater guides but with more text.
Cheers Tim
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“What bird is that” is still in print (certainly in the field guide version) and is updated from time to time. I’m almost afraid to post it here (most people here being far better birders than I am), but I included it in a mini-review of Australian bird guides I wrote for birdforum, although you’ll have to go to page 2 for that book: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=188300 It certainly as its charms, but not necessarily the best as a field guide. Cheers,
Tony
If someone is interested to have a look: I have both volumes.
Nikolas
Yes, I remember my father in law ( SD) who was a bird fancier in the sixties and seventies had one of those Slater books, I think he had the passerines one since he kept finches and doves. He also had a book called “What bird is that” by someone or other which was a rather simplistic approach to bird recognition. It guided one to categorise a bird by size, colour, shape etc, and (sometimes) led you to what the bird might have been. Based only on physical appearances it completely ignored taxonomy as used today. This was way before I got into bird watching so I have no idea what happened to the books.
Tony.