Birds of the Darwin Region

Cover image featuring a Rainbow Pitta standing on the ground surrounded by leaves.

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By: Niven McCrie, Richard Noske

eBook - September 2015 - eRetailers

A comprehensive treatment of the birds of Darwin, including 258 regularly occurring species and 65 vagrants.

Birds of the Darwin Region is the first comprehensive treatment of the avifauna of Darwin, a city located in Australia's monsoon tropics, where seasons are defined by rainfall rather than by temperature. With its mangrove-lined bays and creeks, tidal mudflats, monsoon rainforests, savanna woodlands and freshwater lagoons, Darwin has retained all of its original habitats in near-pristine condition, and is home or host to 323 bird species. Unlike other Australian cities, it has no established exotic bird species. + Full description

Following an introduction to the history of ornithology in the region and a detailed appraisal of its avifauna, species accounts describe the habitats, relative abundance, behaviour, ecology and breeding season of 258 regularly occurring species, based on over 500 fully referenced sources, and original observations by the authors. Distribution maps and charts of the seasonality of each species are presented, based on a dataset comprising almost 120,000 records, one-third of which were contributed by the authors. Stunning colour photographs adorn the accounts of most species, including some of the 65 species considered as vagrants to the region.

This book is a must-read for professional ornithologists and amateur birders, and an indispensable reference for local biologists, teachers and students, and government and non-government environmental agencies, as well as other people who just like to watch birds.

- Short description

News

This title is no longer available in print, but can still be purchased as an eBook.

Reviews

"it's astonishing. It's the sort of book that makes you excited about being a naturalist...
If you're a birder, ecologist, or you're at all interested in the natural history of Australia's north, you'll want this book... The species accounts are wonderfully in-depth without being academically soporific; authoritative while managing to be almost conversational in style. Each account is highly readable."
Chris Watson, The Grip (blog), 8/10/15

"The book has uniquely combined elements of a photographic field guide and an avifauna atlas; in this sense it will be of interest to both ornithologists and birdwatchers... this is a delightful, glossy, soft cover book that is exceptionally well presented with a layout that has an intuitive feel, making it easy to use... Birds of the Darwin Region is likely to be the most important avifauna reference in this part of the Northern Territory for years to come."
Andrew Humphries, The Sunbird 45(2), 2015, pp. 84-85

"This book can be recommended to anyone wanting to do birdwatching in Australia's tropics… [or] anyone with a more general interest in the biology of the birds of tropical Australia… this is a book you need to read"
Michael Lenz, Canberra Bird Notes 40(3), 2015, p. 300

"it will be a valued resource for planning field trips when visiting the Darwin region to locate as many of their 323-plus bird species as possible in the time visitors have available."
Gil Porter, Warbler (Southern Queensland BirdLife e-newsletter), Vol 5(1), March 2016, pp. 24-25

"Our sense of what Australia's birds are like is strongly biased by all the observations made in temperate Australia, so studies coming out of the north provide a vital counterbalance, and Birds of the Darwin Region serves that role handsomely." Tim Low, Wildlife Australia, Summer 2015, p. 46

"no other work comes close to matching the detail and rigor of the species documentation provided by this book. It is a model of careful scholarship, and a volume that could only be written by authors with a deep and intimate knowledge of the region's birdlife... For anyone interested in the birds of Northern Australian, this is a must have."
Jeff O'Connell, Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol 91, June 2016, pp. 229-230

"Neither a field guide nor a site guide, the book serves more as a specialised reference source summarizing local occurrence and ecology, and will be of interest to academics, amateur ornithologists and birdwatchers. The value of this book largely lies in its documentation of locally-specific information, which has nowhere else been summarized in this manner. Information on wide-ranging species contained in Australian field guides and other reference sources often originates from southern and eastern Australia, but ecology, particularly breeding, can differ considerably in the monsoonal tropics."
Peter Kyne, Corella 40(3), 2016, p. 77

"The book contains excellent graphics, which depict the abundance of bird species throughout the year and clearly demonstrate the seasonal nature of the Darwin region, as well as the distribution for each species. The distribution maps are particularly ground-breaking in their display of data from a range of sources and provide data on the relative reporting rates for a species in a given area. They are more informative than conventional distribution maps."
M Simpson, Australian Veterinary Journal 95(4), April 2017

Details

ePDF | September 2015
ISBN: 9781486300358
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Available from eRetailers

ePUB | September 2015
ISBN: 9781486300365
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Available from eRetailers

Features

New and accurate information on the local distribution of all of the region's birds, with a map for each regularly occurring species
New and accurate information on the seasonal occurrence and breeding cycle of these birds
Original photographs of almost all regularly occurring species, with images of nests and eggs or young of selected species
An informative introduction to the habitats and flora of the region, its climate and tidal regime
An annotated list of vagrant species
A comprehensive list of journal papers and other information sources pertaining to the subject

Preface
The beginnings of this book
Acknowledgements
Introduction
About this book
Abbreviations
Species accounts
Unconfirmed species
References
Species list: common names
Species list: scientific names

Authors

Niven McCrie has written several journal papers and the very popular, self-published Finding Birds in Darwin, Kadadu and the Top End. He has conducted birdwatching classes at Casuarina Senior College and has led many birdwatching tours in the Darwin region for Australian and overseas birdwatchers.

Richard Noske has authored or co-authored well over 100 publications, including Birds of Groote Eylandt. He was Senior Lecturer in Biology at Charles Darwin University in Darwin for 26 years, during which he studied many bird species, and conducted several fauna surveys, of the Top End. Since then he has co-led bird tours to Arnhem Land and Papua. He is currently President of Birds Queensland and Chief Editor of the Indonesian bird journal Kukila.