Book Review

Getting To Know the Birds in Your Neighbourhood: A Field Guide

By Darryl Jones

2023, Published by NewSouth Publishing, UNSW Sydney

pp. 240, (Paperback)

Price AUD $34.99, ISBN 9781742238050

Professor Darryl Jones has been investigating the interactions between birds and people, particularly in urban settings, at Griffith University, in Australia, for over 30 years. He has published a litany of scientific papers, but more recently he has focused on books, his books include: The Birds at My Table, Feeding the Birds at Your Table and Curlews on Vulture Street: Cities, Birds, People & Me, all from NewSouth Publishing. His expertise in urban birds and people makes him the right choice for this book on Australian birds.

This book is about urban birds. The book’s aim is to help readers get to know and understand urban birds. The book focuses on urban birds and not those species from remote corners that you would not see in urban environments. Yet it includes many perspectives from Indigenous Australian knowledge and culture. Among the book’s primary aims are to help the novice to identify birds and start thinking about their ecology. This may be particularly important when moving to a new region, a new city, and being confronted with new birds. It also encourages you to look more closely, think and ask questions, ‘why are the Rainbow Lorikeets Trichoglossus moluccanus eating meat put out for Australian Magpies Gymnorhina tibicen’ (p. 9).

This book is written in an accessible language for the beginner or generalist. It is lively with experience and anecdotes presented in an engaging way. You might even take it to bed to read. It is called a field guide but it is really much more. The book is thinner than other field guides because it does not include all species, being focused on those found in the 20 most populous cities, alas that means only three cities outside the eastern states get a look in; Adelaide, Darwin and Perth. Overall 139 species of urban birds are included.

The largest section of the book is devoted to species accounts; this includes a description of each species with a characteristic photograph, their ecology, a map showing cities where it occurs, a relative size chart with one of six silhouettes highlighted black among the other five grey silhouettes, similar species, notes on breeding, interactions with people, small icon diagrams showing its core habitat, main foods and its active zone within its habitat. There is also a fun fact with each species.

This book is pitched to an urban audience and particularly those with little to no experience. It is suitable for students and managers working in city parks and gardens to familiarise themselves with birds. It is not pitched at experts, yet some may find useful information within.

The overall strength of this book is that it stays on subject, that is being focused on the birds you are likely to meet in the urban environment. It does this with easy to follow detail. For example, in the species accounts the birds’ diet is given through a series of pictures depicting what they eat. It is easy and quick to find and understand. The same applies to the little icon images of their core environment – rolling hills with a park bench means a reserve shared with people. I have two criticisms. Intext Harvard style references and an accompanying bibliography are missing, they would have advanced the book. The section on the Australian Magpie Gymnorhina tibicen needed some copy-editing help and the name Cracticus for the Magpie is incorrect. It has moved back to Gymnorhina in my version BirdLife v4.3 (BirdLife Australia 2022).

This book advances the discipline of helping those getting started with birds they are not familiar with; it will extend the knowledge outwards from there. The information is not detailed but this is what makes it a fast reference for those starting out. It will certainly aid those only working with urban birds. It is suitable for a very general audience, particularly undergraduates along with postgraduates and managers just starting out. It will be a quick, useful and interesting read for those with greater experience. The engaging style, easy to follow English and the use of pictures to quickly communicate ideas does advance this book; the organisation of the book follows a trusted formula found in all field guides and makes it simple to use. The level research draws on the author’s 30 years of experience as an academic focused on urban birds. Thus the research is evident in the knowledge expressed throughout the book. Although this would have been improved with a detailed bibliography.

The book is full of what I call supplementary material mostly because it is essential. This includes the distribution maps to the photographs of all the species. It is packed with extra pictures that introduce groups, such as honeyeaters or cockatoos, and all the little icons that go essentially in the species accounts. Throughout the book bird pictures double in being diagnostic and aesthetically pleasing. My one criticism of these is that they are not necessarily all photographed in urban settings.

It is difficult to compare this book to other Australian field guides because it makes no attempt to incorporate all the birds. It remains focused on urban birds and thus is novel. I would recommend it to all those beginning research on urban birds and all the other people who live in Australia’s 20 major cities.