Canter Bridge

Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?

Le’ts start with the bad: The Birds of Australia. A book of identification is no longer available in its original hardcover format with its beautifully illustrated birds and its handy bird-by-bird location map.

The good news: you can get the same great book in reformat as one disintinguished member of the excellent Princeton Field Guides series.

In addition to the standard features that make a book like this a success, Birds of Australia trails a section called—enigmatically—’The Handbook’. This extensive postlude provides an excellent introduction to classes of birds, the life cycle of birds that hobbyists with middling knowledge like this reviewer will greatly appreciate.

The Aussies are great folks and make marvelous life-time friends. As though it couldn’t get any better, they now have a superb book for identifing the birds of their beguiling and sunburned country.