An Australian Bird Book: a Pocket Book for Field Use

Part 1

Produced by Lesley Halamek, Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Mark Orton (for the Formatting Template), and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note.

^ indicates a superscript.

text indicates italic type.

=text= indicates bold type.

A missing line on Page 25 (in italics)

(Their wings are paddles, being flattened and devoid of quills. The wings are not folded, but are carried hanging awkwardly at the side.)

was restored from a different Edition on Google Books (http:// books.google.com/books?id=Rn3uthhODo8C&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25).

Sundry damaged or missing punctuation has been repaired, and a few index entries have been amended.

The use of hyphens was not necessarily consistent throughout this book. In some instances there are subtle differences in meaning.

Some Australian/British spellings (e.g. coloured, defence, draught, grey, learnt, lustre, etc.) have been retained, though color/colored and gray are more prevalent. The Author has used various resources.

From Wikipedia:

"DR JOHN ALBERT LEACH (19 March 1870 - 3 October 1929) was an ornithologist, teacher and headmaster in the state of Victoria, Australia.

Leach was born in Ballarat, Victoria and educated at Creswick Grammar School (where he was dux), Melbourne Training College (1890) and the University of Melbourne, where he graduated B.Sc. in 1904, M.Sc. in 1906 and in 1912 obtained his doctorate for research in ornithology.

Leach was a regular writer and broadcaster on natural history subjects and introduced it into the school curriculum. He was President of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) 1922-1924 and Editor of its journal The Emu 1914-1924 and 1928-1929. He was a member of the British Ornithologists Union and a corresponding fellow of the American Ornithologists Union. Leach was also member of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. He was instrumental in founding the Gould League of Bird Lovers in 1909 with Jessie McMichael. He is best known as the author of An Australian Bird Book, the first edition of which was published in 1911, and of Australian Nature Studies in 1922. He also part-authored a series of Federal Geography books, and worked on the Official Checklist of the Birds of Australia second and revised edition, published by the RAOU in September 1926.

Leach had been preparing two books before his death, one of these was a collection of weekly radio broadcasts he made on 3LO in the mid 1920s....

Among his contributions to ornithology was the relationship between the Australian Magpie, butcherbirds and currawongs in the family Cracticidae, now sunk as a subfamily into Artamidae."

This book is a field guide. The pages were divided vertically, with the tabular matter on the top half, and the Lecture on the bottom half of the page.

The ebook has been re-arranged so that the separate parts have a smoother flow. The top parts of the pages have been left intact, but the bottom parts have been collected together and moved, so that the Lecture text for each ORDER precedes the tabular listing and descriptions for that ORDER.

The only exception is for ORDER XXI.

ORDER XXI.--Perching-Birds--contains 11,500 species, more than three-fifths of the world's 19,000 birds. It has been arranged into sets of suitable groups of FAMILIES, to make it easier to access.

==== has been used to separate the Lecture from the Tabular matter.

From "PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.":

"In response to requests from beginners, a table has been added on page 190. This table shows the page on which a bird of a certain size may be found."

As the page numbers are an integral part of the field guide, and necessary for the identification of birds seen in the field, in flight, or found dead, they have been inserted into the tabular section, as [Page xx].

Sometimes a page has contained the end entries of one ORDER, or one Family, and the beginning entries of the next. In these few instances (e.g. [Page 18a] and [Page 18b]; [Page 188a] and [Page 188b]), it may be necessary for the reader to search both sections of the page.

For birds mentioned in the Lecture, it would be necessary to search by bird name.

NAMES RECENTLY AMENDED (located after the INTRODUCTION).

Part 2

It seems important to have these new names available, so they have been added to (e.g.)

=20 Slate-breasted Rail= ....

as [~20 Rallus pectoralis.]

so:

=20 Slate-breasted Rail= (Short-toed), Lewin Water-Rail, Eulabeornis (Hypotaenidia) brachypus, A., T., Auckland Is. =vt. Eur. Water-Rail. [~20 Rallus pectoralis.]

See also the explanatory notes in the PREFACE, and in the PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

"The number at the right side of the page is the length of the bird in inches (from the tip of bill to the tip of tail)." ...

so:

1 1

=2* Mallee-Fowl=, Lowan, Native Pheasant, Pheasant (e), Leipoa ocellata, N.S.W., V., S.A., W.A.

Stat. r. mallee scrubs 24

Like a small turkey; neck light fawn-gray; back, wings spotted white, black, brown; f., smaller. Seeds, ants.

This means there is one genus of Mallee-Fowl in the world, and it is found only in Australia. It is listed in this book as Bird number 2, which has a colored illustration, indicated by the asterisk, *.

It is stationary (not migratory), rarely seen, lives in mallee scrubs, and is 24" long.

It resembles a small turkey; its neck is light fawn-gray; its back and wings are spotted white, black, and brown; the female is smaller; and it feeds on seeds and ants.

Note (From NOTE following "PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION."):

A.--Australian Region (from Wallace's Line to Sandwich Islands and New Zealand, see map p. 10).

'Sandwich Islands' is an old name for Fiji.

* * * * *

=2= Mallee-Fowl =3= Stubble Quail =4= Brown Quail =6= King Quail =8= Painted Quail =11= Plain Wanderer =14= Diamond Dove =16= Bronzewing Pigeon

AN AUSTRALIAN BIRD BOOK

A Pocket Book for Field Use

J. A. LEACH, M.Sc.

First-class Honorman and University Exhibitioner and Scholar in Biology; Organizing Inspector of Nature Study, Education Department, Victoria; Member of the Council of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union; Vice-President of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria; &c.

With Introduction by FRANK TATE, M.A., I.S.O.

Director of Education, Victoria.

Published by arrangement with the Education Department of Victoria.

SECOND EDITION

Part 3

MELBOURNE Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, N.Z., and London. WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED 1912

Illustrations from Specimens (318) in the National Museum, Melbourne; the balance mostly from Specimens in the Entomological Museum, C. French (59), and in the collections of A. Coles, Taxidermist, (36), C. F. Cole, and D. Le Souëf. Twenty-two birds were photographed from Gould's "Birds of Australia," five from drawings specially prepared by C. C. Brittlebank, the well-known naturalist-artist, and one from the Report of the Horn Expedition.

Photos by Ralph L. Miller.

Engravings by Patterson Shugg & Co., from Paintings by Miss Ethel M. Paterson.

INTRODUCTION.

Nature-study in our schools is fast producing a generation of Australians trained to look upon the characteristic beauties of our Australian skies, our trees, our flowers, our birds with a passionate appreciation almost unknown to our pioneering fathers and mothers. It was natural that newcomers from the Old World should have been impressed, and often unfavorably impressed, by the oddness of things here. Rural sights to them had hitherto been sights of trim meadows bordered by neat hedgerows, of well-cultivated fields and comfortable farmsteads, or of stately homes set in fair gardens and far-reaching parks of magnificently-spreading trees. What wonder, then, that they were at first almost repelled by the strangeness and unfamiliarity of their new surroundings! How could eyes accustomed to the decided greens and to the somewhat monotonous shapeliness of the trees in an English summer landscape find beauty all at once in the delicate, elusive tints of the gum trees, or in the wonderfully decorative lines of their scanty boughs and light foliage shown clear against a bright sky? And so a land which is eminently a land of color, where the ever-present eucalypts give in their leaves every shade from blue-grays to darkest greens; where the tender shoots show brilliantly in bright crimson, or duller russets, or bright coppery-gold; and where tall, slender stems change slowly through a harmony of salmon-pinks and pearl-grays, has been called a drab-colored land. Even now, the beauty of the gum tree is not sufficiently appreciated by Australians, and we see all too few specimens in our suburban gardens. For an appreciation of the decorative effect of our young blue gums, we must go to the Riviera or to English conservatories.

Australia has suffered greatly from phrase-makers. There is still much popular belief that our trees are shadeless, our rivers are waterless, our flowers are scentless, our birds are songless. Oddities in our flora and fauna have attracted the notice of superficial observers, and a preference for epigrammatic perfection, rather than for truthful generalization, has produced an abundance of neatly-expressed half-truths, which have been copied into popular literature, and even into school books. Our English-bred poet, Gordon, writes of lands--

"Where bright blossoms are scentless, And songless, bright birds."

and these lines are remembered better than his description in the same poem of Spring--

Continue reading An Australian Bird Book: a Pocket Book for Field Use free in the Wunder reader →