The Directory of Australian Birds: Passerines

Abstract

THIS large, expensive and beautifully produced volume arrived on my desk in October 1999. There it has sat while I awaited it to be reviewed elsewhere. My intention was, and is, to not only review the book, but to review the reviews. I now have reviews by Allan Burbidge and John Blyth (Western Australian Bird Notes 95: 3-5), Walter Boles (Australian Zoologist, in press), w. (Ted) Davis (The Wilson Bulletin, in press), Stephen Debus (Australian Bird Watcher 18: 320-321), Ned Johnson (The Condor 103: 200), and Allen Keast (Emu 100: 341-2). Of these, Boles, Johnson and Keast are recognised avian systematists, while Burbidge, Blyth, Davis and Debus, as I am, are just plain old ornithologists. I say this because an Australian avian systematist once told me that I had no right to comment on the names of Australian birds because I was only an ecologist, but that has never stopped me before and will not now, and it appears that I am in good company.