Field Guide to Birds of Australia: The Graham Pizzey & Frank Knight Field Guide

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and easy to use
Review: This in-depth field guide is useful for both beginners and experienced bird-watchers. Wonderfully illustrated. Illustrations make for easy identification, and maps show distributions well. Divided into groups of related birds. Some photographs may have been a good idea, however.

Rating:
Summary: Superb color plates & detailed distributional information
Review: This is Pizzey's second field guide to Australian birds, and it is quite unlike the first. Pizzey I was an excellent reference, but the plates (by Doyle) were mediocre and of limited value for field identification. Pizzey II features superb color plates by Frank Knight, with a reduced facing-plate text by Pizzey that surpasses other current field guides in the amount of distributional information furnished. Unfortunately, the ungraduated distributional maps are clearly inferior to the maps in Michael Morcombe's Field Guide to Australian Birds (Steve Parish Publishing 2000) and the Simpson & Day Field Guide to the Birds of Australia.

Though slightly smaller than Morcombe (6.5" x 9.5"), Pizzey II is a large format book (6" x 9") that is easy to read, but a bit heavy for packing in the field. Nevertheless, foreign birders visiting Australia would be well advised to take both Pizzey II -- for the illustrations -- and Morcombe -- for the huge quantity of useful information and detailed field notes on the (amateurish) plates. For routine use in the field, the guide of choice remains the light and compact (4.5" x 8") Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds (Weldon 1989). The other Australian field guide, Simpson & Day, is a worthy competitor with color plates of comparable quality to those in Pizzey II, though perhaps not as conveniently arranged.

In conclusion, all four current Australian bird guides are five-star books, though each has its strengths and weaknesses. Pizzey II is artistically the most pleasing and would be the guide of greatest interest to book collectors interested in fine bird art.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy but excellent
Review: This review concerns a 2001 edition which has been updated but not basically altered.

I bought this book mostly for reasons of bird art, as I have no immediate plans to visit Australia. The book's layout is of the now conventional and conventient type, with illustrations and text plus range maps on facing pages. As there are usually only three or four species on a page, there is relatively much space for text. The range maps function on a "all or nothing" basis, i.e. more detailed info on a bird's status has to be gleaned from the text. The book tries to follow the most recent systematic order, it seems. This has some rather inconvenient consequences, however. For example, the very similarly looking quails and button-quails appear on pages 23 and 161 respectively!

The book is actually not a true field guide as it is too large to take to the field (unless you carry it in a rucksack). Just OK to have in the car or at home. That is a shame. The book is in the same size league as the original Sibley guide for North America. For this reason, I only give it four stars.

As I bought the book for its illustrations, I'd like to comment a bit more about these: I can't say much about their accuracy, but I am rather disappointed about their variable quality. One would certainly not think that all the plates were done by the same artist. Just compare pages 115 and 117, for example. Overall, on some plates the birds seem to come alive, whereas on others they are very two-dimensional. I.e. they appear very flat. Some birds like the lesser noddy appear overly slim. And, while some bird pictures are rather smallish, there are some that are rather too large. The storm-petrels on page 93 are a case in point, giving the plate a crowded appearance. But those drawings are otherwise of superb quality.

I emphasise these differences of the plates because there is usually considerable criticism when a new field guide comes out that has its plates done by several artists. Here, we find similar differences within the work done by the same artist. It is clear that doing all the artwork for such a book is a monumental task. And even a good artist is not always equally disposed, I would assume. And then, there is probably the pressure of a publishing schedule. However, what counts in the end are the pictures we all have to look at and work with for years. Thus, spreading the task does not seem to be such a bad way to do it, after all. That is, as long as you have several good artists with the available time. But it also means that it is a sensible solution to use the same good illustrations for several books, as has recently been done in the field guide to the Birds of Africa South of the Sahara.

One thing that keeps puzzling me - not only with respect to this field guide - is the fact that there is contents included that does not help in the field at all. Thus, we find here a lengthy chapter called "family introductions", the kind of info one would expect in an "encyclopaedia" type book. Also, what good is a long literature list in a field guide?