The Australian Bird Guide

The Australian Bird Guide – the most comprehensive field guide to Australian birds ever published.

Australia's avifauna is large, diverse and spectacular, reflecting the continent's wide range of habitats and evolutionary history. This book covers every regularly occurring species in Australia, including subspecies and rarities. Illustrations of more than 900 species on almost 250 plates, with particular emphasis on providing the fine detail required to identify difficult groups and distinctive plumages, make The Australian Bird Guide the most comprehensive guide to Australian birds ever published.

This revised edition includes updated maps and artwork, reflecting advances in our knowledge of the biology and distribution of Australia's birds, plus fully updated text to ensure identification, distribution and status details are current and accurate, along with an improved index.

This book sets the standard for coverage of Australia's remarkable avifauna. It is truly indispensable for anyone looking to explore Australia's magnificent and unique birdlife.

Winner of Royal Zoological Society of NSW Whitley Awards 2017 (UK)

The ABG – nine years in the making - is a first-rate field guide, one of the best I’ve seen. Should you buy this book if you’ve already got an Australian field guide? Yes, I’d suggest it would be a shame not to … Highly recommended. BTO Book Reviews
The ABG is undeniably the most comprehensive field guide to be published in Australia to date, surpassing previous guides in the quantity and accuracy of illustrations and pertinent information. Australian Book Review
The plates are exceptionally good, and of high quality throughout. Postures and aspects are well chosen to illustrate salient features and in the main, the colours are true to life. The species accounts are also extremely good... When not lying open on my desk, my copy of this invaluable tome will reside on that special bookshelf reserved for those frequently consulted books that I need to reach easily and frequently — a treatise that I will be able to quote with confidence knowing that it will quickly become 'the authority' on the occurrence and identification of Australian birds. Australian Birdlife
I am overall blown away by the high quality of this guide … this is certain to be the field guide of choice for years to come. The Australian Bird Guide sets a standard that all field guides to every region should strive to meet. American Birding Association
Birding Australia may be the stuff of fantasy, but The Australian Bird Guide helps to keep the dream grounded in reality. 10,000 Birds

For me, poring over the pages of The Australian Bird Guide was akin to looking through a new set of binoculars — long familiar birds are rendered afresh, as if you are seeing them again for the first time.
Not only does The Australian Bird Guide successfully provide a rich, contemporary bird identification book, it has the potential to play a far more significant cultural role – in cataloguing the full extent of the glorious variety of Australian birds it becomes a palpable celebration of the wonder of nature.

Sydney Morning Herald
Compared with all other Australian bird guides, the text and most of the illustrations are on a higher level... The cornucopia of high quality illustrations – including numerous smaller sketch-ups illustrating such things as foraging behaviours, honeyeater corroborees, and size comparisons with similar possible species – puts the guide in the upper echelon of bird guides globally... For me, this volume by Menkhorst and colleagues has become my new favourite. Emu

Peter Menkhorst has more than thirty-five years’ experience in ecological research and the survey and management of Australian mammals and birds. He has worked in a range of environmental roles in the Victorian government since 1976 and is the author of Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia. Danny Rogers is principal ecologist with the Department of Environment, Water, and Natural Resources in Adelaide. Rohan Clarke is a lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University.

Jeff Davies is a lifelong birder who completed a Fine Arts Painting Major at Caulfield Institute of Technology. He has contributed artwork for Shorebirds of Australia, Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds and The Penguins. Kim Franklin has exhibited in Africa and Europe. His illustrations have featured in ornithological books including HANZAB, Birds of the Western Palearctic, Raptors of the World (Helm) and Pheasants, Partridges, and Grouse (Helm). Peter Marsack trained as a zoologist but has also worked extensively as a natural history artist and illustrator. He was an artist for HANZAB, and a prize-winner in the inaugural Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize.

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