Review: The Complete Guide to Finding the Mammals of Australia by David Andrew

“Many of Australia’s unique and beautiful mammals are not easy to find in the wild. Most of them are nocturnal and extremely wary of humans.” – Barbara Triggs, in the introduction to her superb Tracks, Scats And Other Traces: A Field Guide to Australian Mammals.

We could add to Barbara Triggs’ introduction, that many of our mammals are also rare and range across massive areas of remote and challenging country. Throw in our disastrous record on mammal extinction and you might be forgiven for not ever starting a mammal list and sticking to watching the birds.

But then again, would anyone really bother looking for Grey Honeyeaters if they weren’t so bloody hard to find? The thrill of the treasure hunt and the pursuit of rarities is a big part of the allure of birding so there’s no reason to think that the difficulty of finding mammals would have any less appeal. Mammal watching has always lagged somewhere behind birding, at least in popularity but certainly not the ardour of its devotees. But lately it seems to have been gaining ground and this book comes along at an interesting time.

Literally just weeks before the release of Finding the Mammals of Australia we saw the creation of the first dedicated Facebook group for serious Australian mammal watchers. This group rapidly grew to over 200 members and we’ve had hints that the first semi-official Australian mammal big year attempts are already underway. Then, following on the heels of Finding the Mammals of Australia, we’ve had news of another forthcoming release from CSIRO publishing, Australian Wildlife After Dark, also with plenty of relevance to mammal watchers, due in April.

Common Ringtail Possum Pseudocheirus peregrinus, often the first tick on many suburbanites' mammal list.

To give you the executive summary: Finding the Mammals of Australia is an astonishing achievement. It’s thoroughly worth owning if you have any interest in our mammal fauna and if you don’t already have it, eventually, you almost certainly should. David Andrew has done a colossal amount of work here and deserves endless kudos for delivering a long-overdue book.

Moreover, it’s astonishing and reassuring that publishers like CSIRO are continuing to support such releases. Hats off all round. The easy assumption to make is that the technologically adept can these days access all the relevant knowledge they need with a visit to one or more online fora and the magical letters R-F-I. Request For Information.

These three dread initials, I was sure, would snuff the interest in, and relevance of, guide books like this in a matter of a few years. They have already ensured that professional wildlife guiding will never be much more than a boutique industry, in this country at least. Go to any birdwatching forum or Facebook group and it’s quickly apparent that a good portion of posts are preceded by the scurrilous three letter initialism. I’m off to FNQ – where to see this mammal or that bird? It’s my first time in Perth – where do all the critters hide out?

Prefix your subject line with RFI and there is no end to the lengths that any number of friendly and generous souls will be prepared to go to, in order to make available the collected knowledge that they have spent years accumulating through long hours scouring the bush (not to mention the literature) and hundreds of thousands of kilometres behind the wheel. If I come across as at all bitter on this matter, it's only because I know precisely how hard many professional guides work for their site knowledge only to have it broadcast on such public channels, or to have their professionalism usurped entirely and rendered cruelly redundant by well-meaning local amateurs or enterprises like Birding Pal.

But I needn’t be so pessimistic. The same generosity of spirit and genuine love for our fauna has ensured that there is an enduring market for books like this and that seems set to remain the case. My revised appraisal of species-seekers in Australia is that despite having access to endless free information online, most still see the value in having an expert like David Andrew assemble the sum of that web-based colloquy, adding a comprehensive survey of the scientific literature, analysing it all through their own research and expertise and binding it all in a single volume. That, in a convenient nutshell I guess, is the appeal of reference books for most of us.

And of course international visitors without time for thorough research, not to mention Australian mammal listers with particularly recalcitrant bogey-beasts, are still just as likely to desire the services of a wildlife professional. So I should dismount my high horse (still a tickable plastic if you know where to look) and return to Andrews’ achievement.

Finding the Mammals of Australia is set out in a very similar format to CSIRO’s 2011 updated edition of Richard and Sarah Thomas’ Finding the Birds of Australia with Alan McBride and David Andrew as co-authors. This book looks pretty similar to that book, is similarly comprehensive in its geographic treatment and at 419 pages is just a few pages smaller than its birdy sister publication. Navigating it will feel familiar to users of Finding the Birds of Australia; after the introductory sections it goes through sites state by state then follows this with a complete annotated list of the mammals, a glossary and an index. The introductory passages deal in some detail with the notorious difficulties of observing mammals in the wild and the differences in observation techniques between bird-watching and mammal-watching.

Fat-tailed Dunnart Sminthopsis crassicaudata - a tiny marsupial carnivore. A lot harder to get to than a back yard ringtail possum but, happily, still pretty common if you look in the right places.

 The coverage of species is complete enough, although it follows the older mammal taxonomy set out by John Woinarski et al in the 2012 Action Plan for Australian Mammals, rather than the more up to date 2015 taxonomy by Jackson and Groves. The latter splits a few more species here and there (the feathertail gliders and greater gliders come to mind) and is being used by most mammal listers, but this won’t be any sort of impediment to accuracy for the most part.

So if it was the advent of good, cheap binoculars and the fledgling conservation movement that finally transformed the old pursuit of bird shooting into the worldwide phenomenon of modern birding, then perhaps digital photography, LED torches and social media may be doing the same for mammal listing.

If that’s the case, a book like this for the Australian mammal fauna might very well herald the opening of the floodgates.

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Birds of the Darwin Region by Niven McCrie and Richard Noske

While it seems another El Niño is looming, the flow of good Australian natural history books is far from drying up. This is perhaps most true for books about our birds. In recent years we’ve welcomed Dolby and Clarke’s Finding Australian Birds, Fraser and Gray’s Australian Bird Names and the re-release of Alec Chisholm’s classic Mateship with Birds to name just a few. All of these are exciting examples of passionate advocates for Australia’s birds, putting their heads together and sharing accumulated knowledge with an eager audience.

This recent release from CSIRO Publishing, is no exception; it’s astonishing. It’s the sort of book that makes you excited about being a naturalist. For the many who are already familiar with the authors’ other work, this will come as no surprise. McCrie is perhaps best known as the author, with James Watson (no relation), of that other beloved Top End treatise, Finding Birds in Darwin, Kakadu & the Top End. A founder of the prime online reference for Top End birders, the NT Birds newsgroup, he has also been a well-loved tour leader for visitors to the Top End over many years. Richard Noske’s prolific scholarship of birds in northern Australia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific is well established. He was senior lecturer in biology at CDU for some 26 years, authored, with Graham Brennan, another work of great interest to northern birders, 2002‘s Birds of Groote Eylandt, and is the current chief editor of the journal of Indonesian ornithology, Kukila.

Laurie Ross' eye-catching Rainbow Pitta adorns the cover. One of the easier to see of this typically elusive family, and still relatively easily found around Darwin.

Happily, it’s a fairly common practice in Australia for local experts to work up a guide to the birds of their town, region, or patch. Such experts are, typically, deeply knowledgeable long-term residents, enthusiastic about recording for posterity all of the vagrant records, seasonal movements, and breeding ecology of the birds of their locality. You don’t have to look far to find self-published guides to this town or that shire. Sometimes these are simply brief pamphlets produced under the photo-copying budget of the town council, but range to more elaborate spiral-bound affairs produced with funding from local field naturalists’ clubs or Landcare groups. McCrie & Noske’s Birds of the Darwin Region, seems likely to become the yardstick by which such guides are measured.

The executive summary for this collaboration? If you’re a birder, ecologist, or you’re at all interested in the natural history of Australia’s north, you’ll want this book.

Birds of the Darwin Region is clearly a labour of love from two long-term residents of the region. Indeed, a book of this kind is only made possible by authors with the intimate knowledge of an area that comes from living in it year round. There are some noteworthy absences from the species list, which serve to remind you of the limited geographic scope of the book. No Variegated Fairy-wren (the treated area doesn’t extend as far as the sandstone country); no Chestnut-backed Button-quail; no Masked Owl; no Dusky Moorhen. Maybe some of these occur in the vicinity of Darwin but clearly none have been confirmed within the treatment area.

The species accounts are accompanied by seasonality charts, and distribution maps. The region is divided into a grid of 64 cells with explanatory notes at the front of the book detailing the number of surveys providing data for each cell.  

The research the authors have done in confirming or discounting records is, no doubt, all but exhaustive. There is an ‘unconfirmed species’ section toward the back for those few birds lacking sufficient substantiation for their occurrence to be admitted without question. Otherwise, the records in the list can be considered ‘gold standard’; thoroughly referenced… and what references. For keen NT listers the references pages of this book alone will be a crucial reference.

McCrie & Noske have done an extraordinary service to Australian ornithology, in compiling, organising, and vetting the observations and publications of the many naturalists who have studied Darwin’s birds in the past. To this end, there’s also a ‘history of ornithology’ section in the front of Birds of the Darwin Region, giving deserved acknowledgement to those who went boldly (recklessly?) before onto the mangals and mudflats, before the days of that great ruiner of lenses, Bushman’s Plus™ tropical strength insect repellent.

The species accounts are wonderfully in-depth without being academically soporific; authoritative while managing to be almost conversational in style. Each account is highly readable. Birds of the Darwin Region is clearly focused on the birds of this one defined area, but as many of these species occur across northern Australia, and even farther afield in some cases, it will have relevance far beyond the bounds of Darwin as well.

Without even going past the waterfowl there are numerous examples of what makes this such a valuable and readable reference. The species account for one of the Top End’s iconic species, Magpie Goose, runs over four pages. It not only contains the expected information about its life cycle and habits around Darwin, but some interesting insights into how local policy and community attitudes can affect a species. Recreational hunters, indigenous hunters and mango growers all influence the movements and site use of this species which, in turn, can influence the health of areas used by the birds.

NT waterfowl hunting season: Anger over 34 geese carcasses dumped near rural property

Still among the waterfowl, what about that most infuriating of ducks – Garganey? This ‘Artful Dodger’ of ducks has certainly eluded my Australian list as skilfully as the Dickensian urchin. I first lived full-time in the NT from 2006. In the 26 years preceding 2006, Garganey was recorded in 20 of them, including a staggering 125 birds at Leanyer in 1991. From 2006 to 2014 (the cut-off for entries in this book) it was seen by… no-one. Well, not quite. No-one except for my arch-rival in NT listing, Mick Jerram, who spotted 3 of the birds on the Katherine River in 2008. The perfect grip.    

Birds of the Darwin Region with some other familiar volumes for size comparison. There is a lot in this book. 

Birds of the Darwin Region boasts many truly enlightening factoids; things I’d never read anywhere else before. Take this sterling opening sentence to a species account for example: “Although among the smallest of the world’s swans, the Black Swan’s neck is proportionately longer than in any other, giving it a uniquely elegant silhouette.” My favourite though, is at the other end of the book, in the species account for Canary White-eye: “It has the ability to prise open small flowers… by inserting its somewhat wedge-shaped bill into the floral tube, then gaping, behaviour known as zirkelning.” In the landmark textbook of our pursuit, Ornithology (3rd edition), the author Frank B. Gill lists only four entries in the index under the letter Z: Z sex chromosomes; zeitgebers; zugunruhe; and zygodactyl. Zirkelning? Nowhere to be found. For this alone McCrie and Noske have my admiration.

Finally, Birds of the Darwin Region draws on records from a number of databases; the NT Fauna Atlas, Eremaea Birds (and latterly Eremaea eBird) and the Darwin Bird Atlas project among others. I suspect it’s highly likely that anyone reading this will have contributed observations to one or many such databases, and you can be justifiably proud in pointing to this book as the fruit which is ultimately borne by such citizen science projects.

Darwin is deservedly renowned as one of the top birding destinations in Australia, which places it high in the running worldwide. With Birds of the Darwin Region, Niven McCrie and Richard Noske have cemented their place in any future history of Top End ornithology to be written, and provided an indispensable reference for visitors and researchers for many years to come.

CBW

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