THE WATERBIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. The National Photographic Index of Australian Wildlife.

1985 1st edition. Large 4to (219 x 2198mm). Ppxiii,343. Colour photographs, b/w line illustrations, distribution maps, bibliography. White titles to black boards, spine titled in white.

This "is an important new work covering the sixty-seven species of bird inhabiting the marshes, swamps, riviers and other wetlands of Australia". "Most water birds are large and conspicuous, though some are rare and obscure. Few sights in nature are more spectacular than a vast ibis rookery in the Riverina, or whistling ducks in dense camps of thousands in remote tropical swamps of the Top End, black swans congregating in huge flocks on extensive lakes, or grebes courting in some quiet backwater of a cumbungi swamp". Grebes, herons, egrets, bitterns, storks, ibises, spoonbills, swans, geese ducks, rails, crakes, gallinules, coots, cranes. Each volume of this series includes a detailed section on the eggs of the species under examination. The series, although wholely new in all aspects of its content, is modelled on Gould's Birds of Australia. "(This book) is both a serious reference book and a magnificent production, designed to give pleasure to a wide audience". This is the second volume in the ornithological volumes of The National Photographic Index of Australian Wildlife.