The next time you’re in a quiet spot outdoors – whether it’s the garden, park, forest, coast or high country – pause to listen, and you are more than likely to hear birdsong. This book will help you to know the birds of New Zealand by their calls.

Listen to 60 birds’ songs and calls, via a QR Code.

Alongside the calls, author Lynnette Moon provides a concise account of each bird, covering their habitat, nest, appearance and behaviour.

Photographs come from the magnificent collection of the late photographer, Geoff Moon and the bird songs come from the sound recordist John Kendrick.

A must for any birder from beginner to enthusiast, New Zealand Bird Calls offers new ways to identify birds, understand their behaviour and enjoy their song.

NZ$30.00 + delivery.

This is the inspiring story of the rediscovery and then the recovery of the Takahe, one of New Zealand’s most Intriguing native birds.

Takahe are ‘strange and wonderful avian beasts’, big purple birds with a striking red beak and legs. Once thought extinct, they were famously rediscovered in 1948 by Invercargill doctor Geoffrey Orbe, who found a small population living in a remote valley in the Murchison Mountains of Fiordland.

In this book Alison Balance charts the history of the Takahe recovery programme, the longest running species conservation programme in New Zealand, and perhaps the world. After many setbacks, those dedicated to saving the bird have in recent years managed to build up a healthy population, which will pass 500 birds in 2023.

Full of fascinating stories about the biology and lifestyle of this delightful bird, summed up as ‘a food obsessed, serially monogamous (mostly) devoted partner and parent, whose teenage kids stick around to help raise their younger siblings’. This beautifully illustrated and inspiring book will appeal to anyone with an interest in ornithology and the natural world in New Zealand.

NZ$60.00 + delivery.

This completely new and fully updated edition of this hugely popular classic covers the 112 seabird species that are most likely to be encountered in New Zealand waters.
Each species is illustrated with photos and a distribution map, while text accounts outline key ID and behavioural features, similar species, distribution and breeding areas, and population status.
Advice on the best places to see each species is also given.

150 new images have been added to the book since the 2006 edition, showing all the different key plumages of each species – for example adult, im-mature and different morphs – and illustrating the all-important wing-patterns of birds in flight to aid ID.
It includes the likes of the newly described Whenua Hou Storm Petrel, the recently ‘split’ Southern Rockhopper Penguin and vagrants like Red-footed Booby and Black-footed Albatross.
Seabird groups covered are: albatrosses, molly-mawks, shearwaters, petrels, storm petrels, div-ing petrels, giant petrels, prions, penguins, tropic-birds, gannets and boobies, shags, frigatebirds.

NZ$35.00 + delivery.

High-quality photographs from one of New Zealand's youngest nature photographers are accompanied by detailed species descriptions, which include nomenclature, size, distribution, habits, and habitat.

The user-friendly introduction covers climate, vegetation, biogeography, and the key sites for viewing the listed species. Also included is an all-important checklist of all of the birds of New Zealand encompassing, for each species, its common and scientific name, IUCN status.

NZ$30.00 + delivery.

Kiwi, kakapo, takahe, moa, tui – these birds, and many others, are unique to Aotearoa New Zealand, and famous throughout the world. It was the 1873 publication of Walter Buller’s A History of the Birds of New Zealand that introduced overseas readers to these extraordinary creatures, and led New Zealanders as well to appreciate them in a way they had not before. Now, a century and a half later, Geoff Norman’s Birdstories builds on that legacy in a compelling, impeccably researched and beautifully presented account, which describes the origins of our birds, their place in both the Pakeha and Maori worlds, their survival and conservation, and the art they have inspired.

Geoff Norman writes of the birds’ unusual evolution, the disastrous impact of two waves of human migration, but too, the late nineteenth-century realisation that extinction need not be inevitable and the astonishing salvation stories of the following century.

Birdstories is a visual delight, rich in sketches and paintings by the scientists and draughtsmen who accompanied the early European explorers, and a remarkable range of works by contemporary artists. Much more than a source of fascinating information, this significant book is also a passionate call for action to save our remaining threatened species.

NZ$70.00 + delivery.

New Zealand has a diverse range of bird species and is especially important for pelagics. Thirteen of the world's 18 penguin species have been recorded in the New Zealand region (including the Ross Dependency). Nine of these species breed here. Of petrels, 37 of the world's 114 species breed in the New Zealand region, some on the mainland or nearby islands so they can be seen flying around, but many stick to the Southern Ocean islands. Eleven of the world's 22 albatross species nest in New Zealand and of those nine do not nest elsewhere. As well as these specific species, the book covers 50 sites on the North and South Islands, Rakiura/Steward Island and Chatham Islands that are best for birdwatching.

Detailed descriptions of each site cover the type of terrain, and the tracks and trails where certain species are likely to be encountered. Particular species for each site are highlighted. A fact file for each site lists land or sea access; type of habitat, best time to visit, facilities and accommodation. Key species for each site are also listed.

NZ$40.00 + delivery.

This book features photographs of the most commonly seen birds along with detailed information on distribution, habitat, behaviour and breeding.
Each bird is illustrated with at least one colour photograph to aid identification, and in many cases photographs also show the birds in their habitat nesting, feeding and socialising.

NZ$28.00 + delivery.

Oceanic birds are among the most remarkable but least known of all birds, living at sea, far from the sight of most people. They offer unusual identification challenges—many species look similar and it can be difficult to get good views of fast-flying birds from a moving boat.

The first field guide to the world’s oceanic birds in more than two decades, this exciting and authoritative book draws on decades of firsthand experience on the open seas. It features clear text filled with original insights and new information and more than 2,200 carefully chosen color images that bring the ocean and its remarkable winged inhabitants to life. Never before have oceanic birds been presented in such an accessible and comprehensive way.

Contents include:

Features careful species comparisons, overviews of the latest taxonomy, tips on how to observe and ID birds at sea, and much more

NZ$70.00 + delivery.

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THE SEABIRD'S CRY.
By Adam Nicholson. Softcover, 128mm x 198mm, 400 pages, Black and White Images, Published 2018. 0.37 kg

This book is the full story of seabirds, looking at the pattern of their lives, their habitats, the threats they face and the passions they inspire.

In ten chapters, each dedicated to a different bird, The Seabird’s Cry travels their ocean paths, fusing traditional knowledge with all that modern science has come to know about them: the way their bodies work, their dazzling navigational expertise, their ability to smell their way to fish or home, to understand the workings of the winds in which they live.

At the heart of the book are the Shiant Isles a cluster of Hebridean islands in the Minch that author Adam Nicolson has known all his life but he has pursued the birds much further: across the Atlantic, up the west coast of Ireland, to St Kilda, Orkney, Shetland, the Faeroes, Iceland and Norway to the eastern seaboard of America, the Falklands, South Georgia, the Canaries and the Azores reaching out across the widths of the world ocean.

This book is a paean to the beauty of life on the wing, but even as we are coming to understand the seabirds, a global tragedy is unfolding. Their number is in freefall, dropping by nearly seventy per cent in the last sixty years, a billion fewer now than in 1950. Of the ten birds in this book, seven are in decline. Extinction stalks the ocean and there is a danger that the grand cry of a seabird colony, rolling around the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become but a memory.

NZ$28.00 + delivery.

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ECOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY. Page Two BIRDS AND BIRDLIFE

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