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Article ID: CBB681830473

J. A. Leach’s Australian Bird Book: At the interface of science and recreation (2022)

McGregor, Russell (Author)

Historical Records of Australian Science
Volume: 33
Issue: 2
Pages: 97-109
Publication date: 2022
Language: English

DOI: 10.1071/HR21010

URI: https://www.publish.csiro.au/hr/HR21010

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Public understanding of science Popularization Natural history Wildlife conservation Birding; birdwatching Recreation; play Amateurs Ornithology 20th century, early Australia Leach, John Albert

An Australian Bird Book by J. A. Leach, published in 1911, was the first field guide to Australia’s avifauna. Unlike today’s field guides, it was not tightly focussed on identification, instead devoting more than half its words to an expansive dissertation on the natural history of birds. This article scrutinises and contextualises Leach’s Bird Book to illuminate some of the interconnections between science, birdwatching, recreation and conservation in early twentieth-century Australia. It shows how Leach’s heavy weighting on natural history was integral to his promotion of birdwatching as an edifying recreation that would lead people not merely to be able to name the birds they saw but also, more importantly, to understand, cherish and protect them.

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