Search

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. In 1911, J. A. Leach published the first field guide to Australia's avifauna in response to demand for a means to identify birds in the wild without shooting them first. Partly a digest of popular science, partly a conservationist polemic, and partly a nationalist homily, the book heralded a change in the relationship between people and birds. Thanks to the Australian Bird Book (and subsequent guides), birdwatching became a popular Australian pastime. With Leach in hand, birdwatchers not only learned how to identify birds, but also how to care deeply about their long-term survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Tucker Musson was a highly respected teacher at Hawkesbury Agricultural College from 1891 to 1919 and a prolific contributor of articles to scientific and other journals in New South Wales. In addition, he became a strong advocate of Nature Study, a subject widely discussed as it was introduced to schools throughout the English-speaking world in the early twentieth century but since fallen into obscurity within historical research. Musson's understandings of ecology and adaptation promoted a holistic study of nature. For him any action that affected the natural environment had wider implications that needed to be understood. He came to believe that environmental understanding required more than factual scientific investigation and thus embraced the additional appeal to emotional attachment and aesthetic appreciation that Nature Study endorsed. A study of his life and writing thus provides insight into the particular ideology of Nature Study as it was introduced into New South Wales schools and its wider connection with conservationist and preservationist thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]