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]

The time children spend in nature has severely decreased. While nature-based learning at school is considered an important strategy in addressing this, numerous knowledge gaps continue to remain. To address these, a systematic review was undertaken. Nine commonly used health and education databases were searched from inception to January 2019. To be included, study participants were required to be children aged 4 to 12 without health or developmental conditions with a focus on nature-based learning. The methodological quality of the included studies was assessed, followed by a descriptive synthesis. Out of 4703 results, 20 quantitative studies were included. There was a lack of universal definition of nature-based learning. This resulted in heterogeneity in how interventions were delivered, and outcomes measured. Overall, nature-based learning had varying levels of positive impacts across a range of outcomes. Despite these positive findings, the evidence base is constrained by some methodological issues. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1921117. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines an experimental kindergarten programme Work in the Kindergarten: An Australian Programme based on the Life and Customs of the Australian Black developed by Martha Simpson in early twentieth-century Australia. Here Simpson adapted international Revisionist Froebelian approaches to cultural epoch theory and nature study in an Australian context. Accepting that human development recapitulates, Simpson posited that Aboriginal culture could serve as stimulus for age-appropriate and improving child-centred activities. Local contingencies, including histories of violent cross-racial encounter, complicated an attempt by kindergartener Helen Beaumont to apply the programme in the Sydney slum suburb of Leichhardt. These contingencies are documented and analysed. [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]

New research is presented on the life of James before his emigration to Australia in 1840. Though fragmentary and incomplete the results show Rennie as a naturalist of considerable standing and of literary and scientific skill. This new information illustrates an intriguingly marginal life in science of the period. On his personal character caution is exercised, although a thread of dogmatism, determination and self assurance, bordering on arrogance, can be traced from his student days until his departure from Britain. Rennie's early unpublished essays clearly point to his potential as a scientific writer. Rennie's final 27 years in Australia are not covered in any detail because of the lack of documentation about this relatively unknown period of his life outside Britain. A bibliography of his published and unpublished works is given as an appendix, together with notes and new insights into attribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fragmentation of natural landscapes is a pervasive process in the world. Common models predict coherent change in assemblages, with less numerous species becoming locally extinct first, then species of intermediate abundance, and so forth. Relative abundance distributions should change systematically in landscapes characterized by greater change. Such a predictable sequence of change is not evident in the avifaunas of landscapes of central Victoria, Australia, where relative-abundance patterns in more affected landscapes bear little resemblance to reference distributions. I provide two sets of analyses of relative-abundance distributions: (1) analyses that do not depend on the identity of individual species and (2) abundance spectra, which use ordered lists of species ranked by species' commonness in reference systems. While abundance spectra change dramatically in smaller remnants, relative-abundance distributions change little, suggesting that the ‘ reorganization’ of abundances occurs over ecological time frames. The dispersal-limited multinomial is a flexible distribution that may fit many data sets yet be unrelated to assumptions (species neutrality) and processes (fixed total numbers of individuals) of the unified neutral theory. A more complete understanding of human impacts at landscape scales must include capacities to predict those species that will be advantaged by change, as well as those that will be disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article unearth the secrets of the itjaritjari. First recorded by Westerners in the late 1800s, the mole, often referred to by its Aboriginal name itjaritjari, caused a stir in zoological circles with its unusual features. At no more than 14 centimetres long, its tubular body fits into the palm of the hand. It lacks eyes and has only tiny holes for ears. And its short, cream-coloured fur, spade-like front claws and a backwards-facing pouch give it an unearthly appearance. Little is known about this creature because the itjaritjari rarely surfaces, making observation in the wild virtually impossible. All specimens caught live have died within weeks in captivity for reasons that remain unclear.

Summary: Coordinating movements to music is often considered a uniquely human skill. A new study dispels this notion by showing that male Australian lyrebirds also perform ‘dance’ moves which are predictably matched with specific songs in their display routines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]