Author Description

The Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB) is one of the most exciting projects in international ornithology. HANZAB provides an up-to-date, comprehensive and accurate synthesis of our knowledge of all the birds in the region. HANZAB continues the tradition of authoritative publications on Australian birds that began with Gould's Handbook of the Birds of Australia (1865). It will have a major impact on the direction of future research and the conservation of Australasian and Antarctic Birds. The area covered by HANZAB includes Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica, the Antarctic and subantarctic islands, and the external territories of Cocos-Keeling, Christmas, Lord Howe, Norfolk, Kermadec, and Chatham Islands, and the islands and reefs of the Coral Sea. Approximately 900 species of birds have been recorded in this region. The information is presented in sections: Field Identification, Habitat, Distribution and Population, Movements, Food, Social Organization, Social Behavior, Voice, Breeding, and Plumages and related matters. Each account concludes with a full list of references. The accounts also include illustrations of behavioral postures and plumage features, maps showing breeding and non-breeding distribution, sonograms of calls and songs, and diagrams of timing of breeding and moulting. Breeding species receive full treatment in these sections. Non-breeding migrants, vagrant species, and those with doubtful records have a reduced treatment. All species, except those that have become extinct in historical times, or vagrants not recorded since 1900, or for which records are doubtful, are illustrated. There are 52 colour plates, painted for HANZAB. Many amateur and professional ornithologists from around the world have contributed to HANZAB. Volume 5 covers 118 species: kingbirds and tyrant-flycatchers; New Zealand wrens; pittas; lyrebirds; scrub-birds; Australian treecreepers; Australasian wrens (fairy-wrens, grasswrens and emu-wrens);