| Main Title: |
Where song began : Australia's birds and how they changed the world / Tim Low. |
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| Author: |
Low, Tim, 1956-
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| Year: |
2014. |
| Collation: |
416 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : colour illustrations, pbk ; 23 cm. |
| Summary: |
Introduction -- One : food worth defending -- Sugar fuels noise -- Successful trees -- Climate survivors -- Ancient pollination -- Where the big birds are -- Accessible nectar -- Two : forests that exude energy -- Special foods -- The forest dominators -- The ultimate aggressor -- The dawn of group defence -- Three : the first song -- Northern orthodoxy -- Forward thinking -- Early musicians -- The Australian way -- Four : New Guinea : Australia's northern province -- Rainforest finds a new home -- What the birds reveal -- Placing New Guinea -- Australian birds shown in new ways -- Five : land of parrots -- Aptitude with attitude -- Parrots as problems -- Parrots as pets -- Trees that store seed -- Southern origins -- Six : the last of the forest giants -- Birds that kick -- Gigantism -- Ecosystem services -- Conserving difficult birds -- Seven : Australia as a centre of origin -- Biogeography as embarrassing science -- Waterfowl and landfowl -- Dodos and hummingbirds -- South or north? -- Australia's sister lands -- Australia as a centre -- Eight : the forest makers -- Asian immigrants -- Almost perfect dispersal -- More fruit couriers -- Seed highways -- Unwelcome forest making -- Nine : of grass and fire -- Grass-assisted invasion -- The volatility of savanna -- Fire -- When grass is eaten -- Grasses as shrubs -- Uncertainties rule -- Fiery future -- Ten : life in a liquid landscape -- Sleeping on air -- Made to formula -- The great south wind -- The New Zealand factor -- Ending isolation -- Adaptability and vulnerability -- Seabirds' services -- Seabirds in trees -- Eleven : a continent compared -- Living with aggression -- Nectar niches -- Absence as opportunity -- Recent arrivals -- Birds that remain surprising -- Birds around the world -- Twelve : people and birds -- Muttonbirds -- Early exploitation -- Taking by Europeans -- Gondwanan pets -- Protecting assets -- Study as taking -- Conservation and the lyrebird -- Modern relationships -- The ecology of feeding -- Birds into the future.
Renowned for its unusual mammals, Australia is a land of birds that are just as unusual, just as striking, a result of the continent's tens of millions of years of isolation. Compared with birds elsewhere, ours are more likely to be intelligent, aggressive and loud, to live in complex societies, and to be large and long-lived. |
| Subject: |
Birdsongs
Birds
Evolution
Natural history
Victorian Premier's Literary Award Nominations
Australia
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| ISBN: |
9780670077960 (paperback) |
| Notes: |
Australian Book Industry General Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2015.
Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2015 - People's Choice - winner
Includes notes, bibliographical references (pages [319]-377) and index.
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