The first presentation will be by McComas Taylor, a keen bird-watcher in Canberra for over 40 years, and author of the ACT Bird Atlas and ACT Field Guide, on “The five ‘red’ Robins.”
This will be a quick survey and comparison of five robins that you are likely (or less likely) to see in the Canberra area: the Rose, Pink, Flame, Scarlet and Red-capped.
The main presentation will be by Russell McGregor, an adjunct professor of history at James Cook University, on “The History of Birdwatching in Australia: A Bird’s Eye View.”
In this talk, Russell will give a bird’s eye view over the history of birdwatching in Australia, from the beginning of twentieth century to now. From field glasses to field guides, from the skinning kit to the camera, from notebooks to Facebook, the changes in birding over the last 120 years or so have been immense. He will look at what impels people to watch birds and how our ways of doing so have changed under the massive technological, economic, social and cultural shifts of modern times. Russell can’t cover everything in a short talk, so he will focus on three related themes: the dissociation of watching birds from collecting them; the rise of bird photography; and the evolution of the field guide in Australia.