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41 AUSTRALIAN FIELD ORNITHOLOGY 2009, 26 , 41–43 Bowerbirds by Peter Rowland , CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 2008. Softcover, 17 × 24 cm, 136 pp., 37 colour and 12 black-and-white photographs, 10 maps. RRP $40. Bowerbirds is the latest ornithological addition to the well-respected Australian Natural History Series, many titles of which provide excellent guides to their featured species. As with many titles in the series, this book is popular rather than academic, being aimed at a general audience. It is neatly produced, well printed with easy-to-read typeface, attractive design, and of comfortable proportions. Its colour photographs are mostly good, if slightly dully reproduced. Peter Rowland’s aim was to ‘condense the published knowledge’ delivered ‘in a more simplified format for the general natural history reader’. His success is, however, limited by content contradictory to this aim, structural problems, ambiguities, and numerous factual errors. The first four chapters constitute 15 (18% of) pages of text. Chapter 5 (69 pp.) contains accounts for the 10 bowerbirds in Australia and Chapter 6 (8 pp.) is a New Guinea species supplement (for 10 other species). The Bibliography (9 pp.) and Index (6 pp.) follow. Given the complex biology, constructions, behaviour, and studies of bowerbirds, 15 pages of general text are grossly inadequate. The result is a book largely of species accounts, condensed from contemporary authoritative publications. In lacking original synthesis, interpretation, discussion or explanation, Bowerbirds consists largely of blandly condensed, readily available, facts. Esoteric topics are suddenly alluded to in the species accounts, without any prior explanation. These include: food caching, functions of vocal mimicry, delayed maturity, bower sites, bower orientation, attendance of deserted bowers by subadult males, breeding seasonality, mating by immature males, and the IUCN threatened species categories, to name only some. There is no explanation of the new classification and nomenclature applied (and yet relevant publications are in the Bibliography), unfamiliar though the fewer genera, species order, and some specific names will be to most readers. As references in the Bibliography are uncited in the text they are of limited use and, puzzlingly, many have no pertinence to the book. No rationale for treating the New Guinea species as ‘supplementary’ is provided and, although it implies that Chapters 1 to 4 deal only with Australian species this is not so. This approach leads to ambiguity and error. For example, the statement ‘One exception [within Ptilonorhynchus (Chlamydera) ] is the Fawn-breasted Bowerbird, which does not have a nuchal crest…’ is incorrect because the same is true of Lauterbach’s Bowerbird of New Guinea. Table 2.1 deals with both Australian and New Guinea species, but Table 3.1 only with Australian ones. The first sentence of Chapter 1, referring to a header quote, makes a disconcerting start: it reads ‘This statement by Charles Barrett would suggest that this fascinating group of passerines (songbirds) are unique to Australia.’ Firstly, the quote suggests no such thing and, secondly, the ‘are’ should have been ‘is’. The third sentence describes ‘New Guinea’ as one country when it involves two. Apostrophe use is eccentric, and the (Gollum-like) ‘species’s’ appears throughout (but correctly on p. 117). A monotonously high proportion of sentences (commonly 12, but up to 24, per page) starts with ‘The’. The first letter of some words is capitalised (e.g. Locally Common, Common etc.) without explanation. We refrain from listing further examples of, much, careless English. There are, however, also numerous errors in scientific language and fact; we mention few of the former but more, not all, of the latter. AUSTRALIAN 42 Review—Bowerbirds FIELD ORNITHOLOGY The Introduction refers to the Tooth-billed Bowerbird’s ‘bower’ when it is a ‘court’ (i.e. not a construction but a clearing). Bower decorations may stimulate but, surely, not ‘bedazzle’ females (p. 2). No bowerbird uses a ‘stick’ (p. 3) or ‘twig’ (p. 24) to apply paint. Rowland frequently writes of ‘males’ when actually meaning, the significantly different, ‘adult males’. The extremely brief Introduction includes a long paragraph about one hybrid individual (p. 4) without mention of two other hybrid combinations (noted in only some pertinent species accounts). As the hybrid alluded to is known from one specimen and sightings of one living individual, Rowland’s statement that ‘many other wild hybrids between the Regent and Satin Bowerbirds have been recorded and photographed’ (p. 5) is inexplicable. The statement that a male’s bower is indicative of his ‘intelligence’ (p. 8) is unjustifiable. A Table 2.1 footnote incorrectly implies that two northern and two southern Satin Bowerbird subspecies exist (p. 10). This same table includes a column listing generic names, but as these appear in the column to its left it is superfluous. The word ‘monotypic’ is applied in error for ‘monomorphic’ (p. 11). The statement ‘Recent DNA work has indicated… that the bowerbirds are more closely related to the crows (Corvidae)…’ (p. 11) is erroneous. Although bowerbirds are basal to the ‘corvine assemblage’, that assemblage is large (c. 14 families): bowerbirds are actually well removed from crows. A statement that relationships among bowerbirds ‘have been largely based on believed similarities in DNA or protein sequences…’ (p. 11) is unbelievable. Rowland acknowledges only five bowerbird genera but writes of Ailuroedus plus ‘seven other Bowerbird [sic ] genera…’ (p. 13). Tooth-billed Bowerbirds have no more ‘preference’ for ‘Eucalypt open forest’ than Great Bowerbirds do for ‘Rainforest’ (p. 16). If climate change causes bowerbirds to move to higher or more southern regions it would not be ‘migration’ (p. 16). We cannot see ‘noise pollution’ as a ‘key threat’ to bowerbirds; and while there may be (trivial) illegal trade in them we cannot see that it ‘impacts on bowerbirds’ as populations, let alone as species (p. 17). It is untrue that ‘There is no national park system in New Guinea’ (p. 19). Bower material is not ‘interwoven’ (pp. 23, 102). The Golden Bowerbird is not ‘Typical of the maypole bower-builders’ but is the most atypical of them (p. 23). Chapter 5 starts with a three-page ‘Bowerbird key’ [sic]. Such a key, quaint in a modern bird book, attempts to define species by external morphology via a process of elimination. This one fails because the unambiguous identification to sex of younger males is impossible (acknowledged in a footnote) and because some characters applied are erroneous. For example, female Golden Bowerbirds are not identifiable by ‘Upperparts washed with yellow’ (as this key demonstrates, having led the reader to this point via ‘Uniform brownish upperparts’). Female Archbold’s Bowerbirds do not have a ‘yellow’ wing-patch (more correctly ‘reddish- buff’ on p. 117), and their males do not have a ‘Small tufted yellow crest’ (but one of the largest of bowerbird crests); male Adelbert Bowerbirds do not have a ‘large glossy orange crest’ (actually the nape and mantle), etc. Moreover, as this ‘key’ deals with Australian and New Guinean species separately it forms two keys, of thus limited value. For the New Guinea species only ‘length’ measurements, only three pictures of bowers (of two species), and no distribution maps, are provided. Many contradictions and errors would have been avoided by treating all species equally or by excluding the New Guinea ones completely. While the emphasis is, thus, heavily on Australia the only habitat illustrated is a New Guinea one! VOL. 26 (1–2) MARCH–JUNE 2009 Review—Bowerbirds 43 Species accounts start with author and year of their description, but full references for these are not provided in the Bibliography. Extremes of ranges of undefined ‘Length, Wing, Tail, Bill, Tarsus’ measurements, and weights, are given for Australian species, but in lacking averages provide no indication of typical or relative size and proportions. Although most measurements are from recent scientific publications, additional, more extreme, ones have been added from popular texts to corrupt them with errors. Largely paraphrased from a 2004 publication are texts under Other names (including strings of Papuan and Indonesian names), Discovery and nomenclature, and long lists of bird species the calls of which bowerbirds mimic—material seemingly contrary to the author’s aim. Ironically, distribution maps are allocated figure numbers nowhere cited in the text, whereas colour pictures that do need cross references lack them. The undertail of Tooth-billed Bowerbirds is not barred (p. 50); these bowerbirds do not digest seeds; occur altitudinally as low as 20, not 350, metres; and males attend courts from July, not September ( contra pp. 52–54). We know of no recorded groups of anything like up to 15 Golden Bowerbirds, let alone such being ‘usually encountered’ (p. 56). Rowland suggests that Regent Bowerbirds use blue decorations ‘Possibly due to co-habitation with the Satin Bowerbird’ (p. 67), but their New Guinea congeners typically also use blue ones. Masked and Flame Bowerbirds were never ‘grouped together as a subspecies of the single species’, but rather as two subspecies of a species; and the Adelbert Bowerbird does not have a filamentous ‘crown’ but has a filamentous nape and mantle (p. 119). That only females nest is tediously repeated throughout pertinent species accounts, under Mating, under Nest, and again under Incubation

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