|
A FINE FEATHERED FRIEND Susan Kurosawa, Travel Writer April 2002 Almost 20 years of experience taking birdwatchers on sorties in the Top End would seem a worthy qualification for producing a guide to the Northern Territory's feathered population. 'Birds of Australia's Top End' by Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow (Scrubfowl Press) is a well-produced compendium of the region's species, each with a detailed physical description plus information on habitat, call and breeding, and hints on spotting. She also includes references to certain birds with significane to Aborigines. The barking owl, for example, "is often included in Kunwinjku paintings of death spirits along with blowflies". Goodfellow likens her career path to "a mad dog's dinnner" and has variously worked as a buffalo shooter, biologist, Darwin City Council alderman, music teacher and cross-cultural consultant. A member of the Kunwinjku people, she also reveals she is the "family snake-catcher". Her book is a very readable resource, but it would be even more fun to have Goodfellow as one's personal ornithological guide! - spotting everything from the bar-tailed godwit to the chestnut-backed button-quail, with what I imagine would be great anecdotal insight and good humour.
Birds of Australia`s Top End by Denise Lawungkurr Goodfellow with Michael Stott published by Scrubfowl Press, PO Box 1023, Parap, Northern Territory, Australia 0804. ISBN 0957884907 Nov 2001. |
