First edition of one of the most significant of Australian bird books.

Colonial jurist Charles Belcher (1876-1976) was a highly regarded amateur ornithologist and founding member of both the Australasian Ornithologists' Union and the Bird Observers' Club. This volume was written not as 'a scientific treatise, but merely the outcome of a personal desire, which I have long cherished, to give some permanent and orderly form to the odd notes, jottings, and recollections of some five-and-twenty years upon the birds inhabiting the district lying about my native town of Geelong' (preface). Though the resulting book was 'too bulky in format and too discursive in style to be a field guide, he clearly indicated that readers could and should consult it to identify birds. In some ways it was more helpful than Leach's Bird Book for that purpose, because Belcher gave more and better information on calls and habitat as aids to identification' 'Before Slater: A History of Field Guides to Australian Birds to 1970', Australian Field Ornithology, July 2022, p. 128).

First edition; 8vo; frontispiece and 49 plates from monochrome photographs, bookplate, spotting to edges of text block and occasionally to contents; original blue cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, cloth a little rubbed and bumped, some scattered loss of size, very good condition; 384pp.