What I most missed after a trip to Australia last year wasn’t the beaches or the local accents. It was the sounds of the birds.
The plaintive cries of the Australian ravens, the laughing kookaburras, and the screeching cockatoos. I realized after I returned home that I never had associated Australia with exotic birds. This is the land of the kangaroo and the koala and so many other marsupials.
But it is the birds that brought me to this amazing book: Where Song Began: Australia’s Birds and How They Changed the World, by Tim Low.
Australia is not some avian backwater, as early European visitors widely assumed. Settlers introduced starlings and other species in an effort to introduce songbirds to the land. But it wasn’t that Australia didn’t have birds that could sing, it was that the Europeans weren’t fully listening.
Thanks to DNA, we now know that Australia is the wellspring of the planet’s songbirds. And it wasn’t until the second half of the last century that Australians themselves began to appreciate that songbirds evolved in their backyards. And it’s not only songbirds that Australia gave the word but parrots.
New South Wales has 33 species of parrot — and the Sydney region alone boasts more species than most countries on the planet.
Australia is also home to the largest concentration of honeyeater species. And why? Because the country gave us trees that are actually very large flowers that give off stupendous amounts of nectar. These are eucalyptus trees. In Australia, it’s not just the bees that pollinate — it is birds.
Back to the songbirds, one of the most ancient songbirds is the lyrbird, native to Australia.
I found this video of a lyrebird and it is truly unbelievable to see — and tragic when you hear the final sounds the bird echoes.
This is a dense book that I would advise only for those who are eager to be overwhelmed by bird species (with each passing chapter I realized I knew less and less about birds). But it’s also a beautiful book written by an author who not only loves Australia’s many avian species but is doing his part to help protect them.
Where Song Began: Australia’s Birds and How They Changed the World
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the eco-mystery Devils Island, forthcoming in 2024. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
