The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds
book by Peter Slater
The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds is one of the main national bird field guides used by Australian birders.
Description
The guide was first published in 1986 in Sydney by Rigby Publishers and authored by Peter Slater and other members of his family. It is 215 mm high by 113 mm wide and weighs 440 g. The imprint page asserts copyright of the paintings for Peter Slater, of the text for Pat Slater, and of the maps for Raoul Slater.
History
In 1970-74 Slater had produced a two-volume guide to Australian birds which was the first of the new generation of Australian field guides to appear after the Second World War. It was shortly followed by guides authored by Graham Pizzey in 1980 and by Ken Simpson and Nicolas Day in 1984. Slater's second guide continued the evolutionary succession only two years later. In a review in the ornithological journal Emu Ian Taylor said:
”Peter Slater, in conjunction with his wife Pat and their son Raoul, has produced a one volume field guide for the whole of Australia which looks like being serious competition for Graham Pizzey's popular field guide. The great strengths of this book lie in its size and its format. For the first time, here is a field guide which can actually be used in the field.
The public source identifies “The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds” as book by Peter Slater. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Slater, Field and Guide.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds”, the useful work is to connect “book by Peter Slater” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 10, 2022. The linked authority identifier is Q17028571. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1970, 1980 and 1984.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds primary sources, The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds archive and Slater research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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This entry incorporates text from “The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.