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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • Vol. 123, No. 1, March 2011 
1988)—are the most commonly mist-netted birds 
of the Bornean forest. Yet another yellow 
paragraph describes the traditional native method 
for snaring pheasants using a “pagar”, or herding 
fence, and another explains that egrets are the 
eyes and ears of forest spirits. At the beginning of 
the Phillipps’ book is an extensive introduction, 
full of facts on Bornean birds, geography, 
habitats, weather, etc., virtually everything needed 
to get started as a birdwatcher or ornithologist in 
Borneo. I wish I had read this section before 
traveling to Mt. Pueh in westernmost Sarawak in 
January 2010. The map and accompanying bar 
graphs on page 35 indicate that part of Sarawak to 
be the wettest place in Borneo in January, and I 
can now vouch that it is true. 
The authors are remarkably well suited to 
produce a natural history guide for Bornean birds. 
Brother and sister, they grew up in Sabah, spending 
their childhood exploring such famous sites as Mt. 
Kinabalu, Sepilok Orangutan Reserve, and the 
Crocker Range, not to mention many lesser known 
places. As a boy, Quentin Phillipps wrote a series of 
papers on the occurrence and nesting of birds (e.g., 
Phillipps 1970, Phillipps and Phillipps 1970), and 
has contributed to Bornean ornithology ever since 
(e.g., Phillipps 1982). The Phillipps family is well 
known in Sabah for their knowledge of botany and 
ecology (e.g., Phillipps 1985), and Karen Phillipps 
is famous for her illustrations in ground-breaking 
Asian field guides (Viney and Phillipps 1977; 
Payne et al. 1985; MacKinnon and Phillipps 1993, 
2000). Quentin Phillipps’ long-term fascination 
with birds, Karen Phillipps’ artistic skills, and their 
combined experiences as Bornean explorers and 
naturalists come together in this wonderful book, 
which I could not recommend more highly.— 
FREDERICK H. SHELDON, Louisiana State 
University, Museum of Natural Science and 
Department of Biological Sciences, Baton 
Rouge, LA 70803, USA; e-mail: fsheld@lsu.edu 
LITERATURE CITED 
Gill, F. B. 1988. Trapline foraging by hermit hum¬ 
mingbirds: competition for an undefended, renew¬ 
able resource. Ecology 69:1933-1942. 
MacKinnon, J. and K. Phillipps. 1993. A field guide 
to the birds of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Bali. 
Oxford University Press, Oxford, United King¬ 
dom. 
MacKinnon, J. and K. Phillipps. 2000. A field guide 
to the birds of China. Oxford University Press, 
Oxford, United Kingdom. 
Myers, S. 2009. A field guide to the Birds of Borneo. 
New Holland Publishers, London, United King¬ 
dom. 
Payne, J., C. M. Francis, and K. Phillipps. 1985. A 
field guide to the mammals of Borneo. Sabah 
Society, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah; and World Wildlife 
Fund Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. 
Phillipps, A. 1985. Diary report on the Marai-Parai 
Spur Expedition, Kinabalu Park, 11-15 February 
1985. Sabah Parks, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. 
Phillipps, Q. 1970. Some important nesting notes from 
Sabah. Sabah Society Journal 5:141-144. 
Phillipps, Q. 1982. Notes on the birds and mammals of 
Mt. Tamboyukon. Sabah Parks, Kota Kinabalu, 
Sabah, Malaysia. 
Phillipps, Q. and J. Phillipps. 1970. Bird banding in 
the Kinabalu National Park. Annual Report to the 
Sabah National Park Trustees 1970:29-32. 
Sheldon, F. H. 2010. Review of: S. Myers, Birds of 
Borneo. Wilson Journal of Ornithology 122:410— 
411. 
Viney, C. and K. Phillipps. 1977. A colour guide to the 
birds of Hong Kong. Government Printer, Hong 
Kong, China. 
BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. Eighth Edition. By 
Ken Simpson and Nicolas Day. Princeton Field 
Guides, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. 2010: 381 
pages and 132 color plates. ISBN: 978-0-691- 
14692-8. $39.50 (flexible waterproof cover).— 
This book is a substantial revision of the authors’ 
earlier editions, a series that has become a 
standard field guide for Australian birds with 
over 600,000 copies in print. A table of contents 
(or “Key”) gives a quick description of each 
family, color figures of representative birds, and 
the pages where the families are illustrated in the 
color plates. The 132 color plates include the 
common name of each species, and the facing 
Field information” page has the common and 
scientific names, a concise description of the 
species as it appears in the field, notes on different 
ages and plumage moiphs (especially in raptors), 
an index of status (resident, migratory nomadic, 
partially resident), abundance, size, voice, and 
habitat, and a distribution map (including distinc¬ 
tive races or subspecies); for some species it has 
alternative and prior names and comments on 
species relationships where these were only 
recently discovered. A “Vagrant bird bulletin” 
after the main color plates is a section for 85 
uncommon species and rarities, especially sea- 
