Curlews on Vulture Street (Darryl Jones, NewSouth)

A fascination with birds and wildlife took hold early for Darryl Jones. Now a professor of ecology at Griffith University, he first noticed the creatures who shared his landscape as a boy in 1970s rural New South Wales. Curlews on Vulture Street, which follows his ABIA-shortlisted guide Feeding the Birds at Your Table, shifts from coming-of-age memoir to more scientific—but deliberately accessible—observations taken from a life spent examining Australia’s birds, particularly those that make a home in cities. Growing up, Jones watched and tended to magpies, ravens, blackbirds and sparrows; it’s perhaps not surprising he name checks the early influence of naturalist Gerald Durrell (‘I’ve yet to return a copy of My Family and Other Animals to the high school library’). We join Jones as he finds his feet as an undergrad, has adventures in urban bird counting, and undertakes fieldwork on the elaborate—and previously misunderstood—mating habits of the Australian brush turkey. In the strongest chapter, he details his stint in magpie management in 1990s Brisbane, which proves a rather chaotic undertaking: ‘A “situation room” was set up in my lab at the university with a dedicated fax machine linked directly to the Parks office’. Jones’s enthusiasm for his avian subjects and the thrill of scientific discovery should appeal most to fellow bird lovers, watchers and counters—or anyone who dabbled in the habit during the long pandemic lockdowns.

Kim Thomson is a freelance writer and editor.

Category: Reviews