Kirsty Costa (Host)

And Claire has got this question for us.

Yeah, I have to say I love the Australian Bird Guide as well.

And I also really love the concise version, which I call the Little Red Book.

You can whack that in your backpack and take it with you.

And there's a really good double page spread of birds of prey that I use a lot.

I'm also a bit of a tech girl and I love carrying my field guides around on my phone.

I can highly recommend the Pizzy and Night app as well as Morecambe's Birds app as well.

I use them a lot.

And I'm also finding myself more and more leaning on things like Merlin birds, which you can download for free in your app store.

Thank you so much for that great question, Claire.

And I hope that's been useful for Weekend Birder listeners as well.

Ah, such good advice, and I'll put a link to all the books that we're talking about in the show notes.

We have another question from John Thomas.

It makes me think about this whole thing we've been talking about with migration and different birds in different areas.

And he wants to know, did the nutrient-poor soils and unique climate of the Australian continent directly drive aggressive, highly territorial and highly intelligent behaviours that we see in our birds today?

Such a good question, John, and I've asked our resident bird evolution specialist, Tim Lowe, to answer that for you.

Thank you so much for such a comprehensive answer, Tim.

And many thanks to you, John, for asking that question.

It's really fascinating to think about the way that birds continue to evolve and how that affects the way that they go about their daily life.

And that actually leads us really nicely into this question by Leanne W. Leanne is wondering, watching bird behaviour to predict the future has been used by many cultures.