Book, Binocular and Clothing Reviews - Diary of a Bird Photographer

The Publisher’s View: Ian Montgomery is a well known Australian bird photographer whose website, birdway.com.au, contains more than 7000 widely published photos of 1500 bird species. Since 2002 he has sent a bird of the week email to a growing number of people, now about one thousand, around the world.

Each email focuses on a particular species with beautiful photos and interesting facts about birds and travel presented in his clear and often humorous style. As readers have expressed interest in earlier postings, this ebook collects together all the bird of the week instalments in the period 2002 to 2009. The book contains an index to all the species of birds mentioned and links to photos on the Birdway website and to other relevant websites.

Other Views: FANTASTIC Ian! I already purchased my copy and will send this announcement to those who have been to Australia with me. (Jeri Langham, USA)

The book is beautiful – I’m reading it on iTunes.

Thanks for years of wonderful photographs! (Sandy Gant USA)

I’m very excited to read it.. ..what a great idea you had! You are such a good writer…your stories are what make your pictures so special. (Andrea Rosner, USA)

I’m now the proud owner of your new book. A thousand congratulations. What a lot of work! I hope it sells like hot cakes 🙂 Michael Johnson (Australia)

The Author: Ian became a keen birdwatcher as a schoolboy in Ireland in the1960s. Fond memories of that time include wildfowl and wader surveys in Dublin and Wicklow, sea-watches in Donegal and a spell as a volunteer warder at the RSPB Minsmere reserve in Suffolk in eastern England. As a Zoology graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he went to Australia in 1971 and did a Ph.D. in animal behaviour at Sydney University. Then followed a career in computing until, in 1993, he got the opportunity to combine zoology and computing in fisheries modelling and stock assessment.

Early attempts at capturing birds on film in Ireland were constrained by inadequate equipment. In 1988, Ian bought his first single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, a Canon T70, with an 80 – 300mm zoom lens and became seriously interested in bird photography. He moved to digital photography 2001 in the form of “digiscoping” using a Nikon Coolpix 990 and a Leica apochromatic spotting scope.

In 2003, Ian took early retirement from James Cook University in Townsville, North Queensland, where he still lives, to concentrate on bird photography

Fatbirder View: I can’t remember when I first stated getting Ian’s ‘Bird of the Week’ mailings. Certainly long enough ago for me to have used dozens and dozens of them to grace the pages of Fatbirder. What’s more I’ve learnt a little with each post as you don’t just get a photo but a description of the bird and something about the excursion where the shot was captured. Moreover, its not just Australia’s birds but we get treated to the goodies Ian gleans from his overseas trips… anywhere from New Caledonia to New England, New South Wales to Old England.

I was delighted to see this diary brought together in an attractive E-book and many of the pictures evoked great memories. It was also interesting to see how Ian had gone from being a really good photographer to absolutely excellent.

At first I was a tad disappointed that I couldn’t enlarge the pictures in the e-book then thought about it and all I had to do was click on to his Birdway website to see them in all their glory!

I hope anyone who enjoys fine photography and fantastic birds will go to iTunes and download the book… I for one can’t wait for volume 2.