David John Baker-Gabb is a New Zealand and Australian ornithologist. He is best known for his work on Australian birds of prey and the birds of Australia, New Zealand and Oceania. He also served from 1993 to 1997 as director of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union.
Baker-Gabb studied agriculture and then biology at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, graduating in 1978 with a master's degree in science for his work on the swamp harrier. [1] He then went to Monash University in Melbourne, where he studied the swamp harrier, the spotted harrier and other Australian birds of prey to earn his PhD. He devoted himself from 1984 to 1987 to the study and conservation of the plains-wanderer. Between 1988 and 1989 he studied the habits of the red goshawk in the Northern Territory until 1990 when he joined the Department of Conservation and Environment in Victoria as a manager of threatened fauna, a role he carried out until 1992. [2] [3]
From 1993, Baker-Gabb served as Director of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, and during his term of office he established the Gluepot Reserve in South Australia. After 1997, Baker-Gabb founded an environmental consulting company that specialised in threatened species recovery, wildlife surveys, the production of management plans and the assessment of properties for acquisition as reserves. [2] [3]
Baker-Gabb married conservationist and ornithologist Julie Catherine (Kate) Fitzherbert in 1981, managing editor for the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds from 1986 to 1987 and then supporter services co-ordinator for the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union until 2000. Kate then took up a similar role with Bush Heritage Australia before becoming Bush Heritage's science and monitoring manager in 2008. They have two children. [2] [3] [4]
A harrier is any of the several species of diurnal hawks sometimes placed in the subfamily Circinae of the bird of prey family Accipitridae. Harriers characteristically hunt by flying low over open ground, feeding on small mammals, reptiles, or birds. The young of the species are sometimes referred to as ring-tail harriers. They are distinctive with long wings, a long narrow tail, the slow and low flight over grasslands and skull peculiarities. The harriers are thought to have diversified with the expansion of grasslands and the emergence of C4 grasses about 6 to 8 million years ago during the Late Miocene and Pliocene.
The hen harrier is a bird of prey. It breeds in Eurasia. The term "hen harrier" refers to its former habit of preying on free-ranging fowl.
The marsh harriers are birds of prey of the harrier subfamily. They are medium-sized raptors and the largest and broadest-winged harriers. Most of them are associated with marshland and dense reedbeds. They are found almost worldwide, excluding only the Americas.
The northern harrier, also known as the marsh hawk or ring-tailed hawk, is a bird of prey. It breeds throughout the northern parts of the northern hemisphere in Canada and the northernmost USA.
The western marsh harrier is a large harrier, a bird of prey from temperate and subtropical western Eurasia and adjacent Africa. It is also known as the Eurasian marsh harrier. Formerly, a number of relatives were included in C. aeruginosus, which was then known as "marsh harrier". The related taxa are now generally considered to be separate species: the eastern marsh harrier, the Papuan harrier of eastern Asia and the Wallacea, the swamp harrier of Australasia and the Madagascar marsh harrier of the western Indian Ocean islands.
The plains-wanderer is a bird, the only representative of family Pedionomidae and genus Pedionomus. It is endemic to Australia. The majority of the remaining population is found in the Riverina region of New South Wales.
The swamp harrier, also known as the Australasian marsh harrier, Australasian harrier or swamp-hawk, is a large, slim bird of prey widely distributed across Australasia. In New Zealand it is also known as the harrier hawk or by the Māori name kāhu. It arrived in New Zealand within the last 700 years, replacing the larger species, the extinct New Zealand endemic Eyles's harrier.
The New Zealand falcon is New Zealand's only falcon. Other common names for the bird are bush hawk and sparrow hawk. It is frequently mistaken for the larger and more common swamp harrier. It is the country's most threatened bird of prey, with only around 3000–5000 breeding pairs remaining.
The little eagle is a very small eagle endemic to Australia.
Andrew Cockburn FAA is an Australian evolutionary biologist who has been based at the Australian National University in Canberra since 1983. He has worked and published extensively on the breeding behaviour of antechinuses and superb fairy-wrens, and more generally on the biology of marsupials and cooperative breeding in birds. His work on fairy-wrens is based around a detailed long-term study of their curious mating and social system at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
Penelope Diane Olsen is an Australian ornithologist and author.
John Warham was an Australian and New Zealand photographer and ornithologist notable for his research on seabirds, especially petrels.
Eyles's harrier is an extinct bird of prey that was endemic to New Zealand. Its closest relative is the smaller and related swamp harrier, which arrived in New Zealand after its extinction.
The spotted harrier also known as the smoke hawk, is a large Australasian bird of prey belonging to the family Accipitridae.
The Australasian swamphen is a species of swamphen (Porphyrio) occurring in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand, it is known as the pūkeko. The species used to be considered a subspecies of the purple swamphen.
Roger Geoffrey Clarke, was an English ornithologist and world authority on harriers and other birds of prey.
Megadromus antarcticus, also known as the “Alexander beetle”, is a member of the Carabidae family and only found in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. Megadromus antarcticus are easily recognized by their iridescent green colouration.
The Raiatea fruit dove is a species of bird in the family Columbidae. It is endemic to the Society Islands in French Polynesia. Although first named to science in 1853, this fruit dove was evidently discovered 30 years earlier, by René Primevère Lesson (1794–1849), while serving as naturalist aboard La Coquille. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the grey-green fruit dove but was split as a distinct species by the IOC in 2021. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.