Just So Stories

CSIRO Publishing

August 2025

ISBN: 9781486318452 

RRP: $26.99

It’s another wonderful title from CSIRO and yes! more birds! I talked a little about our backyard birds in a previous post but we also have our birds along the shore within a minutes’ walk.

The regulars are: Australian and Little Pied Cormorants, welcome swallows, pelicans, oyster catchers, ospreys, kites, silver gulls, common terns, with the occasional nankeen kestrels, herons, and the odd little egret or even blue wrens. It’s not too shabby really, as I go for my daily walk along the foreshore.

Whether your readers live inland, near the ocean, have creeks, rivers or lakes nearby, maybe they’re in the mountains or in the tropics, they will love this cavalcade of our most commonly seen backyard birds.

Acclaimed illustrator, Astred Hicks, is turning her skills to writing as well and in this instance is joined by Dr Holly Parsons, who, like myself, describes herself as a bird nerd. It’s just that she’s taken her passion a bit further than my casual observations. I very much enjoyed reading about some of the birds that are not so well-known to me like the pardalote and the white-eared honeyeater, which I can’t recall seeing even though we are in the right part of the country. I’m on a mission now!

If you check out the link to the contents list you will see how the book is arranged with some fun descriptors of each species e.g., This Bird is Strong – Powerful Owl or This Bird is Loud – Eastern whipbird (one of The Kid’s favourites – we hear these when we are in the Sunshine Coast hinterland).

The illustrations are sensational, as are the endpapers, and the text is informative and well broken up so as not to be daunting. There is excellent backmatter, a glossary and an index. I would highly recommend it for your avid twitchers, or even those just interested in wildlife, from about 8 or 9 years upwards. Most definitely a 5 🦜🦜🦜🦜🦜 rating.