Welcome to BirdLife Australia!

As of 1 January 2012, BOCA has merged with Birds Australia to become BirdLife Australia. The new BirdLife Australia website will go live in early February, and until then the current BOCA site will continue to be available.

At BirdLife Australia we are dedicated to achieving outstanding conservation results for our native birds and their habitats. With our specialised knowledge and the commitment of an Australia-wide network of members, volunteers and supporters, we are creating a bright future for Australia’s birds. Look out for our new website from February 2012 at birdlife.org.au

A Field Guide to Australian Birdsong

Many birders will tell you that your ears are as valuable as your eyes for identifying birds in the field. If you know your bird calls, you know what bird to look for and where to look for it - up in the canopy or down at your feet. BOCA has developed a collection of bird calls, in taxonomic order, for most of the birds of Australia (some 700 species) to help you in identification. For each bird there are several different calls including some regional dialects and also some calls of young birds at the nest.

BOCA has published a 12 cassette series on the bird calls of Australia and has recently completed a 10 CD series.

Birdsong cassettes and CDs are available from our Blue Wren Gift Shop.

Cassette Tape Series

Each tape of our Field Guide is complemented by a booklet containing field notes
and full identification and description of the bird calls.
(Booklets available without cassettes $2.50 each)

Notice to re-sellers: this series is also available at bulk discount rates to shops and environmental organisations. Minimum order: 10 single tapes or sets.

Emu to Striated Heron
Rufous Night Heron to Chestnut Rail
Red-necked Crake to Black-naped Tern
Sooty Tern to Superb Parrot
Regent Parrot to Masked Owl
Eastern Grass Owl to Ground Cuckoo-shrike
White-winged Triller to White-breasted Whistler
Little Shrike-thrush to Hall’s Babbler
Chestnut-crowned Babbler to Redthroat
Calamanthus to Noisy Friarbird
Little Friarbird to Scarlet Honeyeater
Crimson Chat to Torresian Crow & supplementaries

Choose your tape

Which birds are you interested in?

Raptors: tapes 2 & 12
Honeyeaters: tapes 10 & 11
Pigeons: tape 4
Parrots: tapes 4 & 5
Cuckoos: tape 5
Owls, Frogmouths, Nightjars: tapes 5 & 6
Trillers, Robins, Whistlers: tape 7
Shrike-thrushes, Monarchs, Flycatchers, Fantails: tape 8
Whipbirds, Wedgebills, Quail-thrushes: tape 8
Fairy-wrens, Grasswrens, Scrubwrens:tape 9
Gerygones, Thornbills, Treecreepers: tape 10
Chats, Pardalotes, Finches: tape 12
Bowerbirds, Riflebirds, Butcherbirds, Australian Magpie: tape 12

CD Series

All ten CDs in the series are now available.

The information booklet with each CD lists the source of the calls, their duration and recordists. Many of the calls are newly recorded and of a much higher quality than on the original cassettes. All calls are individually tracked for ease of selection.

Birds on the CDs

Ostrich to Brown Booby
(quail, ducks, penguins, petrels, shearwaters & tropicbirds)
Raptor enthusiasts, this is for you!
Darter to Red Knot
(Cormorants, herons, ibis, kites, hawks, eagles and falcons, crakes & rails, snipe & curlew)
Red-necked Stint to Cockatiel
Stints & sandpipers, pratincoles, stone-curlews, oystercatchers, plovers & dotterels, lapwings.
Skuas, gulls, terns, noddies.
Pigeons, doves & fruit-doves. All the cockatoos
All the parrots, rosellas, lorikeets, the cuckoos, bronze-cuckoos and the owls
Tawny Frogmouth to Kalkadoon Grasswren
The little brown birds: Pardalotes to Whitefaces
All the Honeyeaters: Red Wattlebird to Gibberbird
Jacky Winter to Grey Shrike-thrush
Yellow-breasted Boatbill to Fawn-breasted Bowerbird
Singing Bushlark to Common Myna

Links to other items in Publications

Australian Field Ornithology	BOCA Leaflets	BOCA Reports	Emu - Austral Ornithology
Little Blue Birdlist	The Bird Observer	Victorian Bird Report