Auckland Libraries

150 years on from the original landmark study of New Zealand’s birdlife, Buller’s Birds were re-imagined and J G Keulemans re-discovered in Geoff Norman Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. This revision and revisiting of Walter Buller’s original ornithological study includes exquisitely reproduced water-colours by JG Keulemans, the most renowned ornithological artist of the 19th century. In this Going West session from 2013, Geoff Norman is joined in entertaining and enlightening conversation by writer, satirist, ornithologist and journalist Steve Bruanias, author of How to Watch a Bird. Many of the birds reproduced in Norman’s book are now extinct; all we have of them are snippets in oral history, scraps of texts, a few feathers and the odd stuffed carcass in a Museum. And, of course, Walter Buller’s book. It was incredibly popular, especially from the second edition, due to Keulemans’ illustrations - though these were poorly reproduced through the printing process of chromolithography. Norman’s new edi