The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native bird species of Australia and adjacent regions, making it Australia's oldest national birding association. In 1996, the organisation adopted the trading name of Birds Australia for most public purposes, while retaining its original name for legal purposes and as the publisher of its journal, the Emu. In 2012, the RAOU merged with Bird Observation & Conservation Australia to form BirdLife Australia. The RAOU was the instigator of the Atlas of Australian Birds project. It also published (in association with Oxford University Press) the encyclopaedic Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds. Its quarterly colour membership magazine was Wingspan. The RAOU is the Australian Partner of BirdLife International, and had the motto "Conservation through Knowledge".
History
Establishment The RAOU was formally constituted (as the Australasian Ornithologist's Union) on 1 July 1901 in Melbourne, Victoria, following a series of informal meetings held by a small group of amateur ornithologists from 1896. The driving force behind the formation of the union was Archibald J. Campbell. Its founding membership was 137, including six women and 10 overseas members. The first general meeting of members was held in Adelaide on 1 November 1901, where office-bearers were elected. The first president was Colonel William Vincent Legge of Tasmania, the secretary was Dudley Le Souef, the treasurer Robert Hall, and the editors Archibald J. Campbell and Henry Kendall. Such general meetings, soon termed "congresses" were held annually thereafter and were normally accompanied by the annual "campouts" of several days' duration, which gave members the opportunity to meet and to collect specimens and eggs.
Early years Many RAOU members in the early 20th century called themselves "oologists", though the distinction between the notionally scientific discipline of oology and simple egg-collecting was blurred. Identification of any but the most common and distinctive species usually entailed the collection of specimens to be made into study skins. Modern field guides did not exist and few people could afford the massive multi-volume, lavishly illustrated handbooks of John Gould and Gregory Mathews. However, both Archibald J. Campbell and Alfred North had produced comprehensive guides to what was known about the nests and eggs of Australian birds, with illustrations of the eggs rather than the birds themselves, reflecting the dominance of egg and skin collecting in ornithology of the time. On 12 April 1905, some Melbourne members formed the Bird Observers Club to facilitate more frequent and less formal meetings and field-trips. At this time, membership of the union was a prerequisite for membership of the club. In 1916, when the union acquired its own room for meetings and storage of donated specimens, it became impossible for the club to share the use of the room. This led to the club becoming inactive for the next few years, though it was successfully revived as an independent entity in 1927. In 1907, the issue of bird conservation was raised prominently with the publication, in the Emu, of articles and photographs by Arthur Mattingley depicting starving egret nestlings in a breeding colony where the parent birds had been shot for the international trade in plumes for millinery. The photographs were widely reprinted internationally as part of a campaign to halt the trade. As a result, the fashion for wearing plumes in hats and head-dresses changed and the market collapsed. In 1909, the union was one of the first major sponsors of the Gould League of Bird Lovers, which was founded by Jessie McMichael and supported by John Albert Leach, the Director of Nature Study in the Victorian Education Department. In 1910, the union was given permission by King George V, newly ascended to the throne, to use the prefix "Royal" on what had hitherto been simply the "Australasian Ornithologists Union". Early in 1913, the first Official Checklist of the Birds of Australia was published as a supplement to the Emu. For many years, the compilation of checklists and the production of regular supplements to them was a constant activity, and the position of Chairman of the Checklist Committee was an important one. Almost immediately after the first Checklist was published, it was apparent that work needed to be continued towards a second edition, eventually published in 1926.
Changing attitudes 1911 was marked by the publication of An Australian Bird Book, by John Albert Leach. The popularity of the first edition ensured that a series of further editions and reprints continued into the 1960s. This was followed in 1931 with the first publication of Neville Cayley's What Bird is That?, further editions of which continued to be published into the 1980s. These books were focussed on bird identification rather than collecting and were affordable to the general public. They reflected the shifting mood in amateur ornithology, through the first half of the 20th century, from collecting to observation. The annual campouts were increasingly being seen as opportunities for bird-watching, photography and non-destructive studies. During the 1933 campout near Moree, New South Wales, extensive egg-collecting by the oologists present aroused much criticism from other members; the egg-collectors were later formally censured. This growing split between members' attitudes to bird-study came to a head at the 1935 campout at Marlo, eastern Victoria, when a museum ornithologist, George Mack, provocatively shot a scarlet robin at its nest, which had been under observation by the party. This caused outrage among many members and was followed by a decision of the RAOU Council to appoint a committee to reconsider the question of collecting. The result was a policy that collecting of specimens, except under government permit, was not acceptable, and that no collecting should take place at campouts anyway.
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