Release Notes

The information below summarises the online releases of HANZAB.

Release 2.0.1 (28 January 2026)

  • minor fixes to Release 2.0 including:
    • latest release date added to home page
    • text, describing the type of comments being requested, added to comments section.
    • for entries which were split in HANZAB 2023, without the text being revised, and re-merged in AviList 2025, a comment has been added to the Taxonomic change to indicate where the text is  consistent with the AviList 2025 taxonomy.

Release 2.0 (19 January 2026)

NOTE the other conservation statuses (ABAP, EPBC, NZTCS) have not been updated.

  • Accessibility changes.
    • Links underlined and external links flagged with Font Awesome Arrow up Right From Square ....
    • Headings improved in about a third of entries. In some cases, this has required the addition of headings not in the HANZAB books.
    • To extend the navigation options, a Page Contents tab, showing all the headings in order of appearance, has been added to the right centre of pages with more than four headings.
      • note that on mobiles in portrait mode this tab might be off the screen to the right if the entry contains a wide table – either scroll to the right to see the tab or use landscape mode.
  • Comments activated
  • Links to Photographs, video and audio in Macaulay Library added.
  • Abbreviation ABAP changed to APAB (Action Plan for Australian Birds).
  • A list of taxa added since the first online release included.

Release 1.2 (10 June 2025)

  • Atherton Scrubwren revised.
  • Accessibility changes.
    • To support screen readers, Alt text added to:
      • Maps of distribution: ‘Map of distribution’ for map of HANZAB region; ‘Map of world-wide distribution’ for map of world-wide distribution. If the map does not show all of the distribution, then the Alt text will be ‘Map of part of distribution’ for map of only part of the the distribution in the HANZAB region (usually just Australia and/or New Zealand) and ‘Map of part of world-wide distribution’ for a map of only part of the world-wide distribution. The distribution shown in the map is described in the text before and after the maps.
      • Other images:
        • Sonagrams. As the call shown in the sonagram is described in the text, the Alt text of the image has been set to ‘Sonagram’.
        • Tables. As tables will be changed from images to text, as time permits, only simple Alt text has been added to the images as an interim measure. For example, ‘Table of food items’, ‘Table of weights’, ‘Table of population at breeding localities’. In some cases, tables with a caption have had the caption updated to described the contents.
        • Banding recovery maps. Alt text ‘Map of banding recoveries’.
        • Figures with only a limited caption (eg. Fig. 1) will either have the caption changed to be more descriptive or Alt text added to describe the image.
        • Breeding season chart. ‘Chart of breeding season by month’.
    • Some limited work has been done to the heading levels to improve accessibility (more work required; for example see Albert’s Lyrebird).

  • Species which have been revised now flagged above the title with release date and release number in brackets. Also a list of the revised species has been added. The date of the last change and release number has also been appended to Content Updates if there are dated updates for the page.
  • FAQs added and included in site menu.
  • Colour images added to more species.

Release 1.1 (11 March 2025)

  • Albert’s Lyrebird revised.
  • Colour images added to more species.
  • Maps updated for more species.
  • Content Update notes added to each entry that has been updated since the start of the project
    • a link has been added above the title to indicate that content updates have been made.
  • Release notes added.
  • Original HANZAB sponsor added to “ORIGINAL TEXT from HANZAB book” section.
  • The link to taxonomic changes has been changed to be located above the title, next to the Content updates link.
  • MacGillivray’s Prion distribution category changed to include Australia (in WLAB 4.3).
  • Multimedia section added to species (see Sources/Multimedia in menu). This section provides links to Birdlife Photography, Macaulay Library and Xeno-canto.
  • Many English and scientific name changes for species have been reflected across entries. In species which have been split at the species or subspecies level this has not been possible because the text requires revision to reflect the change.

Releases 1.0.x (Various dates in 2024)

Release 1.0 (Nov 2023)

  • All the text, maps, figures and tables from the HANZAB books added. Coloured artwork of the species image has not been loaded for all species in the HANZAB books. See species listing for those with and without colour images.
  • PDF of all the pages from the books added (see Original Text on each page).
  • Updates to content of HANZAB books.

      • Taxonomy brought up to date.

          • masthead for each changed taxon updated to reflect this change but generally the text has not updated to reflect the change. Always take the information in the masthead about taxonomic changes into account when reading the entries.

          • new taxa added but generally they will only have the masthead.

          • sources used

              • Working List of Australian Birds (Birdlife Australia Version 4.1), referenced as WLAB 4.1;

              • Birdlife International datazone website for species recorded in Antarctica, French Southern territories, Heard and MacDonald islands, Bouvet Island, and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands (Accessed 23 March 2023); and

              • for extralimital subspecies, HBW and BirdLife International (2022) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 7. Available at: https://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v7_Dec22.zip, referenced as BLI 2022.

      • Bibliography of more recent sources of information added to some species.


BirdLife Australia (2023). Release Notes. [Text before updates sourced from: Marchant, S. et al (eds) 1990-2006 Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds.Volume 1 to 7.] Birdlife Australia. Birdlife Australia. Source: https://hanzab.birdlife.org.au/release-notes/ Accessed: February 15, 2026 Time Zone: +10:00

Please use comments to report errors in the HANZAB text or suggest updates (including source).
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