Laughing kookaburra there. He probably obtained a preserved specimen from one of the naturalists who accompanied Captain James Cook to the east coast of Australia. Edme-Louis Daubenton and François-Nicolas Martinet included a coloured plate of the laughing kookaburra based on Sonnerat's specimen in their "Planches enluminées d'histoire naturelle". The plate has the legend in French ""Martin-pecheur, de la Nouvelle Guinée"" (Kingfisher from New Guinea). In 1783, the French naturalist Johann Hermann provided a formal description of the species based the coloured plate by Daubenton and Martinet. He gave it the scientific name "Alcedo novæ Guineæ". The current genus "Dacelo" was introduced in
Atlas of Australian Birds a distribution atlas of "Banksia" species that greatly increased knowledge of "Banksia" species distributions and habitat, and even resulted in the discovery of two new species. Atlas of Australian Birds The Atlas of Australian Birds is a major ongoing database project initiated and managed by BirdLife Australia (formerly the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union) to map the distribution of Australia's bird species. BirdLife Australia is a not-for-profit bird research and conservation organisation. There have been other bird atlasses produced for various countries and islands around the world, but the Australian project was the first to cover an entire continent. Volunteers collected