Vale Lloyd Nielsen, OAM
- BirdLife Northern Queensland
- Jun 25
- 11 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
In loving memory of Lloyd Nielsen OAM
It is with deep sadness and heartfelt respect that we honour the passing of Lloyd Nielsen OAM – beloved birder, celebrated field ornithologist, gifted artist, and lifelong friend to birds and birders across Australia. Lloyd passed away peacefully on 23rd June 2025 at Mareeba Hospital following a long illness, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of knowledge, passion, and advocacy for Australia’s avifauna.
Underneath the gumtrees at Mt Molloy Cemetery with a clear blue sky and birds singing, Lloyd Nielsen was laid to rest this morning [July 3 2025]. About 50 people, relatives and friends who travelled from as far away as Brisbane and Perth, gathered to farewell a much loved brother, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend and ornithologist. A beautiful ceremony of memories and loving thoughts was conducted and afterwards, at the National Hotel, Mt Molloy, everyone gathered to toast a remarkable man who has left so much behind for us to remember him by. Vale Lloyd Nielsen.
Photos by Lindsay Fisher.
Lloyd's contributions to ornithology were exceptional. He received the prestigious J.N. Hobbs Memorial Medal from BirdLife Australia in 2014 for “Outstanding amateur contributions to Australasian ornithology,” and in 2020 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for “Service to Conservation and the Environment.”
Yet Lloyd's brilliance lay not only in his achievements, but in his gentle humility, deep empathy for the natural world, and tireless commitment to educating others. He inspired generations of birders through his fieldwork, books, and art – never seeking fame, always working "for the birds."
From his early years growing up on the Darling Downs, sneaking away from farm duties to explore the bush, to his decades of dedicated field research in the Wet Tropics, Lloyd remained true to his calling. His meticulous work led to advances in the classification and conservation of species including the Buff-breasted Button-quail, Lesser Sooty Owl, and the enigmatic "Herberton Honeyeater."
Lloyd’s life was a blend of art, science, and spirit. His photographs were accepted by Oxford Scientific Films before digital manipulation was possible. He taught himself to paint birds with stunning accuracy, and even hybridised native flora such as the Grevillea 'Misty Pink'. His publications – including the Guide to the Difficult Small Birds of Australia and the forthcoming Difficult Medium and Large Birds of Australia – are treasured references for birders nationwide.
He was a regular contributor to ornithological journals and conservation campaigns, and his legacy includes field notes, illustrations, habitat surveys, and a lifetime of passionate advocacy.
In Lloyd's own words:
“From that moment I was hooked. I still retain that book [Neville Cayley’s What Bird is That?] even though it has long since fallen to pieces… and with boyish notes written throughout!”
BirdLife Northern Queensland expresses our deepest condolences to Lloyd’s family, friends, and all who admired him. His legacy lives on in the birds he loved, the habitats he helped protect, and the countless people he inspired to look up and listen.
Rest peacefully, Lloyd. You were truly one of a kind.
BirdLife Northern Queensland Committee
My life with birds
By Lloyd Nielsen
My lifelong interest in birds began when an aunt gave me a copy of Neville Cayley’s What Bird is That? for my sixth birthday. Being used to birds around the family farm, such as Noisy Miners, Spur-winged Plovers and Black-backed Magpies as they were known in those days, even at that young age I could not believe the variety and immensity of species depicted in the book. The long bill of the Eastern Curlew, the incredible tail of the Lyrebird, the colours of the Gouldian Finch were unbelievable. From that moment I was hooked. I still retain that book even though it has long since fallen to pieces from the overuse it was subjected to in those days – and with boyish notes written throughout!
The bird rich Goomburra Valley of south-eastern Queensland where the family farm was situated provided endless fascination for my first 18 years. Here I recorded just over 200 species of birds in the first few years. The gullies which became fern gullies as they ran back into the ranges away from the farmland in the valley always begged to be explored for they held a different variety of birds from the more open areas of the valley floor. I would often sneak off to them when my parents let their protective guard down.
Then there was the huge area of subtropical rainforest at the head of the valley with its Albert’s Lyrebirds, Rufous Scrub-birds, Sooty Owls, Glossy Black-Cockatoos and others which, as I grew older was initially accessed on horseback. Later a local sawmill which intended taking timber from the unlogged rainforest built a road up the mountain and well into the rainforest so our horses were replaced by the old farm truck.
The family sold the farm and moved out to the flat plains of the Darling Downs to purchase a wheat and cattle farm. Here I spent 11 years becoming acquainted with Painted Honeyeater, Red-chested Button-quail, Little Woodswallow, Square-tailed Kite and many others new to me. I acquired a vehicle of my own and later began doing trips into such places as south-western Queensland and the rainforests of north-eastern Queensland which eventually became “The Wet Tropics of Queensland”.
Soon though as drought prevailed on the farm, it was a shift to Tamborine Mountain to establish a large wholesale nursery. Here I was only an hour’s drive away from the southern border ranges, the McPherson Range with treasures such as Rufous Scrub-bird, Olive Whistler and others.
It was here by accident that I was forced to illustrate birds when my friend Peter Slater had taken a large commission and was unable to do the illustrations for a small book “Birds of Lamington National Park & Environs – A Guides Guide” which I had written. Forced to do my own illustrations, I realised then that years of birding had paid off and I was able to draw a bird with correct jizz that looked like the species I was trying to illustrate. While I have never considered myself an artist, I have been able to illustrate every Australian bird, seabirds being the only exception.
After the years in the south-east of Queensland, I had to get back to the northern Wet Tropics, making a permanent shift there in 1991. Here I have been able to study rarities such as the Buff-breasted Button-quail, iconic species such as Little Red Boobook, Atherton Scrubwren and others, sort out the situation with the yellow-spot honeyeaters, establish that the Ashy-bellied White-eye actually exists on Green Island east of Cairns and so on.
While I have made excursions to many other areas of the Australian continent, here I have spent many years enjoying the birdlife that this special area has to offer.
In 2019, while Convenor of BirdLife Northern Queensland, I was asked to provide a reference for Lloyd Nielsen. The following extract is highly appropriate today...
I write to provide comments about the outstanding contributions to our knowledge and appreciation of Australian birds by Lloyd Nielsen. I am presently the Convenor for the Northern Queensland Branch of BirdLife Australia and in compiling my comments have consulted with several distinguished and long-serving members of the Branch. However, I am also aware of Lloyd’s contributions through other sources and as well, I know him personally and these sources have all been drawn upon in formulating my comments.
There is no doubt about Lloyd’s exceptional knowledge about Australian birds, and in particular of the bird species of northern Queensland, an area with outstanding avian diversity and endemicity. This regional knowledge has been brought together in a wonderful book written and illustrated by Lloyd on the Birds of the Wet Tropics of Queensland. Lloyd’s knowledge of birds across Australia is evident in numerous contributions to our understanding of Australian bird species including as a referee for the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB) which is the singular scientific reference for ornithologists. Lloyd has also written scientific papers published in various journals over many years including most recently a brilliant field-based series of observations about the Graceful Honeyeater in December 2018 in the refereed journal, Australian Field Ornithology, published by BirdLife Australia.
One critical point to make here is that Lloyd’s exceptional knowledge and skills have been developed entirely in a volunteer capacity; he is not a professional ornithologist, being self-taught across most of the fields of ornithology and capable at a very high level. In addition, Lloyd has demonstrated great passion in raising awareness about our birds and in working for their conservation. He readily shares his knowledge with all who are interested and even the most experienced birder learns significantly from a period in the field with Lloyd.
Lloyd Nielsen was awarded the J.N. Hobbs Medal by BirdLife Australia in 2014. This is the most prestigious award made for amateur contributions to Australian ornithology. The citation includes Lloyd Nielsen has made a long and distinguished contribution to the ornithological knowledge of this country, and continues to do so – he is a worthy recipient of the Hobbs Medal.
An example of Lloyd’s skill level and the admiration in which he is held by birders comes from a quote from one of Australia’s most outstanding field birders and a member of our Branch, in response to my query. I fully endorse these comments.
“What I admire most about Lloyd is his tenacity and commitment, as well as his skills in field observation. He will spend days and days in the field over years and years to discover interesting questions about our birds and then find the answers to them. A great example of this is his recent work on the Graceful Honeyeaters. He has just published in AFO (Dec 2018), his conclusions that there are two separate species, one in CY and the other in Wet Tropics. He presents his arguments clearly and with excellent details from numerous approaches - using plumage features, vocalization, behaviour, recent DNA results, geography and makes it all easy to understand for all of us.”
There is a great deal of novel information about our birds that has only come to light because of Lloyd’s impressive field skills and ability and enthusiasm to communicate with others. In addition to the Graceful Honeyeater, Lloyd has made significant observations about the fascinating Herberton Honeyeater (not yet recognised but on the basis of Lloyd’s work almost certainly will be), separating it from the Yellow-tinted Honeyeater and Fuscous Honeyeater. He is also an acknowledged expert on the critically endangered Buff-breasted Button-quail, a species that remains the most poorly known of our Australian birds – it has not yet been photographed and its call is unknown.
Lloyd Nielsen’s guide to the birds of the Wet Tropics is unique in that he approaches the task of identifying birds from the naturalist’s perspective rather than the taxonomists, therefore being more relevant to most birders. In this volume, he provides an array of illustrations and text to help people separate species of birds that look similar. It is brilliantly done. Almost all the species present in the Wet Tropics have been studied in detail by Lloyd and the results contribute to this outstanding book, the second edition of which was published in 2015. It is a further mark of his talent and his persistence that each species is illustrated in colour by his own paintings.
Lloyd demonstrates outstanding tenacity, commitment and passion for conservation that complements his field and studio skills. His strong and outspoken support for conservation is another much-needed quality. Lloyd is an extraordinary Australian whose contributions are entirely from passion and not employment or professional training. He provides an exceptional role model for young people.
Peter Valentine
Adjunct Professor
College of Science and Engineering
Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Studies
James Cook University
A selection of Lloyd's illustrations from some of his publications:
Lloyd Nielsen is the recipient of the prestigious BirdLife Australia John Hobbs Medal presented in 2014 in recognition of his outstanding amateur contributions to Australasian ornithology.
In 1991, I had the great fortune to meet Lloyd at O’Reilly’s Bird Week in Lamington National Park where he acted as a Leader alongside the late Graham Pizzey.
The first thing that struck me about this softly spoken, modest gentleman was his genuine empathy for the natural world and his extensive knowledge of it. I found myself face to face with an ornithologist, naturalist and bushman from a time long gone, someone who learnt his craft from his own experiences in the field, not from a textbook in a classroom.
Lloyd works for the birds, not for himself. His primary purpose is to educate people about birds and create awareness by encouraging people to take an interest in the birds around them which in turn will hopefully stimulate more people to act to preserve birds and their habitats.
Born with a passion, birds are in his blood. The son of a third-generation farmer and a Nature-loving mother, as a lad he was often in trouble for sneaking away to watch birds when he should have been carrying out tasks on farms his family owned on the Darling Downs in southern Queensland where he grew up.
Foremost, Lloyd is a field ornithologist and naturalist endowed with many artistic gifts. Oxford Scientific Films accepted several of his artistically composed photographs of birds and mammals long before the days when image-manipulation techniques could mask a photographer’s deficient creative skills. He taught himself to paint his feathered friends, and when he owned a plant nursery on Tamborine Mountain, hybridised the well-known grevillea, Misty Pink.
Over the years his contributions to ornithological publications, including HANZAB published by Oxford University Press, have increased our knowledge of several species. Also published in the ornithological literature are many papers written by him, covering subjects as diverse as the breeding habits and territories of Albert’s Lyrebird, and information for farmers about birds that may damage agricultural crops – Psittacines of Southern Queensland – written at 19 years of age and published in The S.A. Ornithologist.
More recently his efforts behind the scenes were instrumental in re-elevating the Lesser Sooty Owl to species status. His ongoing field research with the Buff-breasted Button-quail, the “Herberton” Honeyeater, cicadabirds and others continues to uncover facts hitherto unknown, proving that the age of discovery has not passed.
Always in step with Nature, and working independently, he spends much of his time monitoring birds in the field, in all weather good and bad, as well as maintaining records of his research and keeping abreast of other current research and birding news.
In these challenging times, projects which may impact significantly on fragile and diverse environments motivate Lloyd to actively lobby to preserve critical habitats for birds. Lloyd is a man of integrity – any reasons he expresses concerning the protection of critical habitats for birds are based on facts, not emotion.
This book is an extraordinary achievement created by one dedicated birdman, Lloyd Nielsen.
Dorothy Window – extract from 'Birds of the Wet Tropics’
It was with great sadness that we received the news today of the passing of one of the staunchest advocates for birds and birding: Lloyd Nielsen, OAM. He had been battling ill-health for a long time but when we visited him at home just a couple of weeks ago he was as keen as ever to talk about and hear about birds. On his table was a beautiful, half-finished painting of owls, intended to grace the cover of his latest identification guide: Difficult Medium and Large Birds of Australia, a follow-up to his invaluable [Identification] Guide to the Difficult Small Birds of Australia. He was determined to complete it so we can only hope that he did and that his work will reach the printers to one day grace the shelves of all who love birds like he did. His achievements need spelling out by someone far more able than me, but as a birder, researcher, author, artist, and friend he will be sorely missed. RIP Lloyd.
Carol Iles – Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge
I last met Loyd up at Iron Range in 2022, where we were both after the elusive Black-eared Catbird, he had only seen it once in all his many visits here, so this was a very pleasing find when we located one.
Lloyd was also very helpful with advice for the Field Guide to the Birds of North Queensland, especially with geographic distributions, and we had some rewarding debates about Graceful and Fuscous Honeyeater taxonomy, and agreed to disagree about the specific status of Little Bronze Cuckoo taxa. His knowledge and insights were very valuable, he was a talented artist and I have originals of both Red-necked Crake and what was Olive-backed Sunbird by him, and of course all his identification books which offered another perspective on the local birds. Besides that, he was also a real gentleman, RIP Lloyd from Sue, Rowan and I.
Phil Gregory – Tour facilitator and guide/ ornithological writer
Field Guides Inc/ Cassowary Tours/ Sicklebill Safaris
Some of Lloyd's books covers.
