Its full title was originally A Handbook of the Birds of Western Australia (with the exception of the Kimberley Division), though with the publication of the 5th edition only the shorter form was used.

It was issued in octavo format (228 x 148 mm) and contains 372 pages bound in blue buckram with a dustjacket illustrated with a painting of Australian pelicans by Harley Webster.

It contains a coloured frontispiece of paintings of the heads of Meliphaga honeyeaters, with numerous black-and-white drawings and maps scattered through the text.

The book covered birds recorded within the Australian state of Western Australia except, as the full title of the first edition indicates, the tropical Kimberley region of its north.

Further editions appeared in 1951, 1962, 1967 and 1976, the fifth and final one being published by the University of Western Australia Press, with the length having increased by then to some 490 pages.