10th September National Bilby Day

National Bilby Day was officially launched in 2005 and the celebrations are held on the second Sunday of September.

The bilby is the only Australian animal with an official gazetted day of celebration!

This is because the bilby is so incredibly important as a flagship species – if they survive, so do many other threatened species and so they are the perfect critter to front biodiversity month in September. 

I wrote about this day back in 2010, but of course the library has added more books about bilbies since then. It does seem such a shame that books about animals such as bilbies have such small print runs and an audience limited to Australia, because it means they are out of print very quickly and then hard to find.

Here are some from the library:

• Bilby Secrets by Edel Wignell and Mark Jackson

• Bilbies and Bandicoots by Debbie and Brendan Gallagher

• Finding Out About Bilbies by Greg Pyers

• Bilby Friends  by Pamela Rushby

• Baby Bilby, Where Do You Sleep? by Narelle Oliver

• A Home for Bilby  by Joanne Crawford and Grace Fielding

• Hunwick's Egg by Mem Fox and Pamela Lofts

• Baby Bilby's Question by Sally Morgan and Adele Jaunn

• Little Barry Bilby had a Fly Upon his Nose and  Little Barry Bilby's Big Bush Band by Colin Buchanan and Roland Harvey

• Little  Bilby's Aussie Bush Christmas  by Yvonne Mes and Jody Michelle Pratt

• Little Bilby's Aussie Easter Egg Hunt by Yvonne Mes and Jody Michelle Pratt

• Bam the Bilby and the Wild Cat  by Paul Ashford Harris

• Show and Tell by Bruce Dawe

• The Bush Book Club  by Margaret Wild and Ben Wood

• The Smallest Bilby and the Midnight Star; The Smallest Bilby and the Easter Games; The Smallest Bilby and the Easter Tale by Nette Hilton and Bruce Whatley.