Joseph Forshaw is one of Australia's foremost ornithologists, and is recognised internationally as a leading expert on parrots. Prior to retirement, he held a senior position with the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service. He is a Research Associate in the Department of Ornithology at the Australian Museum, Sydney, and is a Corresponding Fellow of the American Ornithologists Union. In 1977 he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal, and he is currently serving on government advisory committees looking at wildlife conservation issues.

It was in the early 1960s, while he was working as a biologist with the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research in Canberra, that Joe Forshaw turned a lifelong fascination with parrots into a serious academic interest. His efforts were rewarded in 1964, when he was granted a Frank M. Chapman Memorial Fellowship by the American Mtiseum of Natural History, New York, to study specimens of Australian parrots in the Mathews Collection at that institution. Results from his research were incorporated into his first book, Australian Parrots (Lansdowne Press, 1969), which was an immediate success, selling out within a few months and being reprinted three times by 1972.

The Forshaw-Cooper partnership was formed in 1969, when Joe met Bill Cooper at an exhibition of bird paintings being held in Canberra. Bill agreed to illustrate Joe's next and more ambitious project. Parrots of the World, for which Joe was awarded a Churchill Memorial Fellowship in 1971. Publication of Parrots of the World (Lansdowne Editions 1973) forged an outstandingly successful collaboration and friendship between author and artist that has resulted in some of the most important and impressive bird book monographs of the 20th century, and now continues into the 21st h century with this Portfolio of Cockatoos.

There have been three revised editions of Parrots of the World and it was followed by The Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds (Collins, 1977), which was awarded an international prize for design and now is highly prized by collectors of fine bird books.
A second, revised edition of Australian Parrots, with new paintings by Bill, was published in 1981 in both a prestige, limited edition and as a standard textbook format.
Between 1983 and 1994, the six-volume Kingfishers and Related Birds (Lansdowne Editions) was published and arguably is the outstanding achievement of their very special collaboration.
Turacos: A Portfolio of all Species, the companion work to this Portfolio, was published in 1997, and Joe presently is finalising his technical text for The Turacos: A Natural History of the Musophagidae, in which the spectacular paintings by Bill will be supplemented with new plates and fine drawings. Cockatoos: A Portfolio of all Species marks yet another marvellous achievement from a masterful partnership.