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ENJOYING NATURE

THE BITE OF THE ‘PHANTOM FLUTTERER’

The bite of the ‘phantom flutterer’ was little more than a pinprick, but it was strangely moving to feel the little creature struggling to defend itself. I was entranced by the tiny black dragonfly with its iridescent purplish wing patches, clawed legs and delicately ribbed wings. The intensity of the moment was also related to the setting — a deep, shaded pool, pink and white water-lilies, the flash of a Malachite Kingfisher, several lilytrotters, and masses of tiny, buzzing red and blue dragonflies — solar-powered, helicopter creatures — the females dipping into the water to lay their eggs.

Listening to our friend who was busy recording and photographing all the 160 varieties of dragonflies known in South Africa, I was struck by the care and gentleness with which he held each dragonfly up to scrutiny. The prominent veins and long fingers on his hands looked like the hands of a pianist rather than those of a biologist used to sorting and dissecting in a laboratory. But then Warwick Tarboton is clearly a different kind of scientist, moved more by awe than the need to dominate the natural world through classifications and labels. He is lyrical about dragonflies, describing them as ‘the royalty of the insect world, being highly active, colourful, flamboyant creatures, entirely harmless to man’ (Tarboton and Tarboton, 2002: 1).

Studying those dragonflies living on a small pond on Tarboton’s Nysvlei property involved painting numbers backwards on their wings using a toothpick and nail varnish so that he could track the different individuals. Sadly, a quarter of the species of dragonflies in South Africa are threatened or near-threatened (Samways, 2005).

It is difficult to think of anyone who has done more to promote the appreciation of wild nature than Tarboton. He is a major contributor to the bestselling Sasol Birds of Southern Africa, which has done much to promote the enjoyment of our bird life. He has also produced a number of books on waterbirds and owls, and a guide to the nests and eggs of southern African birds. His introduction to this illustrates the appreciation and enthusiasm he generates: ‘Finding birds’ nests is fun. Like birding, which involves finding and identifying birds, “nesting” calls on skills and powers of observation that grow with practice, and the better you get, the more rewarding it becomes’ (Tarboton, 2001: 5). For many people living in urban, industrial societies bird-watching provides a personal entry into the world of ‘wild nature’.

BIRDS AND BIRDING

I became interested in bird-watching while teaching in a school on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Birds such as the Crimson-breasted Shrike and the Violet-eared Waxbill provided (as their names suggest) a rich source of colour in the grey-brown desert landscape. Some of my biggest thrills in experiencing ‘wild nature’ have involved birds, such as seeing the rare Narina Trogon in a wild fig tree in the Ndumo Reserve.

Increasing numbers of people are experiencing such thrills. Moss argues that watching birds for pleasure is a recent, modern, Western phenomenon. He suggests that only during the twentieth century did bird-watching shift ‘from being a minority interest pursued by a handful of eccentrics, to a mass participation activity followed by millions’ (Moss, 2004: 87). He describes Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selbourne, published in England in 1789, as ‘the first book to treat nature as something to be observed, investigated and enjoyed’ (Moss, 2004: 185). In similar terms, Hill argues that the publication of this book marked the emergence of ‘birdwatching as a practice distinct from the larger category of natural history’ and ‘ushered in a new way of documenting the natural world’ (Hill, 1999: xii).

However, this practice has a much longer history in many indigenous societies. A collection of traditional Xhosa aphorisms, such as the one that characterises personal vanity as a quality of the hamerkop because of the bird’s practice of ‘watching its reflection in the river’ surely indicates long, patient and appreciative observation. So too does the proverb, ‘ithemba lakho liseme lona lizalel’ ethafeni’, meaning ‘your hope is like the bustard that lays its eggs in the veld’ to indicate that someone’s expectation is hopeless (Godfrey, 1941: 46). Many Xhosa proverbs are evidence of an intimate knowledge of wild nature. The crucial question is whether the human relationship to birds is one of exploitation or appreciation: whether nature is understood and valued as a network of living plants and animals, or simply a collection of skins and specimens.

Natural objects have too often been the focus of obsessive collecting, a widespread practice in Victorian England. At that time, egg collecting by zoologists was particularly threatening to wild birds. Also, birds were slaughtered in order to supply skins and feathers for the fashion industry, in particular ladies’ hats. The nineteenth century craze of using feathers in fashion may have contributed to the extinction of birds such as the Passenger Pigeon. Ironically, the origin of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in England dates back to 1889, when a group of women gathered in Manchester with the mission of ending the widespread use of bird skins and feathers in the fashion and millinery trades. ‘Between 1870 and 1920 20 000 tons of ornamental plumage, from many millions of birds was imported into the UK’ (Moss, 2004: 75). The practice involved great cruelty, as ‘often the birds were still alive when feather hunters cut off their wings and threw the still-struggling bodies into the ocean to drown’ (Hill, 1999: xv). In 1899 Queen Victoria ordered that regiments in the armed forces should stop wearing plumes in their uniforms (Moss, 2004: 76). This military use of birds was also evident in the traditional Xhosa practice of experienced warriors adorning themselves with Blue Crane feathers.

Birds were not only slaughtered for personal adornment, but to promote science. The scientific study of nature has not always involved reverence or promoted appreciation. For example, the flamboyant early traveller Francois Le Vallant travelled in South Africa from 1781 to 1784 and published his magnificently illustrated volumes, Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux d’Afrique (1790–1808), which, according to Winterbottom, was ‘the starting point of ornithology on our continent’. Le Vallant collected 2 000 specimens of birds, named several species such as the Bateleur, Klaas’s Cuckoo and the Narina Trogon (after his Khoi lover, whom he described as ‘enchanting’ with ‘the freshest and most beautiful teeth in the world’), but once boasted that the Glossy Starlings were so numerous around the Gamtoos River that he killed 80 with 5 or 6 shots.

The Transvaal Museum contains hundreds of birds such as Tinker Barbets shot by the curator Martin Prozesky in a study of their colouration patterns. Even the great American bird artist Audubon wrote, ‘I shot, I drew, I looked on nature’ (cited in Moss, 2004: 48). Audubon once wrote that he felt incomplete if he didn’t kill a hundred birds a day (cited in Gibson, 2005: 3). Some scientists suggested that bird-watching simply for pleasure was flawed. For example, Moss quotes a Rev. Hartley, who wrote, ‘non-scientific bird-watching is not splendid and adventurous bird-watching: it is simply lazy, incompetent and slovenly bird-watching’ (cited in Moss, 2004: 192). But increasingly, scientific ornithology, with its interests in migration studies and bird ringing, and popular bird-watching have reinforced each other.

The modern variant of collecting with its emphasis on shooting, killing and skinning birds is the highly competitive practice of ‘twitching’ — the desire to see and list as many species of birds as possible. There are some 10 000 species of birds in the world, and one woman, Phoebe Snetsinger, saw more than 8 400 species of birds in her lifetime (Moss, 2004: 182). According to the Oxford English Dictionary a ‘twitcher’ is ‘a bird-watcher whose main aim is to collect sightings of rare birds.’ It is a practice reminiscent of the Victorian era, when instead of ticking off rare birds on a list, people shot, stuffed and collected them. In Gibson’s view, ‘they are chasers, for whom birding is a competitive sport’ (Gibson, 2005: xi). In my view, twitchers’ practices such as calling birds using tape recordings of their songs is very intrusive, especially when we have no idea what message the recorded songs are conveying. A more benign form of this collecting is bird photography, which is becoming increasingly popular.