1924-1987

THE ITEM IN THE LAGOON FLIER INVITING MEMBERS OF THE BUENA VISTA Audubon Society to tell of their experiences in foreign birding set my mind to wandering and reminiscing about the wonderful times I've had while birding overseas. I'd love to tell you of my various encounters with birds and birders.

First let me say, I have been a birder since childhood. I have records going back to 1924 for first sightings of robins, meadow larks, scarlet tanagers, and others in our Wisconsin springs. Also in my five year diary, a gift from my mother for my 8th grade graduation, I noted the receipt of a Nature Library. It was March 29, 1924. This was a set of four small pocket nature guides--birds, flowers, butterflies, and trees. I still have the original latter 3 guides, but the bird guide has long since been worn out. I replaced it recently when the set was republished. These books were the first of my collection of bird and nature guides and books which now number at least 100. I think I got my first binoculars about the same time, probably from Montgomery Ward.

My first foreign field guide was purchased in Holland when I went to Europe with my husband on a vacation and business trip in 1960. This book, A FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF BRITAIN AND EUROPE, by Roger Tory Peterson, Guy Mountford, and P.A.D. Hollom, was autographed for me by R. T. Peterson many years later. I carried this book twice around the world, and again in 1982 when I traveled through England and Scotland.

We lived for four years in Cairo, Egypt, where birding was difficult. Egyptian vultures and cattle egrets were abundant, as were the ever present house sparrows. There it was though that I first saw that exotic looking bird, the Hoopoe, which is also common in parts of Europe. In Egypt it was hard to get away from people, and when stopping beside a canal, or even on the barren desert, one was soon surrounded by children, a situation not conducive to birding.

But while living in Cairo, we took one of our vacations in East Africa, and fortunately for me, I found a recently published book, FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA, by John G. Williams in a book store in a small Kenyan town. I found Mr. Williams in the Natural History Museum in Nairobi when we returned there, and he graciously autographed my book.

East Africa was a fabulous place for birds and in the forty days we spent there, traveling in a rented VW, I was able to list a total of 120 species of birds. My husband, Burt, although he was a biology scientist, was not much interested in birds. He was very patient and cooperative, however, in helping me spot and identify birds when we traveled. He seemed to be able to SEE much better than I. He especially wasn't interested in the smaller birds, like warblers, but he became very excited when he saw a secretary bird or a pileated woodpecker.

After leaving Egypt in January of 1967, Burt retired and we bought a small British motor home, and traveled around the northern hemisphere. My only guide then was the BIRDS OF BRITAIN AND EUROPE until we got to India. For some reason I have never counted the birds, although I have the lists, I saw during the many months we traveled through Europe, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan.

In India, however, we were fortunate to spend Christmas Day in a painted stork sanctuary, and Salim Ali, whose book of INDIAN BIRDS I already owned, was banding birds. Once, again, I was able to have my book autographed when he visited us in our motor home.

India, too, was a fantastic place to see birds, and because of the Indian religion of Hinduism, the birds were not caught and eaten as they were in Egypt and some other places.

Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan were not good places for birding, at least, I saw few. I bought BIRDS OF JAPAN, in English, by Yoshimaro Yamashina, but this book has few notations made during the three months we drove around Japan.

In 1972, we started on another round-the-world trip, this time around the southern hemisphere, and my bird count really went up. Birds I saw in the South Sea islands were mostly unidentified. I had bought AUSTRALIAN BIRDS, NON-PASSERINES, by Peter Slater before I left home, but it was no help with the others. In Australia I bought WHAT BIRD IS THAT? by Neville W. Cayley. It wasn't the best field guide, but the one recommended. I bought several other books while there, but WHAT BIRD? was the most complete at the time.

During our interim stay in the U. S. A., I had joined the Buena Vista Audubon Club and met Alice Friese. She gave me the names of several Australian birders she knew. I met two of these families, and one couple in Cairns took us out for a whole Sunday's birding. They also told us about a fishing boat trip which made a stop at a very small reef, called Michelmas Cay, where sooty terns were nesting at this time of year. The terns laid their eggs right on the sand, but in the high center, presumably above high tide. They were so tightly packed that we had to be careful not to step on the eggs, and we were in danger of being hit by the mass of flying birds all around us.

Parrots, galahs, cockatiels, king fishers - of which the kookaburra was one - were abundant in each one's own particular ecological areas. But the high spot of our birding in Australia was a visit to Phillip Island where every evening at dusk hundreds of small penguins, the Fairy penguins, come ashore. Quoting from WHAT BIRD...?, "Evening parades of this dapper little bird on Phillip Island, Victoria, have become a popular spectacle."

We continued our trip around the southern hemisphere by taking ship from Sydney to New Zealand. I found a recently revised edition of BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND by Robert Falla, R.B. Sibson, and E.G. Turbott. I was able to find all three authors for their autographs, and through the curtesy of E. G. Turbott, the director of the War Memorial Museum in Auckland, I was introduced to Mrs. Sylvia Reed, curator of birds. She picked us up one Sunday morning for a birding trip with the Auckland Bird Club. We met on a broad beach at high tide when the waders were forced to crowd together more. I listed twenty or more species that were pointed out to us. The most interesting birds here were the wrybills, a bird much like the sanderling, but with a long bill bent sideways. They are not like sanderlings in that they hardly moved at all in the two hours we watched them. One of our party estimated there were 2400 wrybills in this one spot. I read later that probably not more than 5000 of this species existed in the world. They are endemic only to New Zealand. On the North Island we walked four miles along the beach at low tide to see a large Australian Gannet colony near Cape Kidnappers. The birds we saw were on a small reef which was surrounded by water at high tide, but we were able to get quite close to the birds sitting on eggs.

We also visited the Royal Albatross Sanctuary on Otago Peninsula on the South Island. It had only recently been established, and we saw only a few albatrosses. Spotted shags and Steward Island shags were abundant on the rocks here, and hundreds of black-billed gulls were flying about.

On Stewart, the most southern island of New Zealand, I was fascinated and delighted to see the large, beautiful, purple and green New Zealand pigeons gorging themselves on elderberries outside our hotel.

My bird list for New Zealand is not long, just 76, and the commonest birds there, as here, were the imports, house sparrows and starlings.

We traveled then by ship from Auckland to Capetown, South Africa, and I listed 17 species during the trip. So many birds one sees while on board ship, fly by so fast, and one sees them so fleetingly, they remain unknown.

South Africa, again, was a wonderfully satisfying place to do birding. In the blinds in the various game parks, one can sit for hours watching the animals and birds come to the watering holes. Here my guide was the equivalent of our American birds. Robert's BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA is a very good book although bigger and heavier than our field guides. I had logged many birds in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), when disaster befell us. Burt had a massive heart attack while we were camping near Johannesburg. He was hospitalized for weeks before we could fly home.

During this time, I learned through a "What's on in Johannesburg this week" of a bird club. I called the chairman of the group, and was most graciously invited to join them. A

field trip was scheduled almost every Sunday morning, and through them I saw and became acquainted with many birds I would never have seen on my own. During the six months in South Africa, I listed 228 species.

In 1979, now alone, I spent six months in South America, but here I was disappointed in the number of birds I saw, and even fewer that I was able to identify. Since I was traveling alone, I spent most of my time in the bigger cities, and traveled from place to place by bus. It wasn't the same as having ones own car, being able to stop whenever and wherever one wished. Also I didn't have a good bird guide.

I spent 16 days on the Amazon, but even on the river, I saw few birds. Parrots flew over head, but their flight is very swift, and they fly high. Two or three species of king fishers were common along the river banks, and I saw some egrets from time to time. It seemed to me that the commonest birds along the river--and elsewhere, too--were the black vultures.

I visited ten zoos in South America, and each one had a large collection of native birds, but that wasn't the same as seeing them in the wild, in their native habitat.

So I think with much thankfulness about all the places I have seen, the people I have met, and the many, many beautiful or exotic birds I have enjoyed. I have BIRDS OF THE WORLD, A CHECK LIST, by James F. Clements, and from time to time, I go through my diaries and bird lists to enter my birds into this compilation. Maybe some day I will complete it, and then as I page through the book, I can again enjoy the memory of happy days of birding in far-away places.