Page 32 - INTRA MUROS December 2020

LIFESTYLE

EVOLUTION OF BIRD BOOKS 1936 - 2020

By James Clarke and Mary Broadley

Pages from South Africa’s first bird spotters’ guide (1936) compared with the just-launched guide
The Larger Illustrated Guide to Birds of

Southern Africa - a revolutionary new bird book

n my day, (as people over 60 tend to say), indicators in various fields of scientific guidebook by a former commercial artist
we birders would walk for hours carrying importance such as climate change and and amateur birder, Kenneth Newman.
Iheavy binoculars and an equally heavy crop management. The growing number Newman’s Birds of Southern Africa entered
bird book to identify different birds. of birders now forms an auxiliary arm to the scene as a proclaimed ‘field guide’
the science of ornithology. and, for the first time, included our entire
For years, I carried the 871-page Roberts’ region from Antarctica to the Zambezi.
Birds of South Africa. If, on an outing, we I became involved in the birding world Newman’s illustrations were big and bold
found ourselves differing over a bird’s when somebody gave me a slim cloth- and, importantly, depicted each species
identification, we’d start frantically rifling bound book, First Guide to South African opposite its text.
through our field guides. Frantically? Well, Birds by Leonard Gill, one-time director
after the bird had flown, somebody might of the South African Museum. It was first Then came ‘Sasol’ when Struik Nature’s
well have asked about the colour of its published in 1936 – a bold attempt at publisher, Pippa Parker, produced Sasol
legs. being a field guide. The illustrations look Birds of Southern Africa. It had a handy,
quaint nowadays although, as a beginner, plasticised cover for use in the field and
“Red!” somebody would assert. I found them fine. Within the space of a Parker corralled three of the country’s
single page, Gill managed to squeeze 30 top professional birders, Ian Sinclair, Phil
“Black, definitely!” somebody else would species as diverse as the hamerkop, the Hockey and Warwick Tarboton, to handle
say. herons, ibises, ducks and geese. the text while Peter Hayman and Norman
Arlott did the illustrations. It was flagged
“Legs?” I might say. Four years later, another former director as ‘The region’s most comprehensively
of the Museum, Austin Roberts, produced illustrated guide’.
Bird books took a battering. This led to Birds of Southern Africa. It was (and still is)
heavier gauge paper being used and published by the John Voelcker Bird Book Sasol was a big hit and over the next 27
stronger covers so that instead of field Trust Fund and it became the standard years, three more editions appeared,
guides becoming lighter, the opposite was
happening. reference for many years. It was a huge partly made necessary because South
improvement on Gill’s and it introduced African bird names were changed to
When I started birding, there were just over distribution maps, one for each species. comply with international naming policies
900 species in our region that stretched But Roberts, even through the 70s and – our dikkops, for instance, became thick-
to the Zambezi. Now that eight countries 80s, still had all the illustrations bunched knees – but also because of changes in the
are involved and new species are being up at the beginning of the book so that, distribution of many species.
spotted creeping in from Central Africa or once you found the picture, you now had As birding became more and more
from the sea, our region now lists almost to go to another part of the book to find popular in the 21st century, the average
1 000 birds.
the details. birder was now using the car as a base
Birding dynamics in general have become Roberts’ popularity took a knock on birding expeditions. The weight of
more fascinating and are being noted as bird books was no longer that important.
when, in 1983, Macmillan published a Just as well, for now we have the bulkiest

30 INTRA MUROS DECEMBER 2020