Birders of Africa: History of a Network

This book is not what I thought it was going to be about! It is written by a historian, not a birder and it is a social history book rather than a bird book.

The main story is the relationship of the colonial, usually European, immigrants - who as far as this story is concerned were especially such as District Officers and equivalent - with the indigenous native populations.  The bulk of it refers to southern Africa and to the period when the main activity of birders was collecting specimens for various museums both in Africa and around the world.

The first part deals with the vernacular knowledge of the local people and how this knowledge was often ignored by the “scientific” establishment.  Partly this was because at the time the only ornithology considered worthy of that name by this establishment was collecting skins to determine distribution.  The divide (essentially based on race) was between the ornithologists who produced the papers and got the credit, and the locals who did the donkey work of actually collecting and the preparation of the skins and only rarely got a mention in the resulting publications.

The second part is “The Lives of Birders” with some more detailed accounts of the lives of both groups of people – for example Leslie Brown, George Bates and Reg Moreau on one side and Jali Makawa and Saul Sithole on the other.

The final chapter brings the story more up to date with the rise of conservation, the rise of biology, the rise of recreational birding and the broadening of the spectrum of participants in all these.

Book reviewed by Peter Lack