This kind of bird-watching appeals to the nana within all of us. It’s so… domestic. A very clear line separates birdwatchers from birders, who apply strenuous thought and methods to what is much more than a nice pastime. As such, I was terrified when I first started attending meetings of the official body of New Zealand birders – the Ornithological Society, or OS.
There is a stock image of ornithologists. It’s courtesy of the one film maker who is more famous for birds than even David Attenborough: Alfred Hitchcock. His classic film The Birds gave a fear and loathing of not just wild birds to the modern subconscious. The film’s resident bird expert, Mrs Bundy, turns up in the town’s cafe just before the birds run amok and imperiously announces, ‘Ornithology happens to be my vocation.’ She then throws out a few learned remarks about moulting and flocking. But for all her knowledge, she has no idea what’s happening. With her beret and mannish bearing, she’s cast as an old bat, bad news, an eccentric fool. ‘Birds are not aggressive creatures,’ she claims. The cook interrupts her with an order: ‘Three Southern fried chicken, Sam!’ When she scoffs at warnings that the birds are about to attack, she’s put in her place with a devastating put-down: ‘Mrs Bundy, why don’t you go home and polish your binoculars?’ The last we see of the film’s ornithologist she is cowering, traumatised and ashamed, after the birds have reduced the town to ashes.
I got talking to a nice old dear one night at the monthly meeting of the South Auckland OS branch. It was her first time too. She had actually come the previous month, but as she had stood outside looking at the birders inside the brightly lit shed of the Papakura Croquet Club, she had had an attack of shyness, and turned and fled. I knew exactly how she felt. During a break, I went outside for a cigarette, and stood in the chill night air, looking in through the window at the gathering of about 20 birders. They bustled about with their knowledge and their commitment, confidently discussing copulation, and were more intimidating than the other hobbyists who had gathered that night in a hall on the other side of the bowling green for a class in kickboxing. I never saw the nice old dear again.
But there was nothing to be frightened of. The birders were funny and welcoming, a happy bunch of middle New Zealanders, with their beards and their jerseys and their arcane dialogue. Members of OS routinely see novices arrive in their midst; they can usually tell straight off if newcomers have the right stuff, the true calling.
Among themselves, there was a fair amount of bickering, jealousy, and territorial squabblings: the usual office politics, made stranger by the fact they didn’t have an office. But they were governed by an ethic of utter selflessness – they were in it for and on behalf of the birds, and worked tirelessly, adventurously, merrily, towards that end. They could sometimes, though, be killjoys, wringing their hands about the threat posed to birds by people having fun – in particular, kite-surfing, and walking dogs on beaches. One person asked, ‘Could there be warnings put on cans of dog food?’ Leisure didn’t seem part of their vocabulary. They went to work, bending their heads and backs to the task of bird study, and their attitude was: all hands on deck.
They were very white: you could count the number of Maori birders on one claw. They were very English: eight of the OS regional representatives came from England. This figure was pointed out to me by an OS regional representative who came from England. He said, ‘It’s the same in Australia. We had a bunch of Australians come here to look at the storm petrel. Of the party of eleven, one was Canadian, nine were Brits, and one spoke with an Australian accent.’
England is the home of birding. As I was to discover later on a trek through Norfolk and East Anglia, it strikes the population like a disease. It has its own culture, its own customs, including that famous English characteristic of forming an orderly, disgruntled queue wherever possible. The harsh light of New Zealand softens the English. It was hard to tell the English members of OS from the locals. Almost everyone in the society I met was marked by an easy New Zealandness – they were casual, open, friendly, smart, mocking, self-mocking.
They had chosen – or were drawn to, without asking why – a subject of inexhaustible interest. There is no end-game in the pursuit of knowledge about birds. Once in, you’re in for life.
In 2006, membership of the OS nationally stood at 919. As well as the monthly meetings, where notes and observations are shared, and a guest is introduced to give A Most Interesting Talk, members contribute to core activities – bird-banding, wader counts, bird distribution, constant monitoring of migratory habits, and beach patrols to count and sometimes collect dead birds. There are field trips, and members receive Notornis, which over the years has featured such classics as ‘An attempt to restore sex to the Cape Pigeon’, ‘What do keas die of?’ and ‘The mineral content of the faeces of the pukeko’. And there are usually doomed attempts to get schools interested. One idea floated in 2006
