Birds for Africa

Piper, S.E. 1998. Birds for Africa. An invited evening public lecture. (lxxix-lxxxi).

It is argued that Africa’s rich and diverse avifauna is attractive to visiting amateur and professional ornithologists for ecotourism, ringing and research. It is suggested that First World visitors can contribute to the continent’s knowledge base. Most importantly, ornithologists visiting Africa can initiate and maintain technology transfer and examples of this are given.

Africa has a rich avifauna which has until recently been largely under-appreciated by both local and overseas visitors. Ways in which this resource may be developed and effectively utilised are suggested.

Africa is famous for its mammalian fauna that attracts visitors from all over the world. Among these are many visitors who enjoy looking at birds and some that even come specifically to watch birds. Few general-purpose tour operators offer exclusively bird-oriented tours. However, there has been a growth in specialist operators who cater specifically for this market.

A wish is often expressed by concerned persons from the First World that they would like to ‘ do something’ for Africa and its birds. Some have fulfilled this wish by coming to Africa as part of bird-ringing expeditions.

Even a cursory glance through any of the standard regional avifaunal texts will reveal that the basic biology of many African endemic species is poorly known. Africa’s avifauna is a rich lode to be mined.

Many African countries are generally regarded as Third World and this implies low incomes, poor standards of living, inadequate health facilities and little or no education. Less obvious is the lack of intellectual and scientific infrastructure. This is an area in which visiting birdwatchers, ornithologists and scientists can make a contribution.

A visit to almost any international airport in Africa, outside the local rainy season, is likely to reveal a handful of visitors, mainly from the Western Hemisphere, wearing designer safari clothing. For nearly two hundred years going ‘ on safari’ to Africa has been a well-recognised adventure. In earlier times these visitors came for ‘ sport’ : to hunt and take home trophies, curiosities and tales of high adventure. Many wrote of their travels and the new animals, mainly mammals, that they saw there. A handful of visitors came to collect specimens that were taken back to Europe and to a lesser extent North America, for use in taxonomic endeavours.

Since the end of the Second World War there has been a massive growth in ecotourism, especially in east and southern Africa. These visitors have come mainly to view the large mammal fauna, especially the carnivores and so-called mega-herbivores. From the 1980s a few of the major tour operators have found it profitable to run exclusive bird-oriented tours. Scanning the ornithological publications targeted at the ecotourism market reveals that from the early 1990s there has been a growth in specialist tour operators who focus specifically on this segment of the market. For example, see the Bulletin of the Africa Bird Club.

The ecotourism market is potentially of great value to Africa’s avifauna in four regards. First, there is a direct monetary benefit to local communities and an injection of foreign currency to the national exchequer. Second, a demand for guides with an ornithological qualification is generated. Third, the more visitors an area or species attracts the greater the pressure on the nation’s conservation authority to provide formal protection. Last, direct local benefits often lead to changes in local attitudes to conservation. The best-known local example is that of the Campfire hunting scheme in Zimbabwe (P.J. Mundy pers. comm.)

The ringing, or banding of birds offers both local enthusiasts and foreign visitors a way of obtaining an immediate and hands-on wildlife experience. Given the fascination that Europeans have with migration and the fact that so many Palearctic migrants come to Africa it is not surprising that so many of them wish to come and ring their birds in Africa. Ringing Northern Hemisphere migrants while on passage to or from Africa or while in their African winter quarters holds great allure. This drive has fuelled one-off, temporary and permanent ringing stations in Africa.

One of the best-known permanent ringing stations is at Ngulia in Kenya. This station attracts many visitors from Britain and Europe each year (H. & Z. Bernitz pers. com.). The main catch is migrant warblers and shrikes, though a number of local species are also handled. It has added a number of recoveries of birds both in Africa and across Europe and Asia and has helped to elucidate migration routes.

Because so few of Africa’s endemic species have been studied Africa provides a wonderful opportunity for both the keen amateur and professional ornithologist. By way of example, three case histories are presented: vulture, rails and robins.

While serving as a teacher in West Africa an impecunious cockney, Peter Mundy became interested in vultures. In the village in which he taught, Hooded Vultures were a common bird taking scraps from in and around homesteads and much tolerated by the local people. His observations of these scavengers soon became a passion and he travelled to the southernmost tip of the continent in the early 1970s to begin a long-term study on the resident species there. This study made him the foremost expert on vultures in Africa and his findings are set out in his book The vultures of Africa (Mundy et al. 1992). He co-founded the Vulture Study Group and has been instrumental in facilitating the study and conservation of vultures around the world.

Another Englishman to come to Africa in search of birds is Barry Taylor. He came not for the large and charismatic but rather for the small, shy, cryptic and almost impossible-to-see flufftails, crakes and rails. Initially he worked in the commercial world and confined his ornithological studies to his free time. However, his desire to study these little, elusive, skulking but intriguing denizens of marsh and grass drove him into full time study. His fame slowly spread and with it came requests to write species accounts for various national, continental and world handbooks. The ultimate accolade was delivered in 1998 when he published the definitive monograph simply entitled Rails (Taylor & van Perlo 1998).

As a child Terry Oatley was enamoured of robins, and notwithstanding a congenital infirmity, he put all his efforts into finding and looking for these cryptic inhabitants of Africa’s dark forests. He has spent more time looking at robins in Africa than any other person and holds the distinction of having marked and observed the oldest individuals of a number of robin species. In fact, his longevity record of 25 years is probably the oldest passerine on record anywhere in the world. Although he never had the opportunity to read for a primary degree at university his ornithological studies were rewarded by not one but two postgraduate degrees. From a lifetime of patient fieldwork and research has flowed a most beautiful and authoritative monograph The robins of Africa (Oatley 1998).

It is my personal opinion that the ornithologists, amateur and professional alike, can go to just about any place in Africa and find local species which have not been studied at all, or whose basic biology is not well known. In the moister parts of the continent, and excluding the badly degraded areas, I would suggest that even urban areas contain 10 to 50 such species. Some of the better-vegetated areas can hold up to 200 species worthy of further study.

In terms of natural history, one of Africa’s greatest deficiencies is its lack of an educated populace. Almost without exception, the majority of people who are well-educated and have an interest in the natural world are either of foreign nationality or are non-African in origin (A. Berruti, pers. comm.).

In my opinion, few ornithologists visiting Africa realise the great intellectual contribution they can make to the local community by including them in their research. While ‘technology transfer’ is often spoken about in the field of engineering is does not seem to be well understood by ornithologists.

Excellent examples of what can be achieved for the conservation of Africa’s avifauna can be seen in the co-operative ventures between international organisations such as the Peregrine Fund, International Crane Foundation and BirdLife International and their African partners.

The extremely rich, but relatively unstudied African avifauna offers the First World visitor a wealth of opportunity in three main areas: ecotourism, ringing and research. My view, from the southern tip of Africa, is that in many parts of Europe there is a surfeit of amateur and professional ornithologists battling for access to the few remaining natural areas to study the even scarcer wild populations of that continent’s depauperate avifauna. However, in Africa the reverse is true. Species probably wait to be discovered and many species have never had their basic biology described. European visitors can find areas in Africa where 'their' species come to 'winter' and they can then observe aspects of biology, which are normally hidden from them.

I urge ornithologists, both professional and amateur, from the First World to give serious consideration to visiting and studying in Africa. There is much that they can see, do and learn and even more that they can contribute.

I wish to thanks Dr. Aldo Berruti for the invitation to deliver the lecture upon which this paper is based. Helpful ideas and suggestion were made by Mr M.D. Anderson, Drs. H.& Z. Bernitz, K. Bildstein, P.J. Mundy and Prof. M. de Plessis.

REFERENCES

Mundy, P.J., Butchart, D., Ledger, J.A. & Piper, S.E. 1992. The vultures of Africa. Randburg and Halfway House: Acorn Books & Russel Friedman Books.

Oatley, T.B. 1998. The robins of Africa. Randburg and Halfway House: Acorn Books & Russel Friedman Books.

Taylor, B. & van Perlo, B. 1998. Rails. Sussex: Pica Press.