Olivaceous Warbler- Hippolais pallida
I am scared of warblers. Scared of getting them wrong. Scared of making a fool of myself. Scared of being ridiculed in years to come for being amateur with my Acrocephalus, lightweight with my Locustella, silly with my Silvia or just failing with my Phylloscopus. I am easily critcised for my spelling - the fundementals of identification though. These are not easy birds. The Old World warblers are a collection of nuanced individuals - washes, tones, tints, lower mandibles, leg colours, primary projections. I need a better book to really get stuck into Old World Warblers.
I have been toying with the idea of Handbook of the Birds of the World. At 200 euros a volume with 16 volumes it kind of goes down on the list with ''new car'', or ''holiday''. I had one volume in my hand though on a trip to London - I snuck into Foyles the bookshop and there were 4 or 5 assorted volumes at the reasonable price of GBP 189 each. Most were shrink wrapped in plastic but the one I got to get a look at was fantastic. Perhaps 600-700 birds for each volume by family with a coloured plates, distribution maps, behavioual treatments. The first handbook of a complete class of any animal in the world - how fantastic is that. The good news is that it is leaping into the world of the digital next year and for a subscription I can raid the goody jar without denying the children education, running water or any other civil right. There is something madly wonderful about having a shelf with a single book though that deals with every bird in the world. Victorian ! I love collecting.
I love old print shops with the old coloured engravings of birds. The smell of them. There is one near covent garden that I found last Christmas - you could spend hours in there. I am a sucker for bird prints, photos, anything that records or seeks to understand or "capture" a bird. If I could come back in another life I would be Doctor Maturin in the Jack Aubrey novels - if you want a taste I have linked to some great little quotes from the man himself. "Jack you have debauched my Sloth'', the crew loved him , Aubrey is of course Cochrane the fanous fighting captain of the early 19th century very loosely - Maturin is a more complex amalgam - part O'Brien himself - if you are a film person thats the lengthy series of novels that the single film Master and Commander is based on (Peter Wier the filmmaker but Patrick O' Brien the novelist). Maturin wanders the oceans on a Royal Navy frigate, part Irish radical, part British intelligence officer, ships surgeon, polymath, natural historian but clearly the first world birder. Read the synopsis of him on Wikipedia and you just want him to be real. There is no room for travelling the world on a frigate for 4 years anymore and discovering a new tortoise while combating Napoleon with your surgeons tools and rapier - railing against flogging and then classifying a new beatle. The Victorian collector and amateur enthusiast. If you don't fancy a life at sea then the 18th century vicar come naturalist Gilbert White of Selbourne fame provides another more bimbling model. He studied a local patch watching the comings and goings, the minutiae of the hedgerow, the music and rythym of nature as he did his pastoral rounds, no doubt in fetching stockings and a favourite battered hat. Doctor Who - Doctor Who fits the type ! The English amateur scientist or observor. We have of course just lost Sir Patrick Moore. He belonged to a different era (link here to the bizzarre - but its the way most of knew him from childrens television rather than from the Sky at Night !!). A ''Steam Punk'' of the highest order. Whats the gist today ? Collecting and classifying - hobbies and interests. Napoleon might have written off Great Britain as a nation of shopkeeprs but as anyone knows there's detail in retail to be sifted and pondered. Weighed out, put on a shelf, valued, owned, books to be kept. A beautiful end in itself. Amateur archeology, botany, astronomy, gardening, sailing, cooking, woodworking or trekking. It just isnt the detail of the Grande Armee that captured Napoleon down to every button and coat lapel. He decided to take on a nation of thugs and street brawlers led by amateur hobbyists. To join the elite that built the British empire then do build your bridge or settle your case but then bake a cupcake - Just get on with it. Get some silly kit, hats are good, books are good, but doing is better - it doesn't have to go anywhere. Its a diversion but then it becomes the point.
Anyway we have a problem with this identification as Olivaceus Warblers are migratory as I think of them and this was July in the Great Rift Valley. I am hanging my hat though on a small note in Birds of the Western Paleartic - "African populations sedentary at South of Range". Much of what is written about birds is written with a European bias. I am sure that some Olivaceous Warblers do stay put. So there we have it. I am looking at a plate that could almost be the shot above - "long bill, flat crown, short wings and sturdy legs... dull grey or brown above and dull white below...dull supercilium (thats the stripe above the eye)...brighter eyer ring (that isnt quite catching on this shot)...pale edges to inner flight feathers (have a look at the leading edge of the wing)..." That doesnt take us too much further but I am sure this is a Hippolais warbler and by the distribution maps in my East Africa Birds textbook I have two options - Olivaceous and Icterine. I am hopeful that in July there would be no confusing passage birds to mess me up on that. Icterine is just far more yellow on the front which leaves me by elimination with this fellow. But I will never 100 % know and that almost bothers me. Short of a DNA test I stand no chance to be 100% sure with dozens of birds. The Victorians shot them and kept their skins - measured every feather and compared and contrasted. Skins would go around the world being swapped and studied by collectors. You can still go out to a place in Hertfordshire and see the trays and trays of bird skins in the collection of the Natural History Museum - collected by Stephen Maturin - well in my imagination.
Nowadays we have books, the net, thousands of sites and experts online more than happy to tell you you are wrong. As I have said before if I ever get to a few thousand birds on here I will link the site somewhere mainstream and then let them all come pouring in to dispute my identifications.
While we are in the Nineteenth Century or indeed outer space with our daily Zeitgeist I leave you with a beautiful picture of an Impala - my impala portrait. It isn't hanging on my wall and I have no trays of skins - just pictures and memories. This is my Natural History Library - I did threaten to pin a butterfly on a board once - Mrs C wasn't happy - that makes NDB even more important as it will be the only record bar a few notebooks of what an earth I have been up to all this time ! I am looking foward to reading this all over in my 90's and laughing at my amateur mistakes. I am categorically not putting myself up there with Doctor Who or Sir Patrick Moore - but they are good role models - interested travellors - I am just aspiring to take a few shots and on a daily basis build up a picture of what might be out there and see a few new places along the way.
I am in discussion with another Yoderish bird guide from Islamabad - its cold up there so I'll need a puffer jacket and a waterproof cover for my next field guide - perhaps a map of the foothills and some new boots ? Ah expedition coming on....I have a price for the vehicle and driver, a date, a location and a reason to do it - random !!
Lake Manyara, Tanzania
July 2012
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