Birding behind the wire.

[Owen]

A Bird in the Bush A Social History of Birdwatching by Stephen Moss has a good chapter on birding during WW2.

Mention is made of POWs that spent their long years in POW Camps bird-watching.
Perhaps thinking wistfully that the birds could fly away but they were stuck there.
One chap John Buxton decided to study the Redstart which he saw by a Bavarian river in the summer of 1940.
He organised his team to regularly watch the Redstarts. they started in April 1941 and took up nearly all their spare time.
In three months from April to June he and his team clocked up 850 hours watching a single pair of Redstarts.
After the war he published his finding in a book.
here http://www.lowryjames.com/cgi-bin/lowry/717.html

http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/...0282-p0284.pdf


Another birder at Eichstatt was Peter Conder (later Director of RSPB ).
He was captured at St Valery June 1940.
Whilst birding in the camp the guards became used to his activities he made a good lookout during escape attempts.
He made detailed observations on Goldfinches on whatever paper was available, including toilet roll.
He used the opportunity of being on mainland Europe to study Crested larks which don't appear very often in Britain.
Frustratingly they always bred outside the wire, so he couldn't get views of them.
Lots of his notes didn't survive the last winter of the war and some of the long marches .
Some of his notes taken in WW2 can be found here.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~zoolib/Conder1.htm#wwII

[Kyt]

Thanks Owen. Do you still have the book handy? Does it say anything about birdwatching in Britain during that time - any stories about birdwatchers being accussed of spying etc during the invasion fears (I'm sure anyone with binoculars would have been seen suspiciously).

I wonder how many other POWs used their time to write or research material for things that they became famous for after the war - off the top of my head I can only think of Sartre who developed his ideas for Being and Nothingness in his prison notebooks.

[Owen]

Nothing about Birders being accused of spying.
Does mention most sites out of bounds.
Makes a big point about the opportunities for Foreign travel and broadening ones horizons post-war and breaking down of social barriers to allow birding to be mass participation hobby.
The stay at home birders had to make do with their local patches such as vegtable plots.

[DaveWalters]

Oh wow - very interesting. When I was active in the birding world I remember one or two soldiers being around and interested but on the whole it was a tiny percentage. Also remember having a snot nose pte move his gun slowly in my direction whilst laughing and extremely impolitely telling us to leave when we mistakenly wandered to the borders of military land in West Sussex whilst birding. Seems like an excellent activity for a POW but surely you need to be a senior NCO or above otherwise the ribbing from your fellow prisoners may take some of the enjoyment out of it.

[von Poop]

Senior NCO and above indeed .

[Owen]

In World War 2, as Brigadier, he commanded 1st tank brigade and, subsequently, 42 nd Lancashire Infantry division when it converted to tanks. Later, he was ADC to Field Marshal (afterwards Lord) Alan Brooke. The latter’s published War Diaries contain numerous references to “Rollie” Charrington, occasionally in connection with shared bird-watching expeditions. A DSO was added to the Brigadier’s WW1 Military Cross.

Birthday present


The Chief of General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke at his desk in the War Office in London........calling Dave Gosney at Birdguides to hear news of the latest rarity.

[Owen]

Another (in)famous birder was Joachim Peiper believe it or not.
Well he was in his retirement.
From After The Battle Issue 40 page 51.

[von Poop]

7 Papers relating to Brooke's post-war life and career, 1927-1968:

ALANBROOKE: 7/25-38 Papers relating to his ornithological activities, 1952-1963, dated 1944-1968




ALANBROOKE: 7/25 [1952]-1963

Correspondence relating to Wildfowl Trust and World Wildlife Fund, mainly Wildfowl Trust publicity brochure, [1952]; letters to Brooke from Peter Markham Scott, Honorary Director of the Wildfowl Trust, 1958-1961, and Chairman of World Wildlife Fund (British National Appeal), 1962; correspondence concerning press treatment of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, President of World Wildlife Fund (British National Appeal), 1962; World Wildlife Fund press releases, 1963. 1 file

ALANBROOKE: 7/26 1944-1945,1958-1963

Papers relating to various ornithological and wildlife organisations, mainly correspondence and printed pamphlets relating to Hampshire and Isle of Wight Naturalists' Trust, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, British Trust for Ornithology, Norfolk Wildlife Park and Ornamental Pheasant Trust, British Ornithologists' Union, Council for Nature, Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, and Army Bird-Watching Society. 1 file

ALANBROOKE: 7/27 1964-1968

Letters to Brooke's wife, Benita Blanche Brooke, from various ornithological and wildlife organisations, mainly thanking her for her subscriptions. 1 file

ALANBROOKE: 7/28-38 1955-1963

Papers relating to bird-watching expeditions, notably correspondence, 1955-1958, concerning expedition by Brooke and others to Coto Doñana, Spain, Apr-May 1956 and May-Jun 1957; report on Coto Doñana trip, 1956, compiled by I J Ferguson-Lees, [1957]; correspondence relating to Brooke's bird-watching vacations in the Netherlands, 1956-1961; correspondence, 1957-1958, relating to première of Wild Spain, Eric (John) Hosking's film of the [1956 and 1957] Coto Doñana expeditions, 1958; letters to Brooke from fellow ornithologists, 1958-1963, notably Hoskings, G K C Van Tienhoven and Maj Anthony Buxton. 11 files

[Owen]

Coto Doñana expedition photo from A Bird In the Bush.

[Owen]

Read this today and thought I'd share.
From ROME '44 by Raleigh Trevelyan.Pages 249 & 250.

There were said to be three hundred deserters , both British and American, at large on the Beachhead. At first nobody made out where they could hide themselves in such a small area. John Hope , the British Guards Officer at VI Corps, used sometimes to take time off bird-watching in deserted gardens to the east of Nettuno, making his way along a very deeply dug ditch.
'Once I saw some washing hanging out, which I thought was odd. Then I saw something shining beneath a lot of old sticks. I kicked at it and found a large cache of new tins.
I thought: "My God, those deserter bastards must be in the wood there." I turned a corner and was confronted by two unshaven GIs, one with a red beard, with rifles. I knew it was touch and go.
"What are you doing here?" one of them asked.
I showed him my British badges , and when I said I was bird-watching they burst out laughing. They pretended they were just back from the front.'

As soon as he got back, Hope reported the affair to the American Provost.
After some difficulty , it was agreed to send a jeep. Hope, to his alarm, was asked to sit on the bonnet.
'As we approached the ditch , Red Beard and his companion jumped up and ran like hell into a tabacco field; the men in the jeep belted off into the crops . God knows whether any were killed. No expedition was organised to go into the bushes to find out who was there. Men just couldn't be spared.'
Hope was delighted one day to see a pair of Bee-eaters , which appeared to be nesting in the German lines.
He also saw several Golden Orioles.
In the front line you might hear a cuckoo at dawn.
Nightingales sang by day and night, and people complained they were becoming bird-happy. The more the Nightingales were frightened by two inch mortars or volleys of grenades , the more they sang- and the more this so-called music of the moon seemed callous to those who crouched in shallow fox-holes and who saw their comrades die.