It was the first known to Western science.Ī veteran of bird-collecting, Gould was not one for hyperbole. The specimen had been obtained the previous year by German explorer Ferdinand Werne, while traversing the vast Sudd swamps in search of the source of the Nile. "The most extraordinary bird I have seen for many years," said the celebrated Victorian naturalist, describing the species to the Zoological Society of London. John Gould was most impressed when, in 1851, a shoebill landed – so to speak – on his desk. I have stood on deck in the south Atlantic, hundreds of miles from land, watching one glide past my ship without so much as a flap, and wondered just how much we still have to learn about the lives of these amazing feathered voyagers. This huge seabird, which has a wingspan of over 10 feet, may cover more than 70,000 miles a year as it circles the oceans. And for sheer miles on the clock, surely nothing beats the wandering albatross. It is thanks to one individual that turned up in a small German town in 1822 with a hunter’s arrow through its neck, miraculously still alive, that the truth about bird migration first began to dawn on scientists. I have watched this bird both on its church tower nests in the villages of France and Germany, and at the other end of its journey, foraging on the grasslands of the Serengeti Plains and the Kruger Park. The white stork, traditional baby-carrier of legend, is one of numerous species that travel twice a year between northern European and sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps the most exciting birds for any traveler are the migrants whose astonishing journeys criss-cross the globe. This species reputedly killed the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise in his head! On a steep trail in Spain’s Pyrenees mountains, I once heard the sharp crack of a large bone dropped into a rocky gully and looked up to see the raptor soaring overhead. The bearded vulture is a huge bird of prey that feeds entirely on bone marrow, which it obtains by dropping bones from on high down onto rocks to smash them open. We followed the bird’s frantic ‘guiding’ call a kilometer through the dense bush, dodging elephants in the process, until we arrived at the prize. This unobtrusive little bird feeds on bees’ wax and has evolved the trick of guiding traditional honey-gatherers to bees, hoping for left-overs. In Zambia, a greater honeyguide once deliberately led me and my companions to a bees’ nest in a baobab tree. With other birds, it is the things they do. It wasn’t until this bizarre stork-sized bird beast turned to face me, revealing a beak the size and shape of a Dutch clog, that I understood what all the fuss was about. I’ll never forget my first sighting of an elusive shoebill deep in a papyrus swamp in Uganda. Their fluorescent orange plumage was so dazzling that they seemed to glow in the murky half-light like lanterns. I remember one dawn in Manu National Park creeping to a traditional display site to watch a group of males strut their stuff before a judging panel of females. In this respect, few species top the Andean cock-of-the-rock of Peru’s dense cloud forests. Many birds are celebrated for their gorgeous colors and beautiful displays. And it isn’t only me: birds have so deeply embedded themselves in our lives, languages and cultures the world over, from the sacred quetzal of the Aztecs to the mighty bald eagle of the US Air Force. Birds have imbued each place I’ve ever visited – from deepest jungle to city center – with its own avian associations, and just a glimpse of those birds again, or a snatch of their voice, brings back that place in an instant. As an adult, and now a travel writer, it is still birds that help me navigate the globe. As a child, I learned about the world through birds: Antarctica had emperor penguins the Great Rift Valley meant flamingos, New Guinea was for birds-of-paradise, and so on.
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