Flights of fancy become science of ornithology

Rigorous study of birds didn’t begin in earnest until the 17th century and for some time after that superstition impeded progress, finds Richard Collins.

The Wisdom of Birds - An Illustrated History of Ornithology

Tim Birkhead

Bloomsbury; £20,

BIRD study is a multi-faceted subject so Tim Birkhead, in The Wisdom of Birds — an Illustrated History of Ornithology, tackles various topics separately; bird intelligence, migration, the antagonism between academics and ‘field men’ etc.

One chapter is entitled ‘Infidelity’ while another is headed ‘A Degenerate Life Corrupts’, seemingly odd choices for a work of this sort. The result is a set of lucid and entertaining parallel histories, laced with quirky observations and colourful vignettes of celebrated ornithologists. George Montagu, for example, was “famous for his Ornithological Dictionary and infamous for abandoning his wife for the female artist who illustrated it”. Bird-fanciers are a peculiar lot.

Aristotle, the first person to group animals in families, had much to say about birds, although not all of his pronouncements would withstand the rigours of modern peer review. He knew that some species migrated and that birds were territorial during the breeding season, ideas that would not become universally accepted until the 19th century.

His observation that farmyard cocks ‘are salacious’ whereas ‘crows are inclined to chastity’ may be fanciful but, Birkhead says, even this is not without a grain of truth; farmyard fowl are harem-polygamous whereas crows are monogamous.

Pliny the Elder, who was overwhelmed by noxious gases and died while investigating the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, penned the world’s first natural history book. Memorable for its colourful pre-suppositions, his writing is not scientific in the modern sense. He thought, for example, that the peacock was vain and couldn’t bear to look at its own ugly feet. The notion endured; Renaissance depictions of peacocks carried the caption ‘Nosce te ipsum’, ‘know thyself’. But Pliny’s observations are often insightful. His remarks on the behaviour of geese, for example, anticipated Lorenz’s discovery of imprinting two millennia later.

In 1474, a farmyard cock which had produced eggs was deemed to be a witch and burned at the stake in front of a huge crowd in Basel. It’s doubtful whether the medieval bestiaries written during such a superstitious era contributed much of value to our knowledge of birds. Curious mixtures of fact and fancy, the bestiaries were, nonetheless, the ornithological reference books of their day.

The ‘doctrine of signatures’ held that God had created animals and plants for our use and benefit. Clues to the role a creature was intended to play had been incorporated at its creation. Yellow flowers, for example, must be valuable in treating jaundice and the red breasts of the male cross-bill suggested that the bird held a cure for scarlet fever.

The history of ornithology is one of struggle between new insights and deeply-entrenched superstition. Religious notions held sway into the era of evidence-based science, which began effectively in the 17th century. The idea, for example, that birds were models of marital fidelity, intended by God as an example to us wayward humans, persisted to our own day.

Until very recently, it was universally believed that the familiar, and much-loved, songbirds were all dutifully monogamous. We know now that most small birds indulge in extra-pair couplings. The bullfinch is the exception which proves the rule; highly-strung and sensitive, as every bird-ringer knows, it remains paired even in winter and never ventures out of sight of its partner. The male has a lower sperm count than other small birds. It’s a luxury he can afford that others can’t; in-vitro competition with the seminal deposits of other males isn’t needed by him, because adultery isn’t an option under the watchful eye of a spouse.

Darwin accepted that male birds could be promiscuous but, despite evidence to the contrary of which he must have been aware, could not bring himself to accept that females misbehaved.

The notion that excessive sexual activity is injurious to health seems initially to be borne out by the facts. Zebra finches, for example, become non-stop breeding machines once the rains arrive in their Australian habitat. Their lives are correspondingly brief. Seabirds, such as razorbills, on the other hand, survive for decades but they don’t begin laying their single, annual egg until they are about seven years old. Just why longevity and fecundity appear to be inversely related would not be satisfactorily explained until the 20th century.

The Irish contributions to ornithology which Birkhead mentions were mostly negative. Gerald of Wales, on visits here with Prince John in 1185-6, was told that ‘birds which are called bernacae’ come from fir timber tossed about in the sea. They begin life as a sort of gum. Afterwards, they ‘hang by their beaks as if they were seaweed attached to the timber, surrounded by shells in order to grow more freely’. Gerald was notoriously gullible: ‘I have frequently seen, with my own eyes,’ he declared, ‘more than a thousand of these small birds, hanging down on the seashore from one piece of timber’. The error persisted and barnacle goose was eaten during Lent, as the flesh was that of fish not fowl.

When Oliver Goldsmith published his History of the Earth and Animated Nature, Samuel Johnson quipped; ‘if he can distinguish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of his knowledge’.

Goldsmith, ‘a brilliant but eccentric hack’, had ‘the knack of adopting another’s suggestion and making it his own’. He was one of the few 18th century writers to discuss territoriality and, Birkhead says, may have been the one who coined the term. Another Irishman, Charles Moffat, pioneered the notion that territoriality served to distribute birds throughout the countryside and prevent overcrowding. James Burkitt, the county surveyor for Fermanagh who invented colour-ringing and anticipated the ground-breaking work of David Lack on robins, is described as ‘British’.

This authoritative and informative book will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in birds. As befits its historical theme, carefully-chosen illustrations, drawn from paintings and engravings executed over the centuries, embellish the lively text.

Outdoors, Monday