Birds of a feather
BOOKS New Zealand natural history enthusiast and broadcaster/radio host Graeme Hill finds cause for celebration and contemplation in the re-release of an ornithological classic.
‘‘WALTER BULLER was the first native-born New Zealander to make a name for himself in the international world of science. He achieved this by a combination of ability, ambition and sheer effrontery.’’
This snappy description by historian Ross Galbreath is probably bang on. Buller is hard to like but nonetheless was the driving force behind the most important New Zealand wildlife publications of the 19th century (1873 and 1888), now combined, restored and reproduced in full for the first time ever; gilded with a foreword by Stephen Fry and generous preambles on Buller, John Keulemans and the restoration itself. This, as they say in the business, is the business.
The word iconic is overused but thoroughly applicable here. The images produced by John Keulemans for Buller’s Birds would go a long way to defining New Zealand as being distinct, both to us and the world.
His images ended up on innumerable posters, tourism guides – and our money. That’s fairly iconic.
John Gerard Keulemans was a Dutch artist based in England in the late 1800s, specialist subject ‘‘birds’’, and was commissioned by Buller to provide the images for his quarto blockbusters.
While his New Zealand bird prints are clearly accomplished and beautiful, I’ve always thought there was vague dullness about some of them. I put that down to either shabby reproduction or age, like a floral print sofa that frisky newlyweds bought in 1950 for its vibrant and colourful pattern, which now sits in nana’s lounge, a blurry olive grey thing after 20,000 sunrises. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The fact is the foggy impression of some of Keulemans’ work happened on day one of the 1888 edition going to print due to failings of the lithographic process.
The professionals of the day were more excited about new technology than the images. Keulemans’ watercolour originals were recently rediscovered by Geoff Dawson at the British Museum of Natural History and are bright and clear.
For the first time the full second edition has been reproduced from these original watercolour proofs and it’s as though grandma’s sofa is new again.
A criticism could be made that the depictions are not entirely natural, slightly brickish, but Keulemans was painting in Europe from stuffed birds and skins supplied by Buller. Given that, he did incredibly well. And he probably did see some of his subjects alive because just down the road at the Regent’s Park Zoo there were live huia, kakapo, kaka, bellbirds and tui, also supplied by the industrious collector, Buller.
THE NAME Walter Buller ignites internal anguish, a confounding dichotomy between being just a man of his times, and being a guntoting self-obsessed collector.
Buller thought our native wildlife was condemned to extinction. He was a ‘‘salvage ornithologist’’. Shoot it and stuff it and send it to
Buller was a salvage ornithologist. Shoot it and stuff it and send it to England.
England. His book, similarly, was to be a grand pictorial museum. Heartbreakingly, today a fair proportion of it is.
Turning the quarto pages one doesn’t have to wait long for the first haunting image. At plate three two owls are depicted, a ruru perched knowingly and its distant cousin, the larger speckled laughing owl beside. You will not find a laughing owl today. Then the piopio – ‘‘unquestionably the best of our native songsters’’. Really? Sigh. As you leaf through you see beautifully rendered huia, bush wren, quail . . . all gone. So was Buller right? It should be better known that by the late 19th century, Buller’s school of thought was starting to become old school. There were enlightened thinkers and doers vigorously fighting the introduction of stoats and weasels to New Zealand, quite correctly warning of the devastation they would likely do to our native wildlife. Their objections were narrowly and cynically defeated. Offshore islands were becoming dedicated sanctuaries.
Richard Henry (who should be on our money) petitioned the academics of the day for more action to save what we had and offered practical ways to go about it. Dismissed and ignored as a mere peasant enthusiast (and depressed for other reasons) he shot himself in the head, survived, and almost at once set about transferring more than 700 kakapo and other ground birds to Fiordand sanctuaries, the whole time paying the keenest attention to their habits and habitat. His kakapo Dunkirk of the 1890s ended in tears but his methods and observations would result in many species’ survival, just, to this day.
Henry always recoiled at visitors to his Dusky Sound hunting for sport, collection or even commerce. Buller met Henry very briefly in Dusky Sound and their instant clash is telling. ‘‘[Buller] immediately asked for bird skins. I told him that it was not becoming for me to be getting skins.’’ Henry called him a ‘‘cadger’’.
Unforgivably, and it’s nothing short of sickening, after huia were accorded protected status, Buller was given a permit to capture some for transferral to an island sanctuary in a desperate effort to try to save the imperilled species. There is no record whatsoever of them making it to safety, but there is a letter written at that precise moment to his most wealthy client, Baron Rothschild, gleefully announcing that he had finally obtained the specimens he’d been asking for. That’s a ‘‘what if’’ that should make you cry. No huia would subsequently make it to safety.
It’s the Richard Henrys that make Buller look bad, not our lack of imagination to appreciate his world view. To excuse Buller this way is to dismiss the enlightened work of Richard Henry and his colleagues and I’m not having it. Walter Buller would die in England, Dr Sir Walter Buller FLS CMG FRS KCMG. Richard Henry died Henry R, Helensville, his postman the sole attendant. Go figure. We have one copy to give away. To enter, email escape@star-times.co.nz with Buller’s Birds in the subject line by Friday, October 26.