Spotted by one of our party on a large patch of grass between blocks of housing this White-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii) caused great excitement. We were driving into Minot, North Dakota, in the late afternoon. This species is almost entirely nocturnal, solitary and sparsely distributed; our luck was in on that day in late May. It leapt across the grass and then stood stock still before eventually moving off again.
This photograph is a still from video.
From Hong Kong last week came this photograph of a Lemon Emigrant (Catopsilia pomona), a common species over much of south-east Asia and Australia. As its names implies it is migratory.
From Hong Kong last week came this photograph of a grasshopper bush-cricket or katydid. And no, we don't know which species it is.
Thanks all those who responded to say that this is a katydid or bush-cricket, genus Eimaea of the family Tettigoniidae. But, as an excuse for those us from a school of zoology where everything below a fish was a plant, they are also sometimes called long-horned grasshoppers.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) of 23 May 1958 reported:
At the time the Chinese Cobra (Naja atra) was considered a subspecies of the Indian Cobra (Naja naja).
In his entry in Contributions to the History of Herpetology Romer’s family had provided the circumstances of the bite: ‘a supposedly dead Chinese cobra brought in for identification bit Romer on a finger, which required skin grafts and he needed months of recovery’.
In his notebook, Romer later recorded:
An adult male, caught at Tai Po Kau in the New Territories and received from Dr. P. A. M. Van de Linde* on 21st May 1958, bit me on the middle finger of the right hand shortly after its receipt the same day. Only the right fang penetrated the finger. Scales in 21 rows at mid-body. Ventrals 171. Anal 1. Subcaudals 50. Total length 1,330, tail 210 mm. (Scale-counts made and checked by Miss Lo Shum Chung Ngok) Specimen subsequently prepared as complete skeleton. The hood marking was of the binocellate type but incomplete (i.e. interrupted at base).
Three days later, readers of the SCMP were assured by better news :
At the time he was bitten, Romer was in correspondence with Hugh Alistair Reid (1913-1983) about the coverage and advice on snake bite to be included in his guide to the venomous snakes of Hong Kong. Alistair Reid was then at the General Hospital in Penang, Malaya and establishing himself as a world expert on snake venoms and the treatment of those bitten.
On 9 June he wrote to Reid:
I am at present in hospital, having been bitten by a large Naja naja in the middle finger of my right hand. Although only the right fang penetrated my finger, it was a deliberate and forceful bite and probably involved a fair quantity of venom. You will be interested to hear that there was a complete absence of neurotoxic effects but a very great deal of local reaction and tissue damage. There was tremendous swelling Involving the entire hand and arm up to the shoulder. The finger itself 1s very badly affected, and there is a hard black necrotic area starting behind the nail and extending right along the upper surface. There are also two fairly large scars on the dorsum of the hand where two blisters were cut. The future of the bitten finger is still uncertain, and apparently depends on its condition after sloughing and of of the damage. Regarding treatment, I applied a rubber tourniquet within a minute or two of the bite and was given Haffkine polyvalent serum within about half an hour. I believe I had in all between 60 and 80 c.c. of this serum, but am very doubtful that it had any beneficial effect. It was necessary for multiple punctures to be made on the dorsum of the hand to relieve swelling. They also gave me cortisone or hydrocortisone (sorry I do not know which). I am afraid that, not being a medical man, the above information is not very specific but trust that it will of some interest.
Local necrosis is recognised as a major effect of being bitten by a Chinese Cobra. The extent of the damage and the resulting scars were still obvious when John Romer showed me his hand over seven years later. His office, as well as the live Bamboo Pit Viper, had the prepared skeleton of the offending but unfortunate Chinese Cobra.
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| Juvenile Chinese Cobra, Lantau, Hong Kong, 2011 Photograph by Thomas Brown on Flickr |
*Patrick van de Linde was a government medical officer who went on to study the cholera outbreaks of 1961 and 1963. He is remembered as a medical officer in the British Army Aid Group (BAAG) which operated in China to assist those escaping from occupied Hong Kong and to gather intelligence. Commanded by Lindsay Ride, Professor of Physiology in the University of Hong Kong, who had been in charge of a field ambulance during the battle of Hong Kong and who had escaped captivity, the BAAG provided medical services to the civilian population and Chinese guerillas operating against the Japanese. Colonel Ride, later Vice-Chancellor of HKU and knighted, wrote:
This officer was posted as MO i/c Advanced HQs in Nov 1943 and remained there from that time till the Japanese surrender. The Chinese forces in that area were notoriously badly off for any sort of medical service and Major Van De Linde readily put all his energy into setting up a scheme to supply their needs; medical posts were established and staffed in guerilla areas and two hospitals were run in Waichow. To these hospitals - the only ones in that area - came all the Chinese sick and wounded from the East River forces as well as all the civilian air raid casualties. In addition to this Major Van de Linde undertook the intensive work necessitated by a cholera epidemic and a famine. Working long hours under most primitive conditions he was responsible for saving the lives of scores of Chinese, both soldiers and civilians.
For 2 years without a rest of any sort Major Van de Linde gave the whole of his time and unbounded energy for the benefit of the needy and the suffering and in order to increase the value of his services he, at the same time, mastered the Cantonese language. This exemplary devotion to duty not only saved many lives but it paved the way towards the successful conclusion of many intricate negotiations with the Chinese concerning BAG operations.
See Gwulo.
Anon. 2007. Romer, J.D. (1920-1982). In Contributions to the History of Herpetology (Volume 2), Edited by Kraig Adler, p 212. Society for the Study of Reptiles and Amphibians.
In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the 12th in the series.
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The artist for this plate was Chloe Elizabeth Talbot Kelly (born 1927) who went on to illustrate a number of field guides. Her paintings of birds appear in art sales. She began painting in 1945 at the Natural History Museum in London.
The plate shows the Tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae), a New Zealand endemic and one of three honeyeaters that occur there. The article accompanying the plate was written by Alan Reece Longhurst (born 1925). He is a well-known oceanographer and expert on plankton communities who spent a short time working in fisheries in New Zealand. He was born in Plymouth and after four years in the army he returned to London and university life. He graduated in entomology and then proceeded to a PhD on the ecology of notostracans. Fisheries research in West Africa then followed (with the short period in New Zealand in the middle). Spells in Plymouth and the USA were followed by a career in Canada. He became Director-General of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia.
Longhurst pointed out that the Tui survived successive human invasions of New Zealand the best of the three honeyeaters and is the one most likely to be encountered by visitors to the country. Its song and calls have a loud and distinctive song, quite unlike anything those from other parts of the world are likely to encounter.
Avicultural Magazine Vol 68, 1962
My eye was taken when looking through JOHN DUDLEY ROMER’s (1920-1982) notebook* on snake specimens he had collected or been given in Hong Kong. Under notes on the King Cobra or Hamadryad (Ophiophagus hannah) he wrote:
Specimen from Lan Tao Island (Fatal Snake-bite Case)
A specimen (still alive) which had killed a man on Lan Tao Island [now Lantau or Lantao] was received from Marine Police on 8th August 1957. It was retained alive until 10th August 1957, then killed and returned to Marine Police.
After noting data from its scales (important features for taxonomy and identification) and sex (female), Romer founds its length was 2,135 mm immediately after death, 2½ cm shorter than when alive. In short this King Cobra was 7 ft 1 inch.
The China Mail of Friday 9 August 1957 reported the case but were waiting confirmation that the man had died. Romer told the newspaper that the snake is very rare in Hong Kong.
While snake-bite fatalities were rare in Hong Kong, those working in the countryside were at the greatest risk from this and other venomous snakes. With the virtual end of agriculture in Hong Kong that risk has probably shifted largely to those clearing vegetation or jogging/walking for pleasure.
The King Cobra, which is not a cobra at all, is the longest venomous snake, sometimes in excess of 5 metres, in parts of its range, and thus able to strike from a considerable greater distance than the much more common Chinese Cobra (Naja atra) for example. The venom is mainly neotoxic; human deaths can occur in 30 minutes. As its generic name suggests, it is an important predator of snakes but not averse, apparently, to making a meal of other vertebrates, sometimes I read constricting its prey.
*After Romer’s death his papers were deposited in the library of the Zoological Society of London. The last time I was there I did not have time to see what that Romer archive held. Then Jack Greatrex of the Department of History in the University of Hong Kong contacted me. As part of his research on the history of pest control he was going to be in London and offered to send me his gleanings from the ZSL library. I of course accepted gratefully and Jack, now at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, sent me photographs of the various pages.
In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the 11th in the series.
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The artist is not mentioned in the text of the accompanying article and I cannot make out the signature in the corner. The picture has been seen by some as a photograph rather than as a painting but the signature and composition, even allowing for the reproduction, seem to point to it being on canvas. As pointed out by Mike Curzon when he reported breeding this species at a now-closed bird garden in Rode, Somerset, it was a poor representation of the coloration. There are modern photographs of this species here.
The bird was unusual in captivity at the time because it is found in the Atlantic forest of Brazil which was not then the site of major collecting for the live parrot trade. Having later been subjected to the usual problems and habitat loss and over-collection, the population of the Red-tailed Amazon (Amazona brasiliensis) is now said to be increasing again. It is classified in the IUCN Red List as ‘Near Threatened’.
The article was written by Patrick ‘Pat’ Hall Maxwell who was well known in avicultural circles of the the 20th century.
A very short account of Maxwell’s life is given in The Eponym Dictionary of Birds (EDB). The reason his name appears there will become apparent below.
Patrick Hall Maxwell was born on 31 May 1912 in London. He was a son of the Raj. In 1912 his father, Percy Alexander Maxwell (1883-1951), who was born in Darjeeling, was a Captain in the Indian Army. Before transferring to the Indian Army’s 3rd Brahmans in 1903, after passing out of Sandhurst in 1902 Percy Maxwell served in the South Lancashire Regiment. During the First World War he served in the 3rd Brahmans and in 94th Russell's Infantry in the Mesopotamia Campaign, being promoted to Major in 1917. In 1919 he was appointed OBE (military) for services in Mesopotamia; he was then with the 1st Brahmans.. He retired as a Lieutenant-Colonel but I have been unable to fund the date when he finally returned to UK. The London Gazette though shows that he finally retired, from the Indian Army Reserve, on reaching the statuary age in 1938, i.e. at 55.
Patrick Maxwell’s mother was Mary Beatrice Game, the daughter of a farmer. She married Percy in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1909. In 1921 Major and Mrs Maxwell, presumably on leave from India, were staying with her parents in Evesham. Patrick was boarding at Eastacre, a preparatory school in Winchester.
Patrick Maxwell joined the Avicultural Society in 1929. His address is shown in membership lists as that of his parents: Ebberley Hill, St. Giles, near Torrington, Devon, until the 1944-45 volume of Avicultural Magazine.
It is clear that during the 1930s Maxwell kept birds in Devon, presumably at Ebberley Hill. Given his job as an assistant librarian in 1939 and his enormous support for the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter (see below) I do wonder if he was employed at the Central Library in Exeter after leaving school (which would have been around 1928). The library and museum were essentially the same institution and were located one opposite the other on the same street. Where else but a museum would a bird-mad young man spend his spare time during the working week?
In the 1939 Register, the emergency census, he was living in London, at 2 Queensway Place, Kensington; his occupation was ‘assistant librarian’. Notes in Avicultural Magazine over the wartime period show a variety of addresses in addition to the parental home. In 1941 came Palmer’s Dairy, Queen Street, Lynton, Devon—was he staying there on holiday? In 1942 the address was the National Central Library in London (later incorporated into the British Library). I think it is safe to conclude that in the war years up to 1944, Maxwell was employed as an assistant librarian in London. His notes indicate that his birds were ‘on deposit’ at Paignton Zoo and at London Zoo by 1940, suggesting his collection had been broken up by his move to London.
The EDB states that he worked as a keeper at Paignton Zoo. When this was and how it fitted into the rest of his life I do not know and have been unable to find out.
In 1944-45 he worked at London Zoo and provided notes on new arrivals to Avicultural Magazine. He then moved his postal address from that of his parents to The Salvation Army Red Shield Club, 28 Euston Square. He also donated birds and kept some of his own birds at the Zoo.
How he came to get the job at the Zoo is an interesting question. He was already well connected with the inner circle of the Avicultural Society. He was proposed for membership in 1929 by a fellow parrot fanatic Miss Emily Maud Knobel, of whom I have written previously and who, along with other members, were either employed by or had deep connections with London Zoo. Maxwell was sufficiently well known to be a founder member of the inner circle, the British Aviculturists’ Club, which met for the first time on 10 April 1946 at the Rembrandt Hotel in London.
In 1946 he moved to Whipsnade where he ran and probably set up the Parrot House (until its removal in 1958) which housed the zoo’s own birds, birds he had donated and others of his own. The Parrot House was a new addition to Whipsnade. The wooden building had been the Fellows' Tea Pavilion before the Second World War and then an Air Raid Wardens’ lookout post over the surrounding countryside. Maxwell’s parrots were a far cry from the building’s role in entertaining King George V, Queen Mary, the Duke of York (the future George VI) and Princess Elizabeth (QE II) on 23 April 1934, on the first royal visit to the zoo.
It is on Maxwell’s period at Whipsnade that there is more information recalled in 2021 by Bernard Sayers, another noted aviculturist, in a series of articles in Keeper Contact, the excellent and informative newsletter published by Paul Irven. Bernard Sayers wrote:
Patrick (Pat) Hall Maxwell (1912-1991) used to regularly attend meetings of the Avicultural Society and it was there that I met him. He was a small, intensely shy gentleman who was invariably sitting alone in a corner. I felt rather sorry for this seemingly lonely man and made a point of sitting alongside of him and engaging him in conversation, and I am very pleased I did because not only was he a lovely person, but he had enjoyed a very interesting life.
Pat came from a very wealthy family who owned extensive properties in London. Judging by his cultured accent and impeccable manners I deduced that he went to a public school. He always insisted on calling me Mr Sayers although I repeatedly urged him to call me Bernard. Being of independent means he spent his life working as a zoo keeper at Paignton, London (1944) and at Whipsnade (1946-1966) [Information from EDB].
Pat had a particular interest in the parrot family and with his considerable wealth, he would buy many of the rare species which came onto market. Yet, since he had no settled home or garden of his own, he could not keep them himself. Instead he loaned his birds to zoos and several went to Len Hill`s Birdland at Bourton-on-the-Water. These included the two female Lear`s macaws which, for many years, were the only examples of this species in this country. The only exception was a red-tailed Amazon parrot (Amazona brasiliensis) which he kept as a pet. At that time the National Exhibition of Cage Birds was held at Olympia around Christmas of each year. The exotic birds were exhibited on the balcony and for several years Pat showed his red-tailed Amazon parrot there. It created considerable interest because it was thought to be the only example of this species outside its native Brazil. Pat acquired this bird in the 1950s and it died in 1968. [It is his Red-tailed Amazon that was the subject of the article and plate in Avicultural Magazine.]
When I used to meet Pat Maxwell he was retired and living in a London hotel. I often regret that I did not get to know him better so I could have learnt more details of his remarkable life.
Half the parrots in the parrot house belonged to London Zoo (having been brought over from Regent`s Park) and the remainder were the property of Pat Maxwell. Pat was the keeper in charge of the parrot house and when it closed he wanted to continue on the bird section. Unfortunately, for some reason, Pat had an uneasy relationship with Harold Tong, Whipsnade`s Director, who instead transferred him to the camel section which did not please him.
Ernest Harold Tong (1908-1992), Superintendent of Whipsnade from 1947 was a land agent. The derision in which managers of zoos with little experience with, or a deep, even obsessive, interest in animals, are held by keepers continues to the present day. Maxwell was also a fish out of water. In the Zoological Society of London’s zoos, there was a strict hierarchy just like that in the armed services: Keepers were the private soldiers, Head Keepers the NCOs, Overseers the Sergeant Majors, Curators and Superintendents the Officers. Maxwell, of the officer class, was working as a keeper.
I was told by Clin Keeling (and may even have read somewhere) that Pat Maxwell was well connected with senior figures in ZSL in the 1940s and was part of the communist or extreme left-leaning and pro-Soviet cabal that existed at Whipsnade.
Between 1939 and 1951 he presented specimens—the EDB states over 300—to the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter, about 35 miles from his parents’ house in north Devon. The present catalogue of the museum shows that they now have 15: 12 birds and 3 mammals (see here). The birds range from a Rhea, Cassowary and Andean Corner to a Gouldian Finch and a Hummingbird.; the mammals are a Maned Wolf, a Saki and a Springhaas. Many are on public display. Some were professionally mounted by taxidermists; others were skins.
What I cannot determine is whether he actually collected any of the specimens from the wild. Although the catalogue has a few in which he is shown as the collector, I suspect there has been confusion as to whether he was donating birds of his or of others that had died in captivity. The Kea he presented falls into that category. Similarly, Maxwell recorded that he bought live birds brought to this country by the collector/dealer Wilfred Frost. Dead ones from the Frost and other collectors may have been bought by Maxwell and handed on to the museum. He certainly bought birds from other collections, possibly from salerooms or dealers; the original labels are still attached.
The EDB states that he travelled from the 1940s to 1970s to ‘Africa, Samoa and the Solomon Islands’. I do not know where this information came from but if inferred from the Exeter museum catalogue then that information could be wrong. I have failed to find any shipping records to indicate the dates of Maxwell’s travels or any record of their existence. The only mention he gave to travel was a note in Avicultural Magazine in 1967 about a trip to Jamaica, shortly after he retired from Whipsnade at the age of 54. He may, of course, have travelled more extensively by air after that. The only clue I have of his other travels is that in the letter to Avicultural Magazine reporting the death of the parrot in 1968 he ended with ‘I have travelled over a great part of the world’.
Maxwell as a member of the British Ornithologists’ Union and although there is no mention of his death in Avicultural Magazine there may be in its journal. Since there is no proper index to the minor items published in The Ibis and the relevant back issues are behind an expensive paywall it would cost a fortune to check in there online. A visit to a library with a full run on the shelves is needed.
Before moving on to his entry in the EDB it is interesting to note that his donations to the Exeter museum ceased in 1951. He had sent specimens, including his eponymous one, from London Zoo. It was around this time there was a great hoo-ha about the distribution of dead material from ZSL and of who had priority in getting their hands on it. In the ZSL there is an exchange of letters in 1949 between Maxwell and George Cansdale, then Superintendent at London Zoo, about sending dead snakes to Exeter.
I suspect Maxwell spent many hours as a young man in the Exeter Museum. Willoughby Prescott Lowe (1872-1949) was from the 1930s the honorary curator. In the 1939 Register, Lowe, living in Exmouth, described himself as ‘naturalist, working free for Exeter Museum). He was a famous collector for the Natural History Museum in London who in ‘retirement’ set out to improve the Exeter collection. That is where Maxwell played his part in donating specimens. It was Lowe who named a specimen provided by Maxwell after Maxwell. Under the title, A New Banded Rail from the Philippines, Lowe ended his note to the British Ornithologists’ Club with:
The Exeter Museum has recently received from P. H. Maxwell, Esq., this new Rail, which died in the London Zoo on February 29, 1944. It was obtained in Manila by the Hon. Anthony Chaplin, on the way back from Lord Moyne's expedition to New Guinea. It gives me pleasure to name this bird after Mr. Maxwell, who has generously presented to the Exeter Museum so many rare and valuable specimens.
The rail was named as a new subspecies Hypotaenidia torquata maxwelli.
The type specimen was given to the Natural History Museum in London in 1952. That catalogue has a different date for the bird’s death (31 March 1944) and Anthony Chaplin was then the 3rd Viscount Chaplin (1906-1981) who was Secretary of ZSL from 1952 until 1955. The fact that the Exeter Museum was giving specimens he had presented away (Lowe had died in 1949) may also have soured the atmosphere for future donations from Maxwell.
Sadly, but having read Lowe’s description, not surprisingly, Maxwell’s subspecies is no longer recognised as valid. It has been lumped into what is now Gallirallus torquatus torquatus.
After Maxwell left Whipsnade he is shown as living as a flat in London where he kept the parrot shown in the plate. After 1970 he lived in a variety of hotels, guest houses and care homes.
Patrick Hall Maxwell died on 17 October 1991 in a care home in Tunbridge Wells.
Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. 2014. The Eponym Dictionary of Birds. London: Bloomsbury.
Curzon M. 1995. Breeding the Red-tailed Amazon at the Tropical Bird Gardens. Avicultural Magazine 101, 49-51.
Lowe WP. 1944. A new Banded Rail from the Philippines. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 65, 5.
Maxwell PH. 1960. The Blue-faced or Red-tailed Amazon Parrot (Amazona brasiliensis (Linn.)) Avicultural Magazine 66, 1-2.
Sayers B. 2021. Whipsnade`s Parrot House, Pat Maxwell and the Blue Macaws (Part one). Keeper Contact Number 177 (November 2021), 13-16.
