Waved (Galapagos) Albatross at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago, in 1935: a colour plate from 1969

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 19th in the series.

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The artist of this plate and author of the accompanying article was Karl Plath (1886-1970). Plath had trained and exhibited as an artist in Chicago before being asked to become Curator of Birds at what is now called Brookfield Zoo in 1935; he retired in 1961. He also had a large private collection of birds.

Plath describes how three Waved or Galapagos Albatrosses (Phoebastria irrorata) were kept at Brookfield Zoo ‘some years ago’. One died after seven months, another after ten. But one lived for 4 years and six months—not long in albatross terms but considered a success at the time. Unable to take off in the large flight cage (30 x 12 metres and 7 metres high) the bird, thought to be a male, walked around swinging its head from side to side.

Plath does not provide a date but I have found a press photograph for sale online which shows two of the birds and is dated 25 July 1935, i.e. shortly after Plath joined the zoo. Who collected the birds—and why?

This date of 1935 means there is more to this article than a simple description of events because the way in which the bird was fed at the time is of interest to those of us who have been involved in the physiology of marine birds and the history of a key discovery in this field in the 1950s. I will expand on this thread in a future article.

Avicultural Magazine 75, 1969

The Besra in Hong Kong

This Besra (Accipiter virgatus) was photographed a few weeks ago in a tree it sometimes visits in the morning. The Besra is a forest bird but is known to frequent perches in the open at that time of day. It is widely distributed in southern Asia.

It is only in recent decades that the taxonomy and identification of sparrowhawks has been worked out. In the 1960s the Besra was completely unknown to Hong Kong birders. That is because there were only though to be two species visiting Hong Kong: the Japanese Sparrowhawk (Accipiter gularis) and the Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Both were thought to be passage migrants.  The Japanese Sparrowhawk and the Besra were thought to be geographical variants of the same species. When it was realised that two different species were involved, and it was found that one is actually resident in Hong Kong (Besra) and the other entirely migratory (Japanese) did the position become clear. The Eurasian is still a rare migrant.

Identification of the Besra as a Hong Kong bird, also cleared up our scratching of heads in earlier years, starting in 1966,  as we saw display flights of sparrowhawks above Hong Kong. We could not decide between the two stated to be there at the time. They seemed too big for Japanese and not in the season for migrants of either species. And would migrants be displaying?

The Besra must have become more common as there are more and more trees and bushes compared with the hillsides devastated for decades by the collection of firewood for cooking during the Japanese occupation. The latest field guide has them as ‘fairly common, widespread resident and possibly autumn migrant’ whereas in 2005 it was down as ‘a scarce resident, possibly with increased numbers in autumn’.

What’s this moth we saw in Portugal?

 

In a wood near Aljezur we saw this moth, best described as very hairy with very impressive antennae. Only after we got back home did we non-lepidopterists track down what it was. To confuse matters, it has recently had its name changed. We found a photograph online, also from Aljezur, of Ptilocephala albida. However, that species has been ‘split’ recently and the form in Portugal is now Ptilocephala lorquiniella.

The species is psychid moth, known collectively as bagworm moths since the larvae construct from silk and debris a case in which the rest and then pupate. Only adult males fly.

The Medawar 1959 Reith Lectures, ‘The Future of Man’

Soon after I had started ‘A’ levels at school in 1959, the two of us doing zoology were joined at the door of biology block by Jim Key (James John Key 1917-1976) the senior biology master. He had been arguing with Stan Revill (1907-1993), senior history master, and was keen to test his line for further sparring in the staff room. They had both listened to the BBC’s Reith Lectures by P.B. Medawar entitled The Future of Man. That was, of course, before Medawar had become Sir Peter and had been awarded the Nobel Prize. The staff room argument was about whether natural selection in Man, was over (Stan Revill’s stance) or not (Jim Key’s).

Fast forward from 1959 to 2024, I realised that I had never heard these lectures and thus found the one available on the BBC website (here). I also found a copy of the book Medawar published immediately after the lecture series. I think, having read virtually all of Medawar’s later books and having written on his insights in endocrinology, my expectations were too high since I was disappointed both by the lecture (the sixth of the six broadcast on 20 December 1959) and by the book. Was I judging with the benefit of knowledge gained over the past 65 years? Or were his choice of topics,  analogies and explanations not really that good? I strongly suspect that even for his audience on the Third Programme on a Sunday evening, his presentations would have gone over the heads of most.

At the same time as reading Medawar of 1959, I have been reading Venki Ramakrishnan’s Why We Die of 2024. I found myself agreeing with his views on Medawar’s later works:

Unlike many scientists who focus narrowly on one area, Medawar, like Haldane, had widespread interests, and wrote books that were famous for their erudition and elegant writing. Many scientists of my generation grew up reading his Advice to a Young Scientist (1981), which I found pompous, arrogant, thoughtful, engaging, and witty all at once.

The Future of Man can perhaps be described as a series of early essays, in the way of early works by an artist. The best was yet to come. There were though patches of where he put his message over extremely well, as on the genetic consequences of ‘social habit or act of legislation’ and of assortative mating. The book of the lectures is historically important because it deals with topics of human biological and cultural evolution that were being talked about by those in Medawar’s circle in the 1950s. I was therefore surprised to see that my cheap copy was one which had been withdrawn from a British university library. Do such institutions now just throw away important books by important authors away? I fear we are already depriving students the pleasures of browsing in a proper library and then wondering why they are bright but not learned.

…and can you imagine a publisher or the BBC producing anything with that title, or including the word ‘eugenics’ in the text, in 2024?

Medawar PB. 1959. The Future of Man. London: Methuen.

Great Mormon Butterfly in Hong Kong

AJP photographed this Great Mormon Butterfly (Papilio mormon) in the garden in May. He has seen large numbers of this large butterfly (around 5 inches -125 mm) this year.

Females are highly polymorphic. In some parts of southern Asia the females mimic toxic butterflies. The fact that the males have the choice of a number of different female forms within an area seems to have been responsible for their common name of ‘mormon’.

Great Mormons figured in one of the key papers on mimicry and its evolution. Ian Thornton (1926-2002) then Reader in Zoology in the University of Hong Kong sent specimens to Liverpool for breeding experiments and was a co-author of the paper with Sir Cyril Clarke (1907-2000) and Philip Shepherd (1921-1976) which was published in Transactions of the Royal Society in 1968.

I only discovered that Ian Thornton had been involved in work on the genetics of the Great Mormon when writing this note. I then recalled something odd about the department of zoology in those days. I never recall a single internal seminar. External visitors and talks by a host of distinguished scientists calling in Hong Kong, yes; but talks by staff and PhD students on what they were doing, no.

Clarke CA, Sheppard PM, Thornton IWB. 1968. The genetics of the mimetic butterfly Papilio memnon L.. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 254 37–89. doi:10.1098rstb.1968.0013

ANIMALS Magazine. Back to the 60s

 

ANIMALS magazine was launched in January 1963 by Purnell & Sons as a weekly. The editor was John Paget Chancellor (1927-2014) but television personalities were used as ‘influencers’ then as now, and the film maker Armand Denis was listed as Editor-in-Chief. For those not around then, Armand and Michaela Denis produced and presented On Safari, a hugely popular programme on BBC television in the 1950s. Not content with a celebrity editor-in-chief, Chancellor assembled  a collection of well-known naturalists and scientists as ‘patrons’ and ‘advisory editors’ (Julian Huxley, Solly Zuckerman, (13th) Duke of Bedford, Bernhard Grzimek, Gavin Maxwell, Peter Scott, Gerald Durrell, Nicholas Guppy, Alan Moorehead, Niko Tinbergen).

As well as articles ANIMALS ran extracts of books. It had an important role in drawing attention in Britain to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which it began publishing extracts soon after its launch and only four months after the book was first published in the USA.

At the time of its launch as a colour glossy, Purnells were in their heyday. However, it seems that ANIMALS was, by the mid-60s, not doing well; it is said that it ran at a loss for its four years with Purnell. In 1967 the magazine was bought by one of the assistant editors, Nigel Degge Wilmot Sitwell (1935-2017), who changed it to a monthly and cut the costs of production. Then in 1974 he changed the title to WILDLIFE. The magazine was sold to Reader’s Digest in 1978, then via another publisher to become BBC WILDLIFE which is still extant but which I have not seen for years. Nigel Sitwell, whom I got to know slightly 30-odd years ago, moved to other publishing, travel and conservation interests in Antarctica and the Galapagos.

Copies of ANIMALS are difficult to search for, given the title. It was, however, an important popular publication of its time and well worth reading as a source of what was going on in the world of animals and conservation in the 1960s.

Feral Gecko Populations in British University Buildings

Escapes and deliberate releases have been responsible for the occurrence of feral populations non-native amphibians and reptiles in Britain, ranging from Midwife Toads to Aesculapian Snakes. Tropical and sub-tropical species sometimes escape in heated, indoor accommodation but rarely in sufficient numbers to produce a breeding population. However, it does happen, as a recent paper illustrates.

Two feral populations of gecko have been found in buildings at the University of Hull and the University of Nottingham. The date when they were first noticed seems to be the late 1990s-early 2000s in Hull and the 1970s in Nottingham. Both populations have been identified as Hemidactylus turcicus, the Mediterranean House Gecko or Turkish Gecko, which, as its names implies is found in countries bordering virtually the entire Mediterranean coast. It is, like many geckos, nocturnal. However, like some others in the genus, it is now to be found found in other parts of the world where it has been introduced, probably in shipments of goods. It is, for example, found in the USA and Mexico and said to be abundant in Florida.

Molecular genetic studies suggested the Nottingham population is derived from a single or very few founding individuals. Those studied from the Hull population showed greater genetic diversity, suggesting a larger number in the founder population and/or evolution in situ.

The authors speculate that the two populations were established by individuals being kept by people as part of research projects. It may be that the individuals involved are known—or could be guessed—at one site or the other but ‘no names, no pack drill’ may apply.

In Britain, it is difficult to imagine sub-tropical or tropical reptiles becoming established in buildings, other than in those heated all day, every day, in the winter in the decades before the 1970s. Laboratory buildings were often freezing cold in vacations and at weekends—far too cold for most reptiles to survive let along breed and thrive. 

Just in case anybody is asking, have I left feral populations behind in the buildings I once kept reptiles? I do not think so but their food supply was a different matter: crickets, locusts and fruitflies and flour beetles were some of the escapees. In the one building still standing, the crickets may still be there.

Da Silva S-M, Maka A, Hartman T, Valero KW, Gilbert E. 2024. Two established introduced populations of the synanthropic gecko Hemidactylus turcicus (Linnaeus, 1758) in England. Herpetology Notes 17, 407-410