Educator, Adventurer and Conservation Advocate
THEIR STORY
As a child growing up on the central coast of NSW, Doug’s enduring memory is of pelicans coming to rest on calm and protected waters close to the family home. He loved that they could be both graceful and cumbersome and assumed pelicans would always be part of his life, until they weren’t. Rapid urban development in the 1960s saw a town and images of childhood transformed and the pelicans were no more. Perhaps this triggered an early conservation ethos but birds were not then part of a life imagined and yearned for outside the confines of a small Australian town.
In the mid-1970s he set off to discover a world beyond, as did so many young Australians of the time. It was on a kibbutz in Israel that a nesting Collared Dove and the friendship of a British birdwatcher rekindled a long dormant interest in birds. 50 years on they remain long distance friends.
In a working life that has included periods overseas and in remote Australia, birds have been an important thread in making new communities in new places, and forging friendships that endure to the present day. In the late 1980s Doug met biologist Tim Low at the tip of Australia where they were both working. Birds provided an instant rapport but it was Tim who encouraged Doug to broaden his view beyond ‘the bird’ to the ecosystems on which its life depended. So was opened the door connecting birds to the extraordinary world of plants, of biogeography and to all the wondrous diversity of the natural world.
Whether in art, music, books, gardens and design, even in sport, birds continue to enrich Doug’s life as a theme in so many aspects of life with family and friends.
From the Founders:
Doug, you were the first to spark our curiosity for birds, and years later you brought them back to us. Without you, LYFER wouldn’t exist. Thank you for inspiring us to create our own way of raising awareness for birds.
What is one bird encounter you will never forget?
Grey-breasted Seed-snipe (Thinocorus orbignyianus). Encountered on treeless Andean steppes in Chile at about 4000 metres above sea level. Its closest genetic relative, the Plains Wanderer (Pedionomus torquatus) lives half a world away on the flat, treeless Riverine grasslands of eastern Australia at about 90 metres above sea level!
Both the Plains Wanderer and the three species of Seed-snipe have long been emblematic for me as they beautifully represent our unique Gondwanan heritage and a world connected by birds.
You’ve got a golden ticket to go anywhere in the world to see a bird? Where would you go and why?
My golden ticket will take me to the small island of Ua Huka in French Polynesia, which is the final refuge for the critically endangered Ultramarine Lorikeet (Vini ultramarine). During the 1970s, the bird could still be found on three other islands in the Marquesas group. However, due to deforestation and especially predation by invasive black rats and cats, the Ultramarine Lorikeet had disappeared by 2008 from every island except Ua Huka.
To see the bird in its natural habitat would be, for me, a thrill but at the same time sad reminder of the terrible impact of invasive species on birds and other wildlife worldwide, but particularly on small Pacific islands like this, where bird species after bird species has gone extinct because of the ravaging rat!
How is birding part of your life today?
From the home garden to the local nature reserve, from local sports ovals and riverside walks to national parks, birds are part of my life. They take me into nature, if sometimes only for a short while, and away from life’s constant noise and intrusions. Birds cause me to pause and listen, to admire nature’s beauty and occasionally become a ‘citizen scientist’.
Friendships forged, and sometimes renewed through birds have endured over half a lifetime. It is an interest that I’ve always been able to share with my life partner and together we’ve travelled a world and lived a life accompanied by birdsong.
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