About Books: Extinction Birding

Mark Lynch

August 1, 2023 10 MIN READ Book and Video Reviews

There are many books that recount people’s birding adventures. Many of these memoirs focus on a birder’s experiences during a Big Year or accruing a huge life list. Some books tell the story of a life birding in a single location. I had yet to read a book that describes how the birders themselves changed over the decades. I came across Martin Painter’s Birding in an Age of Extinctions almost by accident. This book was not on my radar. I had not heard of the title and knew nothing about the author. Luckily the publisher sent me a copy. On the surface it looked like just another birding memoir. I was wrong.

Painter has not been a birder for that long. He took up birding later in life when he moved from Sydney to Hong Kong and got his first exposure to birding culture from joining the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society. He fell head over heels for birds.

I haven’t been a birder for very long, but I have packed a lot in. I have spent a great deal of time, money and energy searching out new birds and accumulating a life list (to date) of around 6,000 species. For a hardcore world birder, a life list of 6,000 species is just a start (there are nearly 11,000 species to be ticked off in total). I have some traveler’s tales to tell. But in writing about this experience, I first of all wanted to share some of the joys of just being a birdwatcher. So, this book is in no small part a celebration of the joys of loving birds, told through the lens of my own experiences. (p. xi)

Although he does not go into details, the reader can divine from where Painter chooses to seek out birds that he has significant funds. Painter goes on many leader-led trips to see select rare species like Giant Ibis, Invisible Rail, and Western Tragopan. Many of us cannot afford these rarity-focused trips. Painter’s writing about these amazing field experiences is balanced by his writing about what else he saw while traveling. Possibly because he got into birding later in life, Painter has a more nuanced and mature take on his adventures. He often brings up troubling observations about global birding and about the conditions surrounding the preserved areas he visits. Everywhere he goes in the world, it is obvious that the natural world is in decline.

He is also concerned about the impact of so many birders on the birds and their habitats. “The backdrop was my growing exposure to a world of nature that was in decline under the relentless pressures of human activities.” (p. xii) This theme appears throughout Birding in an Age of Extinctions. Modern technology and infrastructures have made many of these formerly remote areas where critically endangered species live easily accessible to those global birders who have the money. This accessibility means increased pressure on the birds and rare habitats.

And yet, as we look more closely at what birders do and why, we also get a hint of some of the technologies and modes of thinking that define the Anthropocene as an era of nature-in-decline. The desire of a growing number of world birders to see new birds has spawned an industry devoted to nature, particularly rare and remote habitats, more accessible, meaning more intruded upon. We travel great distances and, in the process, emit large quantities of harmful emissions and consume scarce resources as we demand quick, and relatively easy access to pristine habitats. (p. xiv)

But in this way, we accept piecemeal and “last resort” remedies to the harm we see being done. Not arrest and reversal of the underlying causes. Moreover, as a result, many rare birds, thus corralled, are more accessible to be enjoyed and (for a birder) to be ticked off with greater ease and comfort. We go “extinction birding”. We put nature into sealed, hermetic containers, like specimens on a laboratory shelf or decorative stuffed bird skins under a glass dome, to admire and inspect for our benefit as much as for nature’s. (p. xvii)

On a trip to tick the endemics of Madagascar, Painter notes that the unique Spiny Forests of that island are now debased and diminished, with only about three percent of the remaining habitat in reserves and most of those reserves not well-managed.

Deforestation due to expanding settlement and agriculture has already depleted Madagascar of most of its forests. The dominant landscape in the central parts of the island these days is rolling grassland, dotted with a species of palm that is resistant to fire, and not much else. The recent uncontrolled growth of charcoal production is another nail in the coffin of the remaining forest and natural scrubland. Living in the dry, marginal agricultural lands of the southwest, when faced with the vagaries of crop failure, the short-term certainty of a regular cash income from charcoal is a godsend. But in the longer term, the accessible supplies of wood disappear. Villages that were once surrounded by scrub and by trees are now surrounded by near desert. So, the tracks snake further into the landscape and new settlements spring up down the road, where the scrub is still exploitable. The boys with the water cans lived in one such settlement, where there was no water supply. (p. 63)

Similarly, in the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia his trip witnesses motorbikes and trucks illegally carting off wood from the sanctuary.

The forest was being shipped out, piece by piece, by an army of paid carriers and petty thieves, their loot heading for the timber yards and furniture factories across the border.

This is not the place to apportion blame, nor to go to remedies. In the Keo Seima forests, close to highways and even further afield, the impact on wildlife of this accelerating deforestation is potentially devastating. More than 60 flora and fauna species found in Keo Seima are listed as Threatened or worse by the IUCN Red List. Aside from some of the mammals already mentioned, the sanctuary contains the world’s largest known populations of Black-Shanked Douc Langur and a large population of Southern Yellow-cheeked Crested Gibbon. The Asian Tiger (the Indo-Chinese subspecies) is now considered extinct in the region.

We birded close to the highway in logged heavily degraded habitats where we found sparse populations of barbets, pigeons, bulbuls, leafbirds, woodpeckers and other species that cope with forest edge and disturbed habitats. (p. 56)

Sanctuaries can be created to protect rare birds and animals, but the rapidly growing human populations around those sanctuaries pose an unrelenting pressure on the plants, animals, and birds in those protected spots. Painter visits the Pantanal region of Brazil, as have many birders, and has some fine experiences there with trip organizers that tried hard to minimize their impact on this fragile environment. Painter looks at the dirt roads that crisscross this important wetland and sees a dark side to the experience.

The great majority of birders and other ecotourists try their best not to leave a heavy footprint when they visit such a place. Of course, the dusty highway is there for them as much as it is for stock drivers. But we tell ourselves our presence brings economic benefit and offers for conservation. We provide an economic alternative to more intensive forms of development that might degrade the ecosystem and diminish the Pantanal’s attraction to ecotourists. This will probably not, in the long run, be enough. (p. 51)

Painter is also interested in what we now consider wild or pristine areas of nature. Many of the places he visits are cordoned off areas to protect the rare species, sometime resorting to captive breeding and hand feeding. All this so that when the hardcore birders come, the trip leaders and guides can give them their “David Attenborough” moment: seeing rare birds closely and easily photographed.

The creation of such illusions about “being in the wild” and “entering into the world of nature” to enjoy its wonders is happening for birders all the time, on a number of levels. Later in the book, I will describe my encounters with wild birds which have been effectively “corralled” into safe spaces such as reserves, and there habituated to the presence of birders and others. Some of these birds may have been hand-reared and released, others relocated to this safe location. (p. 69)

On the Indonesian island of Halmahera, Painter’s group searches hard in the remote and shrinking sago swamps for the legendary Invisible Rail and dips despite repeated visits and the use of recorded calls. He then ticks a staked-out Wallace’s Standardwing from a hide just a short distance from the parked cars. That bird essentially was handed to them on a plate. One of the real pleasures of Birding in an Age of Extinctions is that Painter examines the experiences of birding. Was the search for the rail or the quick tick of the Standardwing a more genuine experience of wild nature? Furthermore, Painter is finding that, for now at least, some of the rarest species are paradoxically fairly easy to find.

Somewhat ironically, more and more of the world’s rarest species by the IUCN criteria are increasingly easy for birders to find (and common where found) precisely because they are rare. This is because their rarity gives rise to conservation efforts: captive breeding and reintroduction to the wild, supplementation of diet at known breeding sites and protection from human hunting and natural predation. Our visits to protected areas where they are being looked after are often encouraged as a source of support for the conservation efforts. The birder knows where to go to see the remaining populations and the local keepers know exactly where to take us, even if there are only a few hundred individual birds to be found.

Birders more and more visit places where birds that are on the brink of extinction are being looked after in the hope of saving them. They go extinction birding. They know where to go and, when they get there, the birds are often easy to find. (p. 119)

Painter writes that birders can be part of the problem, contributing in their own way to the global environmental crisis. Birders, by the very nature of our passion, are high end consumers, and many of us leave a large carbon footprint every week. Many of us justify our mileage by car and plane as not mattering, being just one person’s gas miles in a global crisis with many worse offenders. We hope someone somewhere will come up with a fix that will not inconvenience our birding. But it all adds up. I am amazed how many birders in this state who within just one day will drive over half the state just to tick uncommon—not even rare—species whose locations are many miles apart. These are often species they have seen before. Chasing and ticking birds can become a habit that is tough to break. I know. It is important to note that some of us have decided to cut back on driving all over just so our year list is huge.

As I have argued, birders and birding can’t escape being implicated in this tragedy, however much we engage in efforts to mitigate it. World birders in particular participate in the kind of over-consumption that is helping to drive the escalating biodiversity crises. Global tourism, including avian tourism, invariably carries some degree of threat due to the fragility of many places that are labeled “must visit”. While there are significant benefits to wildlife from the birding industry, the stronger the incentives to bird in the remaining accessible hotspot locations, the more likely it is that mass birding will result in growing levels of intrusion and disturbance to the birdlife. Meanwhile, no nook or cranny of the world’s diverse but diminishing wilderness habitats will remain unexplored by intrepid birders as they pursue and capture their trophies. The harder the birds get to see, the more they will be sought after. In the process, the risks of over-exploitation will grow in these places, as well as in the more accessible ones. (p. 160)

But even if we all reduce our carbon footprint, Painter writes that it will probably not be enough.

And now, as I write this in December 2020, we are struggling to cope with a global pandemic that has to all intents and purposes shut down worldwide travel. From this perspective, I look back on my own globetrotting as a birder and wonder whether that kind of activity will ever be possible again. The Golden Age may already be over. (p. 158)

So, the good times may be coming to an end. The continuing destruction of habitats and the increasing levels of threat to ever more species, if left unchecked, could shortly reduce life on the planet to a pale shadow of its current (much less its former) state. The irony, or tragedy, of all this is acute: just as birders gained the means better to engage with and enjoy the whole world of birds, so that world seems to be falling apart. We can dip into our pockets (if they are deep enough) to pay the additional costs of post-pandemic world travel and we can do something towards a “fix” for this and future pandemics through advances in science and technology. But the alarming and accelerating decline of wildlife (aside, that is, from viruses and bacteria) is another matter. Money and technology alone may not be enough. (p. 159)

After all this doom and gloom, I do not want to leave you with the impression that Birding in an Age of Extinctions is a depressing apocalyptic book. Far from it, and that is part of what is unique about it. Painter includes many great tales of birding and the trip leaders who guide them. His trip leader to the Great Himalayan National Park in Himachal Pradesh, India, ran the trip like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld, complete with a long list of protocols that were to be strictly obeyed or “no tragopan for you!” Some of the participants were surprised to learn that their cameras would not be allowed. They learned this only after they arrived at the bird’s location. Painter gets in trouble because of his hat which was deemed not appropriate for viewing tragopans. Have you ever wondered what would happen if on one of these expensive trips to see a mega rarity, only a few people see the target bird while others do not? Read this book to find out.

There are chapters on pelagic birding, birding on hotel grounds, and mad listers. Even though Painter started as a serious lister, the more he sees global hardcores on trips, the more he begins to question what they are really doing. “At some point, one must begin to wonder what some of these listers are enamoured with, the birds or the lists?” (p. 95)

Finally, Painter realizes he loves watching birds and decides to do much more local birding. He can spend time watching birds behave and have less stress thinking about what he could be contributing to a global decline of habitats and birds. To put it plainly, he evolves.

Seeing new birds is less and less the main thing. I am recovering something more fundamental about birdwatching that got me started in the first place, namely just a love for birds, while winding back on some of the more peripheral, secondary and mundane elements of being a birder. (p. 164)

Birding in an Age of Extinctions is a complex and fascinating book, a stealth classic in its own unique way. The book is nicely laid out and the text is enhanced by many color photographs and maps. Painter shares his wonderful experiences looking at some of the rarest birds on the planet and is always looking beyond the immediate thrill to ask some important questions. Few bird books do that. Ultimately Painter just loves watching birds. “I happily confess to being a mad birder.” (p. xi)

To listen to my interview with Martin Painter, recorded for my show Inquiry on WICN (90.5), please click on this link:

https://wicn.org/podcast/martin-painter/