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Volume 118, 2016, pp. 686–687
DOI: 10.1650/CONDOR-16-85.1

BOOK REVIEW

Birders of Africa: History of a Network

Reviewed by Peter G. Ryan

FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa
Pryan31@gmail.com

Published August 3, 2016

Birders of Africa: History of a Network by Nancy J. Jacobs.
2016. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, USA. xiii þ 325
pp., 16 color plates (a subset of the 48 black-and-white text
figures). $85 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-300-20961-7.

This volume chronicles how

Africa’s birds came to be known.

Nancy Jacobs recognizes three

distinct types of bird knowl-

edge—vernacular, ornithologi-

cal, and recreational—and

weaves a complex tale of how

they have developed and inter-

acted through her ‘‘network’’ of

birders. She adopts Ted Eu-

banks’s refreshingly broad view

of birders as people who ‘‘find

their way to nature through

birds,’’ and takes this to include

anyone who observes birds, even

if it’s only to better hunt them or

keep them from one’s crops. I

suspect that many ‘‘traditional’’

birders would bridle at calling

such consumptive/combative

relationships ‘‘birding,’’ but Ja-

cobs uses this premise to argue

that most rural people are bird-

ers.

A central question of the

book is how colonial ‘‘ornithol-

ogists’’ interacted with—and

exploited to varying degrees—

Africans who possessed ver-

nacular knowledge of the re-

gion’s birds. This question is addressed mainly through the

lens of southern and central Africa. There is little mention

of the exploration of birds in Francophone or Portuguese

Africa, or in the Abyssinian region. Jacobs explains this

bias in terms of the much richer archival tradition in the

former British colonies, but, at least in the first half of the

book, the focus on the south strikes me as deliberate, for it

was there that the arrival of seafaring Europeans in the

16th century had the greatest impact on local communi-

ties.

The wide-ranging Introduc-

tion outlines the author’s ap-

proach to her diverse and

challenging subject. It is fol-

lowed by two sections, each

containing four chapters.

Chapter 1 deals with vernacu-

lar birding knowledge in Afri-

ca, starting from precolonial

times. It provides a wealth of

interesting anecdotes about

the roles ascribed to birds in

traditional beliefs, although

some details are confused

(e.g., the ‘‘predatory uno-

myayi’’ [Cape crow] is referred

to as ‘‘European rook’’). Sever-

al stories are related to myth-

ological ‘‘birds,’’ but Jacobs is

not concerned about objective

veracity; to her, an interest in

birds (in the broadest sense)

qualifies as knowledge.

Chapter 2 considers the

earliest contacts between the

Dutch and various indigenous

peoples found at the Cape.

Here, Jacobs has little material

with which to work; there is

more on the transfer of knowledge about plants than about

birds, and many of the author’s inferences are based on the

interactions of Dutch physician–botanists with people in

Asia rather than in Africa. Chapter 3 describes the

development of ornithology in southern Africa from

1700 to 1900. It is here that Jacobs clearly espouses her

Q 2016 Cooper Ornithological Society. ISSN 0010-5422, electronic ISSN 1938-5129
Direct all requests to reproduce journal content to the Central Ornithology Publication Office at aoucospubs@gmail.com

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views on the strong links between imperialism, racialism,

and ornithology: ‘‘The leading partisans of European

empire would include ornithologists, soldiers, and gover-
nors who conquered people and occupied territory’’ (p. 78).

Strong stuff to place ornithologists at the head of this

egregious pack! Many British officials in the 19th and early

20th centuries were indeed frustrated naturalists, but this

was not the case in the 18th-century Dutch colony. She

goes on to dismiss Peter Kolb’s observations on birds

because Cape sugarbirds don’t eat insects (which of course

they do). Most of the rest of Chapter 3 is devoted to a
discussion of the development and cultural implications of

nomenclatural systems. Chapter 4 explores the importance

of authority and its alignment along racial lines in African

ornithology. I found the contrast between Latour’s ‘‘hard’’

and ‘‘soft’’ facts particularly illuminating. However, the

distinction between recreational birders and ornithologists

in this regard is somewhat artificial; some of the

continent’s best observers and recorders of natural history
over the past half century have been, first and foremost,

‘‘recreational’’ birders.

The second part of the book explores the lives of

selected birders as exemplars of the various roles played in

the scientific discovery and description of Africa’s birds.

Chapter 5 explores the boundaries imposed by white

ornithologists on their African field assistants, based on

the careers and writings of George Bates, Reginald
Moreau, and Leslie Brown. Chapter 6 chronicles the life

of renowned collector Jali Makawa, based mainly on the

diaries of the ornithologists with whom he worked and on

the recollections of people at Choma, where he retired.

Chapter 7 investigates the role of African museum workers

in Apartheid South Africa, exemplified by Saul Sithole and

other technicians from the former Transvaal Museum in

Pretoria. Collectively, these chapters provide fascinating
vignettes of a largely bygone era, highlighting the racial

inequalities that underpinned relations across the conti-

nent.

The final chapter, ‘‘Birding Revolutions,’’ brings us up-
to-date in the current African birding context. It touches

on the end of the colonial era, the rise of professional

ornithology, and the growing role of recreational birding

in ornithology through citizen science programs. Earlier

in the book, Jacobs recognizes three key interactions

among birders: talking/writing, collecting, and making

specimens. This was perhaps accurate up to the end of the

20th century, but the focus in the past decade or so has
shifted from collecting to photography. The advent of

high-quality digital photography has created a new set of

collectors of bird imagery rather than skins. The final

chapter concludes by noting the growing importance of

conservation and of conservation NGOs in driving bird-

related research across Africa, and the need for strong,

flourishing networks among birders for conservation

initiatives to succeed.
Jacobs is a historian based firmly in the social sciences.

To an ornithologist, the text can be hard going in places,

although it is leavened by numerous avian anecdotes and

insights into the lives of many African birders—some well

known, others less so. Despite some inaccuracies about the

birds themselves, the book challenges one’s views of the

development of ornithology in Africa, and of the way

colonialism mined the continent for knowledge as well as
physical resources. As Jacobs notes, this inequality persists

today; by far the majority of ornithological study

throughout Africa is still conducted by researchers based

at northern institutions, with at best limited knowledge

transfer to the communities where the research is based. It

is unfortunate that the book’s price tag means that no

more than a handful of copies is likely to reach Africa.

Book Review Editor: Jay Mager, j-mager@onu.edu

The Condor: Ornithological Applications 118:686–687, Q 2016 Cooper Ornithological Society

P. G. Ryan Book Review 687