By Rupi Mangat
In Summary
Six weeks, six thousand kilometres and six hundred species
of birds later, 89-year-old Dr Dale Zimmerman, emeritus professor of
biology at Western New Mexico University, US, walks into the foyer of a
Nairobi hotel on the eve of his return flight to New Mexico in late
October.
The return visit
Dr Zimmerman has just concluded a visit to Kenya, his first in
20 years. He is no stranger to Kenya. He first came to the country in
1961 as an accomplished birder.
He co-authored and illustrated East Africa’s first bird guide book of note, Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania with
Donald A. Turner and David J. Pearson and illustrators Ian Willis
and H. Douglas Pratt in 1996. As Fleur Ng’weno, doyenne of Kenya birding
told Dr Zimmerman, “We’re all in your debt.”
Sometime in the 1970s, Dr Zimmerman met Turner at the
ornithology section of the museum in Nairobi and the duo hit it off
immediately.
“We were lamenting that there were no books about birds in Kenya
and so we decided to write one ourselves,” Dr Zimmerman says of the
beginning of the book that’s been reprinted several times since and is
now a hard-to-get hard cover copy.
It took the team 10 years to write and illustrate the book.
Background
Born in Michigan, US, Dr Zimmerman became interested in birds as
a child. By age six, he was fascinated by African wildlife, drew birds
and dreamed of coming to Africa. “I continued to dream all the way to
university,” he chuckles.
He studied bird art and natural history at the University of
Michigan. He got married after graduation and went birding across Mexico
and the US. In 1952 he received his PhD from the University of Michigan
and still had not made it to Africa.
Starting out in life, “poor as a church mouse,” in 1960,
Zimmerman wrote to Bob Lowis, a safari operator bringing clients to
Kenya. “It was on a whim,” he recalls.
Zimmerman’s fame as a birder was already widespread and Lowis
offered to take him on a three-week safari for free if Zimmerman taught
him something about birds.
With no field guides to birding in Kenya, Zimmerman cut out all
the pictures from existing books — all heavy technical tomes — of birds
he expected to see and pasted them in a notebook with spaces left below
to make notes. He called his parents to ask if could borrow money for
the air ticket to Africa. “My mum felt that if I got to do the trip, it
would get Africa out of my mind.”
In 1961, the eagle-eyed naturalist flew to Nairobi. “I
immediately wanted to drive into Nairobi National Park to see the
giraffes, to say nothing of the birds,” he says.
It was then that he met John Williams, curator of birds at the
then Coryndon Museum (today’s Nairobi National Museum) who got him
permits to collect bird specimens in the field. Williams became
Zimmerman’s mentor.
Dr Dale Zimmerman and a guide at the Kakamega Forest. PHOTO | EDWIN SELEMPO
Dr Dale Zimmerman, Edwin Selempo and a guide at the Kakamega Forest. PHOTO | COURTESY | EDWIN SELEMPO
Returning to America, Zimmerman’s only thought was how to
return to Africa. In 1963, Zimmerman received a grant from the American
Museum of Natural History to cover his expenses for him to conduct a
census of bird species in the virtually unexplored Kakamega Forest.
In 1965 and 1966, he received another grant from the National
Science Foundation to continue work in Kakamega Forest — living there
for three months at a time. “It had astounding birdlife, you could see
leopards and tree pangolins and the butterflies were endlessly
fascinating.”
What he found
So the trip back to Kenya this year was a homecoming of sorts
for Dr Zimmerman. In the company of noted Kenyan birder and artist Edwin
Selempo, whom Zimmerman met at Elementaita in 1994, he toured the
country from the Coast to areas of an altitude of 5,,000 metres above
sea level, walking from dawn till the late hours of the night tracking
nocturnal birds.
He was surprised by the changes in Kenya’s landscape.
“Kenya used to be one of the birdiest places on the planet. I’m
appalled at the reduction in numbers of all the bird species in the
country and I’m very concerned. Americans used to flock to Kenya for
birding safaris. It’s no longer the case, with Tanzania and Botswana now
attracting the birders. The habitats in Kenya are shrinking fast. The
grasslands, swamps, wetlands are disappearing. We saw very low numbers
of almost all the species,” he lamented.
“It’s impossible to repeat the same counts today compared with
even 10 years ago,” added Selempo. “Walking around Naivasha’s lakeshore,
logging in 200 species in a day, was doable back then. Today one would
be hard-pressed to see 75,” he said.
Zimmerman further noted; “Lakes Naivasha and Nakuru used to be
premier world birding sites, now Lake Nakuru is almost birdless, because
of siltation from the deforested catchment, and pollution from
industries. Lake Naivasha is on the brink of an ecological collapse, and
it’s mostly pollution from the flower farms and human settlements.
“The entire character of the Kakamega Forest has changed. It’s
under pressure from illegal activities. During this dry season it was
silent,” he said.
“That is so,” agreed Selempo. “The road that runs through
Kakamega Forest is busier, more people are going into the forest to
collect firewood and to graze cattle. We saw two recently cleared forest
patches with crops growing and this really worried us. There is
generally more disturbance and the birds were very silent probably
because of the drought,” added Selempo.
According to Ng’weno, Nature Kenya (short for the East Africa
Natural History Society) and the East African Wild Life Society are
aware of this, regularly alerted by members like Turner.
Ng’weno said: “The obstacles are enormous. In Naivasha we must
contend with invasive alien species, a booming horticultural sector that
brings in foreign exchange, and runaway housing development promoted by
politicians at the highest level. There have been numerous attempts at
environmental management of the lake by local environmental bodies like
the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association and Imarisha Naivasha, but so far
they have been unable to overcome all the obstacles.
“However, Nature Kenya is active on the ground in Naivasha and
Kakamega, supporting local birding clubs that are working at the
community level,” she added.
Nature Kenya is Africa’s oldest environmental Society. It was established in 1909 to promote the study and conservation of nature in East Africa, connecting people and nature.
Nature Kenya is Africa’s oldest environmental Society. It was established in 1909 to promote the study and conservation of nature in East Africa, connecting people and nature.
On this latest trip to Africa, Zimmerman trekked up the Virunga
Mountains in Uganda to see the mountain gorillas, as he says, “one more
time.” People decades younger would be hard-pressed to keep up with him.
The epic tome
In the late 1980s, Zimmerman and his wife flew to England to
meet the editor of a prestigious publishing house about the book idea.
The editor agreed to publish it.
Work on Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania began.
Zimmerman designed all the plates (an enormously hard task in the
pre-computer age) and painted all the perching birds and the bulk of the
other birds. But in 1988, with his eyesight weakening, Zimmerman
enlisted Willis and Pratt. Specimens were borrowed from the American
Museum of Natural History in New York, which boasts one of the largest
collections of African birds, and from the Smithsonian Institution.
Zimmerman’s paintings are highly rated. When painting the birds
for the book, he would hold the bird for hours on end to get the exact
colour of plumage. It is what puts this field guidebook in a league of
its own.
“And I always painted the eyes last because that’s what brings
the bird to life,” says Zimmerman. And the white glint in the eye was
never painted – it was the white of the paper the bird was painted on.
Awareness
Zimmerman has published hundreds of papers and is author of Turaco Country: Reminiscences of East African Birding, published in 2015 and available on Amazon.
“Knowledge is the most important thing. Young ornithologists
have to read and go out in the field. Until interest is developed, there
cannot be effective conservation.
And without knowledge of pre-existing conditions, there is no hope,” said Ng’weno, Kenya’s foremost naturalist.
And without knowledge of pre-existing conditions, there is no hope,” said Ng’weno, Kenya’s foremost naturalist.
Selempo agreed. “If you don’t know what you have, you don’t
care. You can only care about something you love,” he said. It’s a
wake-up call for the government and stakeholders. Kenya is a signatory
to many international treaties like the Ramsar Treaty for wetlands to
protect natural resources yet there’s little to show on the ground.
Despite his concern over Kenya’s dwindling birdlife, flora and
fauna, Zimmerman at the end states that it was still a phenomenal
safari. According to him, it’s a matter of striking the right balance
between nature and development.
“The professor is planning another visit next year after the
rains so he can come up with a more conclusive report that will be
presented to the relevant people,” said Selempo.
Hopefully, his report will help Kenya regain its once internationally famed birding safaris.
But this is only possible if those in government and the tourism industry take birding seriously.
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