Here, photographed at Geelong Gallery on the day we deinstalled our show All breathing in heaven, is Gracia with a bound and finished copy of my artists' book A Flight of Twelve Southern Hemisphere Birds in hand. You can see the hand-coloured feathers of May's Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae), June's Grey-rumped Treeswift (Hemiprocne longipennis), July's Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), and August's Red Knot (Calidris canutus).
And here is G's explorer's narrative for this feathery quartet. Enjoy!
MAY
Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae)
SUNDAY 19th
10.15 PM
Tiny little Ninox novaeseelandiae of mainland Australia, Tasmania, and the coastal islands. Tiny little Ninox novaeseelandiae,
lover of the open desert and the dense forest. Why, you’ve charmed your
way into May placement. Sighted nesting in a tree hollow one night, I
fell that hook, that line, that sinker, for your great big eyes and your
small frame. Though your love of the rodent as delicacy is one I cannot
with my palette come to appreciate, I admire you all the same. You talk
to me of their paper fine ears tasting like the finest morsel and I
find myself wincing ever so slightly. But no love was ever smooth in her
course, and so I find myself both drawn closer and repelled. Caught in
your talons, a small grey tail and I think of childhood tales (of
Anatole the mouse with the expert knowledge of cheese, and Ratty and his
beloved riverbank). And so, my handsome little tiny Ninox novaeseelandiae
I will draw your portrait with you and your young encircled by a ring
of mice. A mischief of mice for the two of you, only please, pray, make
their demise swift. (In writing this love missive to a Boobook I realize
that the winter isolation is already taking its toll. I am
metamorphosing into a true Twitcher before your very eyes. My mannerisms
have quite altered, and I fear all forms of normal society may well be
closed to me forever now. But what for that cared the besotted,
mania-bitten. What indeed.)
JUNE
Grey-rumped Treeswift (Hemiprocne longipennis)
TUESDAY 11th
3.30 PM
In
a mangrove forest in the Malay Peninsula, I spot the easily detectable
Grey-rumped Treeswift from a distance. The tail is like a pair of
long-bladed scissors, and the inclement weather is on my side. As they
perch on the twigs for a rest, showing me same cheek as Gould, I draw
the portrait of this non-migrant. For their generosity, a halo of
butterflies (Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing (Trogonoptera brookiana), Common Lascar (Pantoporia hordonia hordonia), The Wizard (Rhinopalpa polynice), Wavy Maplet (Chersonesia rahria), Horsfield’s Baron (Tanaecia iapis)).
My fascination with birds has struck me quite late and J. Ruskin’s
lament, when he mulled over a life he deemed 'wasted' on mineralogy,
echoes my own wilderness steps: "Had I devoted myself to birds, their
life and plumage, I might have produced something worth doing."
JULY
Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus)
MONDAY into TUESDAY 22nd / 23rd
1.40 AM
My
first meeting with a Kakapo on Codfish Island (Whenua Hou), New Zealand
was as befits this marvelously robust flightless bird, most fitting. It
bowled me over one night as it clambered about. Took me by terrific
surprise. The ambush! Bewilderment! There was I stumbling in the dark on
the forest floor looking for one when one found me. Many may describe
such a flightless bird as being ridiculous and stocky, but I can assure
you it was I who felt ridiculous and cumbersome as I fell face forward.
If one of us was to look the lumbering goose it was not the rampaging Strigops habroptilus
en route to create a performance arena to woo a female. All the
nightlong I could hear its subsonic mating boom. July’s portrait to
scale thus drawn from memory. It’s giant claws looked like tree roots,
its focus was intent, and even in night’s cloak, its feathers a most
luminous green and yellow.
AUGUST
Red Knot (Calidris canutus)
THURSDAY 8th
Near to 11 AM
As
we pass the halfway point of the year, if I thought for but a moment
that my to-ing and fro-ing in search of particular birds was of immense
proportions, a cursory glance at the annual flight patterns of the Red
Knot soon returned my head to right proportion. Now at the south east
Gulf of Carpentaria, I await their arrival. Made up of many subspecies
(the nominate subspecies Calidris canutus breeds in the Taymyr Peninsula and in central- north Siberia, for example, whilst the subspecies C. rogersi breeds in north-east Siberia; the subspecies C. roselaari breeds at Wrangel Island, Siberia, and north-west Alaska; subspecies rufa breeds in the Canadian Arctic; and subspecies C. islandica breeds
on the islands of the Canadian high Arctic and northern Greenland. Have
I lost you yet, dear reader, to the factual whirl of the fan?) Beholden
to the mudflats, sandflats, estuaries, bays and inlets, lagoon and
harbours, to sight a Red Knot I know where to look. I know too of the
food they fancy, and so as I wait, I prepare gastropods, crustaceans and
echinoderms. Worms, and bivalves too. And with too much time on my
hands, I have arranged my gastropods and worms so as to spell out the
word ‘Welcome’ on the sandy beach. Fearing they may mock my sign or deem
it too much, I flip my prearranged crustaceans over and reshuffle my
bivalves until the arrangement now loosely resembles the words 'Eco' and
'Mewl'. Though upon reflection, perhaps now this merely renders me
foolish. Of all those in the animal kingdom, surely it is humans who are
by far the most ridiculous. I wait for the Red Knots like a nervous
host unsure anyone will come, the mangled words of Nietzsche in my ear:
"I fear the animals regard man as a being like themselves, seriously
endangered by the loss of sound animal understanding; they regard him
perhaps as the absurd animal, the laughing animal, the crying animal,
the unfortunate animal."
In the background:
STUDIO SUMMERS
established Rome, Italy, 1869-1901
Charles F Summers (sculptor)
Australian 1858-1945; living and working in Italy 1867-1901
Figure of Ruth, seated on a rock 1890
marble
Gift of David and Berna Hume Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2009
Geelong Gallery
