Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh has died at the grand old age of 99. Much will be written about him over the coming weeks, but we wanted to focus on one particular area – his passion and enthusiasm for birds and bird watching. Because no matter what one’s feelings are about some of the more colourful aspects of his life, it can’t be said that he didn’t do an awful lot of work for wildlife conservation.
He held several positions at conservation organisations including international president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), now the World Wide Fund for Nature, from 1981 to 1996, and patron of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) from 1987 to 2020.
When he was a young man in the Royal Navy Prince Philip admitted that he knew very little about birds. Apart from game birds such as pheasants, he thought that all birds fell into one of three categories: sparrows, seagulls, and ducks.
However, he had taken a long interest in photography and attributes his interest in birds and conservation to the purchase of a Hasselblad camera, bought in 1956 in Stockholm while he was there for the Equestrian Olympics.
During his time in Sweden, he didn’t get a chance to try out the camera. It was only when he embarked on a four-month voyage to Australia to open the Melbourne Summer Olympics later in the year that he began to use it to take pictures of the birds he spotted around the Royal Yacht Britannia.
The purpose of the trip was to visit some of the island communities and outposts of the commonwealth. From Kenya the yacht sailed to the Seychelles, and on to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Malay (Malaysia), Papua New Guinea, Darwin, Alice Springs and finally to Melbourne.
After the Olympic Games the expedition continued from New Zealand to Chatham Island taking in a number of isolated islands in the South Atlantic including South Georgia, Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, and ending at St Helena.
He became the first member of the Royal Family to cross the Antarctic circle, which entitled him to join the Order of the Red Nose, an exclusive group open only to members who have completed the journey.
To commemorate the event, the Duke of Edinburgh and the aptly named artist Edward Seago, who accompanied the Duke for part of the tour designed a lino-cut certificate, featuring an image of Philip sporting a red nose with a penguin and seal looking on.
On being told of a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965, he quipped, “Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don’t you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat and save a bird?’”
The voyage inspired Prince Philip to write a book which was published in 1962 in the UK as Birds from Britannia, and in the US as Seabirds in Southern Waters. It is well known to bird watchers and nature lovers around the world for its wonderful photographs of birds including blue noddies, wandering albatrosses, frigatebirds, skuas, petrels, and king penguins.
He accompanied the photographs with vivid descriptions, describing the voyage:
“The colour of the sea can vary enormously, the North Sea, for instance, has a peculiar greyish-green colour even in fine weather. The sea off the west of Scotland has a special black look about it.. The wine-dark seas of Homer’s Mediterranean are again different from the inky black of Antarctic and to the much greener blue of the Indian Ocean…..”
In 1959 Prince Philip embarked on a second expedition which began in Singapore, then on via the Straits of Malacca to Sandakan, Hong Kong, Malaita Island, Vaitupur, Christmas Island, through the Panama Canal before arriving in Bermuda to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the island being a colony of the Crown.
Although there were fewer opportunities to photograph birds as he spent more time ashore, he noted that the gardens of government houses were full of interesting specimens.
During one particular stop-off he invited the US ambassador, who was also a keen bird watcher aboard the yacht. As they were scanning the sea looking for birds, the ambassador said to Philip that there seemed to be a remarkable lack of ornithological activity that day.
Thinking for a moment, Prince Philip retorted in typical fashion, “You mean there are no bloody birds”.
When he returned to London he became friendly with Sir Peter Scott, the British ornithologist, painter, and sportsman, who was in the process of setting up the WWF with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Scott persuaded Philip to join the WWF as president of the British arm of the organisation which he accepted. He commented, “almost before I could tell the difference between a Bewick and a whooper, Peter Scott got me involved in the formation of the World Wildlife Fund.”
He later contributed three chapters to the book Wildlife Crisis, published in 1970 to raise funds for the WWF.
He wrote:
“Simply as a pastime I tried to take photographs of birds. That did it; from then on, I was hooked. I had to know what each species was called. I had to try and get a reasonable picture of every species that came anywhere near the yacht.
“It is only a matter of short time of birdwatching and photography before the question of survival of the species begins to dawn on the mind.”
In October 2020, the Royal Family shared several photographs from the Duke’s expedition to Antarctica to mark Prince William succeeding him as patron of the BTO.
The photographs, posted on Instagram, included two of the Duke encountering Adelie Penguins at the Penguin Rookery Base, near Adelaide Island, and a copy of the Red Nose certificate.
A fourth image captured the Duke with Sir Peter Scott, and Minnie, a bronze-winged duck.
Prince Philip’s interest in ornithology – or bloody birds – continued throughout his career. He took the opportunity to study birds in the wild while on visits around the world, including Africa, Iceland, South America, Canada, and the Galapagos Islands.
He was also instrumental in arranging for his brother-in-law, Lord Snowdon, to get in involved in the design of the aviary at London Zoo.
In 2018 it was revealed that Prince Philip still enjoyed bird watching. In a special Royal series to celebrate its 30th anniversary Countryfile filmed the Prince in a simple wooden shack in the grounds of Sandringham.
It was one of a matching pair of ‘his and hers’ hides on the 20,000 acre Norfolk estate that he used to observe wildfowl, waders, and birds of prey. The other was reserved for the Queen who also enjoys bird watching and who is patron of the RSPB.
Sandringham’s head gamekeeper, David Clark, said of the spartan structure, “You’re not here for comfort – it’s to see what’s on the water out there.”
Mr Clark explained how the estate was landscaped to reflect the interests of the Prince. “You get thousands of birds here in the winter. I thought it would be good to have wetlands as we have so many migrating and wild fowl waders and we could make something really special.”
Prince Philip apparently had no problem reconciling his love of field sports with his interest in conservation. In the introduction to Wildlife Crisis he wrote:
“Stalking deer and shooting game birds was so much a part of my relations that it has never been a moral problem as far as I am concerned, although I realise it can raise strong emotions in others. I came to conservation through shooting and bird-watching.”
To anyone with a conventional view of pleasure, the idea that there might be any thrill in wildfowling [the pursuit of geese and ducks] or rough shooting must seem too painfully ludicrous to be considered. Yet this is the stuff of natural history, this is a certain way to arouse an enthusiasm for conservation.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 10th June 1921 – 9th April 2021
