Mr Birdman
He glided, literally above the vultures of the Magaliesberg. He ventured into Congo jungle to encounter naked hunters with savagely filed teeth. And he lost his heart to the Okavango Swamps.
A brief tribute to Ken Newman at the time of his death.
A fuller biography of this remarkable man’s life appears in Have Wings, Will Fly [Chapter 14 Page 220. Okavanga: Flying with an Eagle Eye].
I’d like to read you a paragraph I once wrote. It refers to all of the world’s best bird artists – but as it applies especially to Ken Newman - I shall use the personal pronoun:
“He set himself the impossible aim of trying to capture the essence of a bird …
- the essence of a life-form born of a reptile that can float on air;
- a being which encapsulates the colours of flowers, the wings of the spirit, sometimes, even the ferocity of a blackmaned carnivore.
He tried – as others, since Stone Age artists and ancient Egyptians, tried before him – to freeze in a single frame the colours, shapes, patterns, energy, mystery; the magic and the luminescence of a bird.”
It was those things that Ken discerned, and wished to share with everybody.
Only now, after his death, are his contributions to humanity and Nature beginning to be fully appreciated. Apart from being Africa’s ‘Mr Birdman”, his achievements were many… and his influence global in some respects.
It was he, as much as anyone in the world, who taught people how to identify - in an almost sub-conscious instant - shapes flying in the air. As a boy too young to enlist for service early in World War Two, he was recruited to teach Allied airmen, plane-spotters and anti-aircraft gunners his arcane skill which allowed them to tell the difference between Allied aircraft and the enemy flying over Britian.
There is no time tonight to describe that novel, yet life-or-death talent which he and his young friends were called upon to develop in others, but it leaves us with the possibility that Ken Newman may have been the author of the concept of Jizz, and even perhaps partly responsible for that almost indefinable noun.
He was born and bred in England, but when he arrived here shortly after World War Two, he soon gathered as much knowledge about this continent’s natural wonders as any individual in Africa.
His favourite place was in a makoro on the waters of the Okavango Delta. Or in a glider soaring above the highest vultures on the Highveld. His most memorable place was probably an unnamed patch of equatorial jungle beyond the Congo, on the road to Timbucktoo. It was near Lake Chad that the jalopy in which Ken and his young bride were travelling broke down irretrievably. As night fell the lost couple were marooned, without food, human contact or any form of communication.
In the gloom they suddenly saw a face. It appeared at their window, heavily scarred with patterned cuts. It smiled, and they saw in the torchlight two rows of file-sharpened teeth.
Ken had met an unknown tribe. “The women as well as the men were quite naked, except for a little flap they wore. They were primitive, he said – and wonderful people. “Some of the nicest we ever met” .
* * *
Ken was a true gentleman in the best, old fashioned sense – one who believed self-importance and self-interest were anathema to the spirit.
His life was dedicated to sharing with others those so-called “moments of magic” which he had discovered in a special area of life on this planet. In propagating to the world awareness of this ‘life force’ he was exceeded in the past century by only one man I believe - Roger Tory Petersen who had, 30 years previously, through his art and obsession, popularised birding and turned it into a tourist industry in the United States.
Ken would spurn as irrelevant my attempt at listing his achievments in this same field. But his work was highly relevant, and all the world should be aware of and grateful for it.He pioneered a popular form of bird guides which outsold all other books in Africa except, until quite recently, the Bible. His books followed a clear, instantly grasped formula inspiring similar bird-guides here and in many other countries. If you go back to his simple six-step route to bird identification, set out in different words in almost all his works, you will see how effective his teaching is and how big his influence has been.
Fortunately, even in death he will be with us, and our children and our children’s children for a long time. His works, his advice, his paintings and his unspoken philosophy will continue, through other birdmen and women in one form or another, to benefit all of us, and especially those of us who revere Nature.
All of us, directly or indirectly are privileged to be part of what he represented in Africa. |
