Contributions to Bull NOS and Malimbus | SHORTCUTS |
Extract from Malimbus Vol. 30, Issue 1, March 2008
Bob Sharland: a
tribute on his 90th birthday
John Elgood and Bob founded
our Society half of Bob’s lifetime ago, in February 1964, when ornithologists
throughout West Africa were as rare as hens’ teeth. Bob lived in Kano, John the
length of Nigeria away in Ibadan, and our journal, then the rather primitive Bulletin
of the Nigerian Ornithologists’ Society, was produced in Zaria. From the
outset Bob took an active role, furthering our interests in every way possible.
He made six contributions to the four issues of the Bulletin in 1964,
and he shared his already substantial knowledge of Nigeria’s bird life by
keeping an ever-open door at home and jumping at the slightest chance to take
like-minded newcomers on birding trips far and wide across the north of the
country.
An
accountant by profession, for years with Nigerian Oil Mills, Bob was, and
remains, an all-round naturalist. His main interest is birds, in particular
mist-netting and ringing them for study purposes, but he has an enviable
field-won knowledge also about butterflies, trees and flowers. An avid
conservationist, he has given much support too to the Nigerian Field Society
and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation. N.C.F. Scientific Committee Chairman
Phil Hall writes: “When I first arrived in Nigeria in 1972, Bob was always
available to provide support and advice as well as a comfortable bed at his
house in Kano. In the first few months of my stay, we travelled together to
Malamfatori on the NE shore of Lake Chad where we spent a week ringing
Palaearctic migrants at the Fisheries Station and I was able to learn an
immense amount from his considerable knowledge. He was a very enthusiastic bird
ringer and until he departed from Nigeria, he maintained the Nigerian Bird
Ringing Report. In 1985, he returned to Nigeria in the company of John Ash
to undertake a comprehensive survey of important bird areas throughout the
country on behalf of ICBP and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation. The report
that they subsequently published laid the foundations for a sound conservation
programme in Nigeria and many of the areas that they identified are now fully
protected. On behalf of the Scientific Committee of the NCF, we would like to
wish Bob a very happy 90th Birthday and would love to welcome him back to
Nigeria to enable him to see at first hand everything that has been achieved as
a result of his pioneering work.”
When I left Nigeria in 1967,
Bob took over the administration of the Society’s affairs, filling the offices
of Secretary and Treasurer until 1978 and remaining as Treasurer and Membership
Secretary to this day. Perhaps no-one has contributed more than he has to the Bulletin
and Malimbus: some 85 papers, articles, notes and reports altogether
(a full list of Bob’s publications in our journal may be found on the W.A.O.S.
web site). The very first was his report on bird ringing, a feature that
con-tinued annually until his 28th report in 1986. The breadth of his
birds-in-the-hand and ringing interests is shown by articles on netting
hirundines by flicking (1965), weights of Sedge Warblers and Reed Warblers
(1966), recoveries of flava wagtails (1967), recaptures of resident
birds (1967) and ringing recoveries between Nigeria and E Europe (1997). Another regular feature over the
decades has been his annual Accounts.
Bob’s greatest passion has
been wetland birds. As a member of the International Wildfowl Research Bureau’s
Duck Working Group he published a series of papers in the Bulletin on
wildfowl censuses. Anything that keeps its toes wet caught his imagination, and
the journal has seen articles of his on Finfoots (Finfeet, he calls them),
Pygmy Geese, Little Bitterns, Hottentot Teal, Three-banded Plovers, Cormorants,
Marbled Ducks, European Moorhens, Black-headed and Grey-headed Gulls. Another
strength has been the compilation of annotated regional avifaunal checklists,
on the Jos–Bauchi Plateau, Tivland, Mallam’fatori, Yankari Game Reserve (now
National Park), Nindam Forest (Kagoro) and of course his own much-loved Kano
State (1981, Malimbus 3: 7–30). In his affectionate obituary of N.O.S.
co-founder John Elgood in Malimbus 21: 74–75 (1999), Bob recalls that
when John stayed with him in 1976 John produced a report on the wetlands
between Hadejia and Nguru, for Kano State Department of Agriculture, which led
to the area being officially gazetted as a Wetland Reserve. You can bet that
Bob undertook a large part of the fieldwork.
The Marbled Ducks and
European Moorhens were new to W Africa, as was Bob’s Olive-tree Warbler netted
in Kano. Of land birds, cuckoos have always interested him and back in 1959 it
was he who taught me, completely green to African ornithology as I was, how
widespread Solitary Cuckoos are on Fernando Po island (now Bioko): they were
calling on all sides, though we never did see one there. Many years later he
posed for me the riddle of supposing that Black Cuckoos must be in the Zaria
district even though at that time none had ever been seen or heard, nor a
feather or egg found. Answer: Zaria Snowy-crowned Robin-Chat songs contain
Black Cuckoo mimicry. But later we found that both species are rare spring
visitors there from the south, so maybe the robin-chat learned to imitate the
cuckoo far afield.
Bob has always been an early
bird, a very early one. At the Pan-African Ornithological Conference in Lilongwe,
Malawi, I remember getting up early to put in some pre-breakfast birding and
being startled to come across the black form of Bob just discernible in rank
vegetation, silhouetted against the early dawn light shining from the river
surface. He was staring fixedly at something through his binoculars. For a
whole minute I scanned the river bank where he was looking but could see
nothing. Approaching him, I was mischievously teased with “Look for the eye,
there, in the reeds.” but still drew a blank until he pinpointed the huge eye
for me and its owner gradually took shape around it: a rare White-backed Night
Heron, to this day my one and only encounter.
Bob’s discovery of that eye
was an admirable piece of field craft; he was and doubtless still is an observant
naturalist with an excellent eye of his own (and a fine ear too). It is a
tribute to his enthusiasm and determination, that in his eighties he regularly
travelled with nature tours to every corner of the world in search of birds,
plants and insects. May he find plenty more exciting destinations well into his
nineties too.
All of this tells of Bob
Sharland the ornithologist, his love of Nigerian bird life and his support for
our Society and unfailing promotion of its interests over the decades; but it barely touches upon his
personality: Bob Sharland the man. It is by way of his engaging
character, generosity of spirit, solicitous hospitality, friendship and always
being there for his colleagues, that he has made such a mark upon W.A.O.S.
Mike Dyer recalls that,
arriving in Nigeria to study Red-throated Bee-eaters at Ahmadu Bello University
in Zaria in the early 1970s, “Bob’s enthusiasm was immediately apparent and in
no time at all he had arranged to come back the following weekend on a long detour
(a daunting task in those days, travelling between Kano and Zaria) to pick me
up and head off into the bush somewhere. That is absolutely characteristic of
him. For the next four or five years heading off into the bush with his nets
and camping gear at weekends became something of a ritual.
“It was on visits to Old
Birnin Gwari, lion country well to the west of Zaria, that I have my fondest
memories of him. Usually we arrived well after sunset. Bob would pull off the
road straight onto an overgrown bush track and drive for miles into the middle
of nowhere. Suddenly he’d stop at a derelict, half-roofed mud shack, which was
to be home for the weekend. Shuffling about before dawn, clanging net-poles and
tripping over things before he headed out to set his nets up was routine, and
dawn had hardly broken before he would return with some exciting Grey-headed
Olive-backs or some such, measure and ring his captures, take a quick
breakfast, then back to the field for the day. Another time there he saw some
swifts drop out of the sky at dusk and dive into an abandoned village well.
Long before dawn he was up and about, draping his mosquito net over the well’s
entrance, and again breakfast was heralded by Bob’s reappearance, this time
with a great catch of Mottle-throated Spinetails.”
Arriving in Kano to take up
a position at Bayero University in 1977, Roger Wilkinson also greatly benefited
from Bob’s kindness: “He was back in Nigeria from his first retirement when my
wife and I first met him. Having heard through the grapevine that a fellow bird
enthusiast was coming to the university and managing to find out exactly where
we were staying, he was kindness personified, inviting us to his house for good
companionship, conversation and food. One particularly memorable meal was a
stew of Knob-billed Goose bulking out the flesh of Nigeria’s first Marbled
Teal, shot from a flock of 50 by a hunter near Nguru. On later occasions Bob
would come to our home for dinner but once he and I were very late; we had been
trying to net nightjars but succeeded only in bringing home mist-nets full of
bats that Bob insisted had to be dealt with before we could start the meal.
“His life has been
dominated, or so it seemed to me, by his out-of-office and even out-of-town
activities. A keen and experienced mist-netter and ringer, he took us many
times to his ringing sites and favourite birding spots near and far from Kano.
As a true naturalist he had boundless energy and enthusiasm for life and for
birds, trees and flowers, preferring always to leg it through the bush rather
than sit to see what might come by. It is amazing that at 90 Bob retains all of
his zest. I have learned much from him, am privileged still to be able to enjoy
his company, and wish him many more years of outdoors enjoyment.”
For Gérard
Morel, ex-President of W.A.O.S., the relationship with Bob was a little
different: “I lived for many years in Senegal, far from Nigeria, and our
contact was only by letters. But on retiring back to France I soon made sure to
meet Bob at the annual meetings of W.A.O.S. Council in England and on the
continent, where several meetings were held between 1990 and 2000 in Normandy
and the Netherlands, where Bob did not hesitate to join the other participants
and demonstrate once again his passion for birds.
“But I
should like to highlight his essential role in the Society, in carrying out
many uninviting and often obscure administrative tasks. He continued to monitor
the accounts, look for the best and cheapest printers, remind forgetful members
to pay their subscriptions and manage the distribution of the journal. Little
used to computers, but always with great concern for economy, he would write in
the briefest letters his precise requests in a concise but perfectly clear
manner. It is thanks to his management that the subscription was maintained for
so long without increase, without adversely affecting the quality of the
journal, in fact, quite the contrary.
“I find it
hard to imagine the Society without Bob and cannot forget the warm welcome at
his peaceful house, deep in the country near a waterway and, as President, I
owe him a great deal and thank him for such a pleasant and efficient
collaboration. May you well continue, dear Bob, en route to your
centenary.”
It is with great pleasure
that W.A.O.S. Council has offered Bob Honorary Life Membership as a small
birthday present in token of our gratitude.
Hilary Fry