Should the Amesbury Hawk Owl Remain on the Wiltshire List?

109 Should the Amesbury Hawk Owl remain on the Wiltshire List? A personal view Pete Combridge and Paul Castle Introduction Harrop (2010) summarised a British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee (BOURC) review of ten British records of Hawk Owl Surnia ulula, the upshot of which was that only four were then considered acceptable. Among those rejected was a 19th century report of one shot in Wiltshire—but, because the reasoning behind the BOURC’s decision showed an astonishing lack of care and proper research, it was swiftly challenged by WOS (Combridge et al 2010, 2011) though to no avail (Harrop 2011). The Amesbury owl: occurrence and eventual identification The specimen was originally in the possession of William Long, who, following the owl’s eventual identification, was contacted about the circumstances of its occurrence by the Reverend AP Morres. Long’s reply was published in Morres (1878–85): ‘I am sorry I cannot fix the exact date when either myself or my younger brother killed the bird in question. All I can answer for is that it was killed in the parish of Amesbury, and some years since. My brother died in 1853 and I am nearly positive that it was before his death. I remember that it was in severe weather. I did not know of its rarity till Mr. Rawlence chanced to see it, and I felt great pleasure in giving it to him to add to his beautiful collection.’ The owl was taken by JC Mansel-Pleydell to London, where it was identified as belonging to the nominate race ulula by Richard Bowdler Sharpe and exhibited on 4 April 1876 at a meeting of the Zoological Society (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1876: 334–335). The original longhand minutes of that meeting (plate A) show that there were more than 20 Fellows of the Society present, including a number of prominent ornithologists whose names are still well-known today: Alfred Newton, Osbert Salvin, Henry Dresser, Howard Saunders, JE Harting and Philip Sclater (the last named simply being referred to in the minutes as ‘The Secretary [of the Zoological Society]’, a position which Sclater had held since 1859). Among those in attendance whose exploits are perhaps less familiar to modern birdwatchers was Henry Godwin Austen, an army cartographer who wrote a series of pioneering articles on the birds of northeast India (J. Asiatic Soc. Bengal 1870–78). The entry in the original minutes (plate B) concerning the owl is worth quoting in full: ‘Mr R. Bowdler Sharpe, F.Z.S. exhibited a specimen of the true Swedish Surnia ulula, obtained many years ago at Amesbury in Wiltshire, being the first recorded British killed example of this species.’ What happened to the specimen? Morres’s account not only shows that Rawlence was the first to realise the owl’s significance but also indicates that it was still in Rawlence’s possession after it had been exhibited in London. In 1942 the Rawlence collection, which was housed in 90 display cases, was given to what was then called the Salisbury, South Wiltshire and Blackmore Museum. Most of the specimens were considered to be too moth-eaten to be worth keeping and were burned, while the remainder were transferred to Liverpool Museums. Correspondence in the Salisbury 110 Should the Hawk Owl remain on the Wiltshire List? A personal view Museum archives dating from 1954 confirm that the Hawk Owl was not among the 13 species (represented by at least 15 specimens) sent to Liverpool (A Green in litt), suggesting that it was one of those destroyed. Alas, in January 2013 just eight of the species (nine specimens) received from Salisbury in 1942 are still to be found at Liverpool (T Parsons in litt), the sad remnants of James Rawlence’s once ‘beautiful collection’. Dramatis personae To evaluate the record properly it is necessary to know something of the human players involved. Both William Long and James Rawlence were sheep farmers (and the latter also a land agent) and were thus connected by class and profession. Given Rawlence’s interest in birds, it is not surprising that he would have been acquainted with JC Mansel-Pleydell, the famous Dorset antiquary and naturalist. Mansel-Pleydell founded the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club in 1875 and was its president until his death in 1902; among his published works on Dorset’s natural history were a flora (which ran to two editions), an avifauna and a book on molluscs (Holloway 1996, Allan 2010). Morres was Vicar of Britford and considered an ‘able ornithologist’ by the Reverend AC Smith (1887), though it appears that most of what Morres published on birds was based upon information supplied by friends and acquaintances (Barnes 1981, Collins & Jackson 2007). As one of the giants of 19th century ornithology, Richard Bowdler Sharpe deserves a paragraph of his own. Described by James Fisher (1966) as ‘primarily a global order-bringer to the science of birds but an active encourager of the pursuit of our own islands’ fauna’, Bowdler Sharpe began his working life in the book trade, during which time he began compiling his first major ornithological work, A Monograph of the Kingfishers (issued in 15 parts during 1868– 71). He was appointed Librarian of the Zoological Society in 1867 and from 1872 until his death on Christmas Day in 1909 was Curator of Birds at the British Museum. During his 37-year curatorship the number of specimens in the Bird Room increased markedly from just 35,000 to 400,000; to put this into perspective, some 90 years later the number of specimens stood at Should the Hawk Owl remain on the Wiltshire List? A personal view 111 about 750,000 (Roselaar 2003). Not content with this, Bowdler Sharpe contributed roughly half of the 27-volume Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–98), which was not merely a list of specimens then held by the museum but also contained plumage descriptions and other details, and is one of the most important works of systematic ornithology ever published. He also wrote several books and papers on ornithological matters, including The Handlist of the Genera and Species of Birds (1899–1909); completed works by John Gould and Henry Seebohm after their deaths; and founded the British Ornithologists’ Club in 1902 (Tate 1986, Mearns & Mearns 1998, Bircham 2007). Nineteenth century ornithology What kind of world did these men inhabit? The Victorians were fascinated by all forms of natural history, and at a time when optical equipment was, by modern standards, crude, serious ornithology was based mainly on collecting rather than on watching the living bird. In addition to the collection of specimens for scientific purposes, it was fashionable for the moneyed classes to display stuffed birds as conversation pieces in their homes; it is in this context that William Long’s retention of the Hawk Owl, even though he was unaware of its identity and thus clearly not an ornithologist, becomes explicable. The Victorian lust for collecting (which was not confined to birds but extended to other animal and plant studies, not least entomology and botany) created a demand that could not always be satisfied, especially among those wealthy amateur collectors who wanted rarities obtained in Britain. Such men were willing to pay large sums to enhance their collections, which inevitably led to unscrupulous dealers trying to pass off birds obtained abroad as taken in Britain. Expert ornithologists such as Alfred Newton and Howard Saunders were well aware of the problem, and so even though there was then no formal system for vetting the occurrence of rare birds, they either excluded, or included with a caveat, records which they believed to be erroneous or at best doubtful; see, for example, comments by Saunders (1899) on Ross’s Gull Rhodostethia rosea and Pine Grosbeak Pinicola enucleator. It should also be noted that one of the six Hawk Owl reports reviewed and found wanting by the BOURC, of an individual said to have been obtained near Greenock (Strathclyde) in 1871, was excluded by both Saunders (1899) and Hartert et al (1912), and regarded as ‘very doubtful’ by Witherby et al (1938–41). Our view that men such as Newton, Bowdler Sharpe, Saunders and Dresser were far from credulous and did not accept records at face value has recently been supported by McGhie (2012), who concluded that: ‘the leading naturalists [of the 19th century] were very aware of the potential for fraud…their working methods were developed to militate against impostures’. Despite such caution, fraudulent reports did enter the ornithological record, so it is worth considering next whether there are any indications that the Amesbury owl was other than a genuine vagrant. Was the Amesbury Hawk Owl an error or a fraud? If Long’s story were false, there seems to be two alternatives. First, that his memory was faulty and it had been acquired from another source to adorn his farmhouse, probably at auction or from a dealer (in which case its identity would surely have been known). An imported Hawk Owl would have been a novelty of great interest to collectors and thus almost certainly expensive to buy: Mearns & Mearns (1998) noted that the prices fetched at auction for bird specimens ‘was sometimes extraordinarily high’. Had Long bought the owl, with these points in mind it seems unlikely that he would have forgotten not only the transaction but also what it was. The second possibility is that Long obtained the owl purposely to deceive. But if that were the case then a precise date of collection and other details would surely have been invented to add veracity to the claim, and it would have been sold, not given, to Rawlence.

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