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| The Prince's book - its original price was 21 shillings (£1.05) |
IN the wake of the sad death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, birders have been snapping up copies of one of his books.
Birds from Britannia is an account, published by Longman in 1962, of birds he watched from Royal Yacht on two separate voyages - in 1956-1957 and 1959.
These included such species as blue noddies, wandering albatrosses, frigate birds, skuas, petrels, and king penguins.
The purpose of the first trip had been to visit some of the island communities and outposts of the Commonwealth.
From Kenya the Royal yacht sailed to the Seychelles, then to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Malay (Malaysia), Papua New Guinea, Darwin, Alice Springs and finally to Melbourne where he opened the Olympic Games.
After the Olympics, 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.
On the second voyage in 1959 the yacht set sail from Singapore, then on, via the Straits of Malacca to Sandakan, Hong Kong, Malaita Island, Vaitupur, Christmas Island, and through the Panama Canal before arriving in Bermuda to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the island being a colony of the Crown.
In the gardens of various government houses, he was enthralled by the range of birds, many of them highly colourful.
During one particular stop-off, he invited the US ambassador, who was also a birder, aboard the yacht.
As they were scanning the sea looking for birds, the ambassador is said to have commented to the Prince that there seemed to be a remarkable "lack of ornithological activity" that day.
Prince Philip's response was typically forthright: "You mean there are no bloody birds!"
The book was published in the USA (by Harper Row) with a different cover picture and under a different title, Seabirds in Southern Waters.
Copies of both titles have been selling briskly on online sites such as Amazon and Abebooks.
As well as writing the text, Prince Philip supplied most of the photographs, taken in black-and-white film either on a Minox miniature camera or on a Hasselblad camera that he had bought in 1956 in Stockholm while in the Swedish capital for the Equestrian Olympics.
The maps and delightful artwork of the birds are by Commander A M Hughes who subsequently supplied the illustrations for another book, Birds of Burma, written by B.E. Smythies.
It was those two journeys aboard Britannia that sparked the Prince's interest in both ornithology and conservation where, previously, his avian interest had largely been confined to shooting gamebirds.
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 artist, Edward Seago, who accompanied the Prince for part of the tour designed a lino-cut certificate, featuring an image of him sporting a red nose with a penguin and seal looking on.
Between 1987 and 2020, the Prince was a patron of the BTO and he opened the library at its Thetford HQ in 2006.
He also held the position of president of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), now the World Wide Fund for Nature, from 1981 to 1996.
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| Same book - different title and cover picture |
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