Camera eye on our birds

Press, 18 December 1976, Page 17

Camera eye on our birds

New Zealand Birds. By M. F. Soper. Whitcoulls. 246 pp, index, 215 illustrations. $19.50. In the last 20 years Dr Soper’s modest hobby of photographing birds in the wild has yielded New Zealanders a store of new information about the country’s wildlife. The doctor’s photographs are remarkable enough. His care and patience in “stalking” shy subjects with his camera are amply demonstrated by the results, for days of patient, careful approach to nests and feeding places have gone into his work. But Dr Soper, who has practised medicine in several remote South Island centres including Whataroa, Queenstown, Takaka and Arrowtown, has also become a skillful and careful observer of native birds. His reports complement his illustrations. He combines precision with informality and readers will envy many of his experiences while enjoying the rare charm of his descriptions. The peculiar “bowing” motion of the Fiordland rock wren, the grand mid-air “pass” of prey

from one falcon to its mate, the nightlandings of white-faced storm petrels on Stephens Island, sweeping “like huge moths through the beams of the lighthouse” — Dr Soper has enjoyed them and wants to share them. The first edition of “New Zealand Birds” appeared in 1972 and was quickly recognised as a valuable guide for amateur ornithologists. Its illustrations were among the best available for bird identification and its text was not overloaded with scientific vocabulary. This new and enlarged edition includes studies of the birds of New Zealand’s outlying islands — Chatham Islands, Campbell Island, and the Auckland Islands — which have been visited recently by the author. Rare species including the Chatham Islands snipe and the Auckland Islands flightless duck are described and illustrated.

A new, concluding section has been added on migratory wading birds which frequent the coast and estuaries of New Zealand. The result is surely the best, straightforward book on New Zealand birds at present available.