Ground-Rollers & Asities in Madagascar

by John Gale.

10^th November 2009

An almost full house was there to hear and see this wonderful wild bird artist.

John has been working as a bird artist for the last 16 years; his first project was painting the Birds of Mount Kinabalu, Borneo. In 1992 he won 'Bird illustrator of the year' (British Birds). He has illustrated a number of field guides including the 'Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa', a project which took five and half years to complete. In 2002 John won 'Bird Artist of the year' (Birdwatch). He has just finished a project illustrating birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsular, and is now currently working on 'Handbook to the Birds Madagascar'.  During the last seven years John has concentrated on Oil Paintings, based on the theme of fragile and endangered Environments, visiting the Forests of South-East Asia, Madagascar and the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. His next painting project is the Falkland Islands.  John also works part time as a Veterinary Surgeon in Exeter, Devon, where he lives with Fay, Tom and James.

Madagascar is of course best known for Lemurs.

It is a very poor country, with very little wildlife as most of the infrastructure has been destroyed. 44% of the country is thorn or rain forest with small reserves; but even this is slowly being lost through logging, felling and burning. After all this is said, there are 135 species of bird here.

A lot of these birds are related to the birds of India and Asia.

Although it has a lot of snakes, none of them are poisonous.

Humpback Whales also come to give birth in the seas around the island.

He talked about his visit to the Eastern rain forests, staying with the local people in their high altitude homes, so on this part of the trip it was not too hot.

The South and West of the island are very hot and dry, so it is best to get up at 4-4.30am to start the day before it gets too hot. In this part of the island are the Thorn forests which have colonies of Weaver birds in the Baobab trees.

In places around the island, the forests come right down to the sea, or fringe the beaches making it appear to be the idyllic tropical paradise.

The rarest bird on Madagascar is the Serpent Eagle; it does not fly, but scratches around the forest floor looking for lizards and other small things to eat. It nests in the tree ferns of the forests.

John finished his talk by explaining about the sketches and photos he does at the time, and uses later to base his paintings and illustrations on.

Lindsay Clitherow