A fascinating article regarding New Guinea birds at Taronga was published in the most recent edition of the Avicultural Society of NSW’s newsletter.
Recollections of Fred Shaw-Mayer: Sir Edward Hallstrom’s Collector in New Guinea
By Graeme Phipps
One of my earliest recollections of visits to Taronga Zoo as a boy in the 1950s was to be enthralled by the Birds of Paradise that were exhibited there… wondrously plumaged birds with striking names such as Prince Rudolph’s Blue Bird of Paradise which hung upside-down bat-like from its perch displaying to an apparently uninterested female. Captivating. But the one that stood out the most in my memory was the Ribbon-tailed Astrapia. The male had an enormously long white tail which rustled like silk when it flew from one end to the other of its 12 m long aviary.
Ribbon-tailed Astrapia Astrapia mayeri was the last Bird of Paradise to be named by westerners in 1939 following the discovery by a missionary in 1938 of its long white tail feathers being part of the head-dress of a native participant in a sing-sing in Mt Hagen.
It was many years later that I had the pleasure of meeting man who that bird was named for - Fred Shaw-Mayer who was Sir Edward Hallstrom’s main collector in New Guinea and responsible for so much of the treasure trove which was the New Guinea species in Sydney’s Taronga Zoo.
By the time I became a Curator in Taronga Zoo in 1985 only one Bird of Paradise remained…a male Raggiana’s BOP Paradisea raggiana. I would have given anything to have been Curator thirty years earlier during the heyday, as what remained was a shadow of what was. Three Victoria Crowned Pigeons Goura victoriae, a fair colony of Nicobar Pigeons Caloenas nicobarica, Palm Cockatoo Probosciger aterrimus, some Grey Dorcopsis Wallabies Dorcopsis luctuosa and Goodfellow’s Tree Kangaroos Dendrolagus goodfellowi and assorted Long-billed Echidnas…at the time all thought to belong to one species but subsequently found to be several. One aviary housed over 300 White-breasted Ground Doves Gallicolumba jobiensis but these were not collected by Mr. Shaw-Mayer…but nearly everything else was. So who was this remarkable man?
A lot of detail is recorded in The Avicultural Magazine, the magazine of the Avicultural Society in the UK which gave aviculture its name. I am fortunate to have a bound set of these magazines from volume 1 number 1 onwards so I could look into contemporaneous reports.
Les Clayton, the Supervisor of Birds was a very well-regarded birdman and had a lot to do with servicing Sir Edward Hallstrom both at the zoo and at Sir Edward’s private collection at Northbridge. In discussion it transpired that Les thought that Shaw-Mayer might still be alive. After some research we found that he lived in a retirement village in Nambour Queensland and so on our way to pick up a Green-winged Macaw, Ara chloroptera, from a farmer in Pittsworth on the Darling Downs, Les and I dropped in to see him.
Fred was a rather thin but healthy guy in his 90s. Really nice smile too. We clicked. He had a beautiful, large, planted aviary in the nursing home which everyone enjoyed and which he serviced every day.
On the wall of his suite was a framed drawing of Salvadori’s Teal Anas salvadori done and dedicated to Fred by Sir Peter Scott of Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust fame (as well as being the son of Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic). I had heaps of questions to ask him to relate to his experiences as a collector. His recollection was as sharp as if it was yesterday. Victoria Crowned Pigeons were netted across dry rocky creek beds which the birds would fossick among the stones to capture yabbies and other arthropods… so they were far from being just any pigeon and likely should have been fed a much more proteinaceous diet such as including dry dog pellets rather than mainly maize. There were images of a large aviary at Taronga which housed at least 80 Victoria Crowned Pigeons, many of which would have been sent to other zoos worldwide. But by the time I got there only three remained luckily an opposite sex. They weren’t good sitters and Les finished off an egg in the incubator and the keepers hand-raised a chick from day one…which is a major feat given that pigeons feed their young on pigeon ‘milk’.
The Palm Cockatoos were trapped at a salt lick. They had to have salt so were easy to trap. I had mental images of Palms seeking out minerals in much the same way as macaws seek out mineral rich clay in the Americas.
One matter of pride for Fred was that he was the first person to take a live Philippine Monkey-eating Eagle Pithecohaga jeffreyi to London Zoo. He caught it in Mindanao and took it by ship to England. The eagle would only eat guinea pigs and so Fred would have to have a breeding group on board the ship.
The equivalent of the Monkey-eating Eagle at Taronga was a single New Guinea Harpy Eagle Harpyopsis novaeguineae…also collected by Mr Shaw-Mayer.
His name is commemorated also in a tree kangaroo Dendrolagus shawmayeri, however……
Fred acclimatised birds and mammals in Sir Edward’s Nondugal Sanctuary at Mt Hagen before shipping them to Sydney, but due to quarantine restrictions they were simply transferred on the tarmac to other aircraft thence to overseas collections in Europe and the United States.
Times change. During my time at Taronga a consortium of US zoos decided to collect Birds of Paradise and other New Guinea birds. Their success rate wasn’t too good. I was able to make a very talented bird keeper Ron Parrish available to the expedition and on Ron’s request sent through boxes of mealworms every week to New Guinea and the results in terms of birds acclimatised and shipped out were very much better. Obviously due to import restrictions we were not able to obtain any ourselves, but my motives were not entirely altruistic because I did have dreams of being able to exhibit and breed these fascinating birds that never cease to intrigue and excite one’s imagination - the Birds of Paradise.
I was able to exhibit one Bird of Paradise - a male Paradise Riflebird Ptiloris paradiseus which was collected on my own collecting expedition to north coast NSW…but that’s another story.
