Birdwatching during World War II: the story of Ronald “Jack” Spittle

In 1950, Ronald “Jack” Spittle published his manuscript “Nesting habits of some Singapore birds” in the Bulletin of the Raffles Museum based on his ornithological observations during captivity in the Changi prisoner of war camp. Although his work has been heavily referred to for information about the feathered creatures’ breeding behaviours, little is known about Jack’s interactions with birds and his experience in prison. His son, Brian, attempts to recreate his father’s stories through a stash of old notes that he recently discovered.

The avifaunal knowledge in Singapore and the region sit atop the foundations that were constructed by British birdwatchers present during the 19th and ~first half of the 20th century. Their observations, for example, spawned the many range maps that we continue to refer to today. What’s astonishing is that many ornithological works were conducted even during the Japanese occupation in World War II. Of such literature is “Nesting habits of some Singapore birds” by Ronald “Jack” Spittle, published in 1950. While indicated explicitly in the introduction that the work was drafted from observations made in the Changi prisoner of war camp, it is far from intuitive for readers to attempt to deduce the effort and pain that went into the work. And of course it wouldn’t be. Wartime ordeal can never be fully understood by a third party no matter the number of books or documentaries absorbed. What we can figure out is that Jack, as he was known, was clearly a very talented naturalist with a knack for fine details. What we can’t, is how he coped, and what birds and birdwatching must have meant to him. A couple of months back, we received an email from Jack’s son, Brian, who shared with us his unearthing of the original publication drafts, and about his attempts to share his father’s story as a prisoner of war. In our email exchanges he sent us photos of draft write-ups and drawings, some of which did not make the final product. I was, for the lack of a better phrasing and without exaggeration, quite overwhelmed when I opened those photos. I find “prototypes” of publications fascinating. They encompass the raw and, in some sense, unpolished contents compared to the eventual publication. There’s also something about hand-prepared documents (from over 80 years ago, by the way) that to me creates a strange sense of connection to the author. Perhaps, while running his pen down the piece of paper before him, Jack might have been able to forget about his captivity. At least I hope that was the case. Everyone interacts with birdwatching differently: it could be a hobby, a passion, an addiction, a scientific pursuit, an excuse to socialise, an income source, a temporary escape from reality, or the many permutations of them combined with other ingredients. Brian’s blog posts surrounding what he describes as the “ripple effects” of Jack’s harrowing memories from the 1940s provide us a reminder of the background behind Singapore’s ornithological history, and of the troubled times that we live in today. Whatever experiences you’ve gathered or are currently navigating, I’m sure that you would be able to meditate on your relationship with birdwatching through reading Brian’s works. ——————————————————– In the late 2000s I did an internet search on my father, Ronald “Jack” Spittle. He had died a few years previously and I was starting to piece together what I could of his time as a prisoner of war in Singapore during the Second World War. I found out very little about that online, which did not surprise me given that he was a lowly private in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) working on anti-malarial measures and general sanitation. What did surprise me were the references I found to his article on the nesting habits of Singapore birds that had been published in the Bulletin of the Raffles Museum in 1950. My father would have been dumbfounded. He had no idea that his paper was still being read and cited all those years later. Growing up in postwar England, I had known from childhood that my father had been a prisoner of war. My mother’s story that he had made notes on the birds in the camp was both comforting and believable, as I had seen him do much the same on our occasional walks along nearby lanes. But the psychological scars were acute in those immediate postwar years, and I was under strict instructions never to mention his time in captivity or cause him distress in any way. It was only a couple of years before he died that he first mentioned his bird notes to me, and only then in a roundabout if theatrical way by showing me his faded copy of the Raffles Bulletin. Until that time I had never suspected that the notes were anything more than a few scribblings on the back of envelopes – here I wasn’t so far from the truth – let alone that they had been published. I only found them, along with many others he made as a POW, after he died. He was already rather more than an avid birdwatcher before the war, and barely a teenager when he took over an annual census of grey herons from the ornithologist and publisher Harry Witherby, a project that would occupy him for the next seventy years. Witherby had been instrumental in transforming British birdwatching during the earlier part of the twentieth century. The emphasis increasingly shifted away from the Victorian proclivity for collecting, stuffing, and displaying to observation and documentation, aided by a growing network of amateur enthusiasts. Witherby knew that this required clear...