| Description | DVD features:
- 1 film of a trip to Jan Mayen Island, showing boats, fishing, tents and huts, men on dog sledges, birds, the landscape, and two captured baby polar bears
-1 film of a trip to the Cyclades, showing boats, traditional life, villagers, homes, Churches and a town, the landscape, and preparing a taxidermy specimen of [?] a rodent
These films were shot in black and white cinefilm, and later transferred to DVD. They feature modern incidental music, but have no original soundtrack.
DVD contains two copies of each film |
| AdminHistory | Charles Godfrey Bird was the second son of Captain FG Bird, DSO RN and was born in 1913. He was educated at Stowe and afterwards at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was interested in birds from childhood. While at university he and his brother Edward made frequent trips to the Wash, Blakeney and the Outer Hebrides in search of birds. In 1933 he started visiting the Natural History Museum to study the bird collections.
In July 1933 he went to the Cyclades and remained until January 1934. Later in 1934 he, his brother Edward and RB Connell visited Jan Mayen Island and spent two and a half months studying birds on the Island.
In 1935 joined an expedition with plant-collector EK Balls to Lake Van is Asia where he studied and collected birds. In 1936 he went on an expedition to Rio de Oro in North Africa where he studied migration. In 1936 he and his brother went on an expedition to Norway and Greenland. He donated all his collections of birds and mammals to the Natural History Museum.
He joined the Navy as a Sub-Lieutenant and Intelligence Officer. Later he served on a Norwegian destroyer and in February 1942 he was posted to the Far East to join HMS Exeter. Charles Bird died in the battle of the Java Sea in March 1942, when the Exeter was sunk. |