In 1949 the German ornithologist Fritz Frielinghaus alerted his fellow bird watchers of the Collared Dove, or as it was called in German, the Türkentaube (literally Turkish pigeon):
The Collared Dove is the newest bird species that is becoming a topic of widespread attention. Some years ago they said that it had probably immigrated from the Balkans to the East-mark (the Nazi name for the annexed territory of Austria). Then they said it was already a breeding bird in Vienna. Today one even claims to have seen it in Stuttgart and in Lower Saxony. One would disbelieve these observations, if those who had made them were not famous ornithologists. This, however, is the case, and therefore everyone should keep a watchful eye on the Collared Dove wherever it appears. (Frielinghaus Reference Frielinghaus1949, 15)
Indeed, during the following years, birdwatchers almost all over Europe traced the bird's rapid spread. They witnessed how until in the 1960s, Collared Doves became local in Germany, the East-Central European countries, the Western parts of the Soviet Union, England and Ireland, Scandinavia, the Benelux and the North of France. What fascinated ornithologists about the Collared Dove was not only the exotic origin of the bird, which originally came from India; they were captivated by the unexpected rapidity with which the bird was “conquering” their countries. Never before had a bird species invaded almost a whole continent in such a short span of time, and this apparently without any direct support by humans.
Due to their geographical location and their well-established network of observers, ornithologists in Germany were in a privileged position to trace what later became described as a “classic example of a biological invasion” (Hengeveld Reference Hengeveld1989, 92; see also O’Connor et al. Reference O’Connor1986, 586) or “the animal geographic phenomenon of our century” (Nowak Reference Nowak1991). By providing a meticulous documentation of this phenomenon, they not only played a key role in establishing the Collared Dove on the international research agenda; they also provided interpretative references for ornithologists who later traced the further spread of the dove to other countries of the world, including North-America where the dove has also spread since 1986. This paper explores the fieldwork practices and related theoretical debates in German ornithology through which the scientific discourse on the Collared Dove expansion took shape. Given their salient role in the formation of this discourse, my focus will be mainly on ornithologists in Germany, in both the former East and West. Although I will point occasionally to debates on the Collared Dove in other countries, it is beyond the scope of this article to systematically explore the subject of the further transnational spread of the Collared Dove issue.
It is my first and most immediate goal in this study to shed light on a significant episode in the history of twentieth-century field ornithology. Whereas conventional historical accounts of ornithology had focused largely on the ideas of conceptual innovators and discipline builders (e.g. Haffner et al. Reference Haffner, Rutschke and Wunderlich2000; Haffner Reference Haffner2007; Birchham Reference Birchham2007), more recent scholarship has expanded its focus to the broader set of activities through which knowledge on birds was produced and popularized, including the emerging nexus with bird protection (Bont Reference Bont2011; Bruynincks Reference Bruyninckx2013; Toegoed Reference Toegoed2011; Dunlap Reference Dunlap2011; Moss Reference Moss2004; Schmoll Reference Schmoll2004). As such studies have shown, the cognitive and institutional consolidation of academic ornithology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century thrived on and intensified the cooperation of academic experts and amateurs in socially and spatially extended networks of bird observation. This involved the harnessing of amateurs for reporting local bird sightings, the organization of bird banding schemes, the establishment of bird observatories, as well as the engagement of leading ornithologists as brokers of ornithological knowledge.
This article looks into how the advent of the Collared Dove became a pivot point around which such networked observation practices were mobilized and around which biogeographic knowledge about European birds became renegotiated. More specifically, it contributes to our understanding of the role that spontaneous occurrences in the natural environment can have for the dynamics of knowledge-making in the fieldwork sciences. As Robert Kohler (Reference Kohler2002, 218–224) in his study of North American field biology has prominently elaborated, field scientists have often exploited accidental events such as volcano eruptions, retreating glaciers or landslides as quasi-experimental constellations to open up new observational possibilities (ibid.). As I claim in this article, for ornithologists and amateur birdwatchers the advent of the Collared Dove in Central Europe had a similar function. It allowed them, in real time, to follow the process of biogeographic range expansion, and thereby, to explore some of the mechanisms that made such expansion possible.
It is my second goal in this study to shed light on the cultural-historical dimension of what ecologists have called the “migration” or the “invasion” of plant and animal species. That species have been on the move, either intended so by humans (e.g. for agricultural or ornamental purposes) or not, has long been discussed by environmental historians (e.g., Crosby Reference Crosby1986). More recently conservation ecologists have rung alarm bells, positioning “bio-invasion” as a major cause for the loss of global biodiversity (e.g., Bright Reference Bright1999). How such moves of species are perceived, evaluated, and treated, however, is not only determined by the biophysical capacities of the respective organisms; it is mediated by the meanings and understandings that are produced and negotiated by field scientists, amateurs, conservationists, pest control agencies and other publics (e.g., Rotherham and Lambert 2011). The association of new entrants with certain damage to agriculture, technical infrastructure, etc. often led to their demonization as “vermin” or “monsters” (Chew Reference Chew2009; Coates Reference Coates2006; Jansen Reference Jansen2000; idem Reference Jansen2003). Conversely, exotic species were also welcomed and supported, for example – as Coates (Reference Coates2006) has described in his study of the late nineteenth-century North American controversy on the “English sparrow” – to combat pests. Since the nineteenth century, when botanists began to develop subtle categorizations of species according to their degree of nativeness (see Chew Reference Chew2009), biotic exchange has increasingly come to be framed as a matter of a species belonging to a certain territory or ecological system. Such understandings not only rely on negotiable eco-historical periodizations and delineations of human agency (Chew and Hamilton Reference Chew, Hamilton and Richardson2011; Smout Reference Smout2003; Helmreich Reference Helmreich2005); all too often they have also blended into nationalistic, xenophobic, or racist discourses (Landström Reference Landström2005; Peretti Reference Peretti1998; Gröning and Wolschke-Bulmahm Reference Gröning and Wolschke-Bulmahn1992; Comaroff and Comaroff Reference Comaroff and Comaroff2001; Jansen Reference Jansen2000; Pauly Reference Pauly1996; Coates Reference Coates2006).
The Collared Dove is an instructive example for understanding such cultural processes since this bird was, notwithstanding some initial concerns about nuisances, widely accepted as a positive element of the European avifauna. As I will argue, the practice of academic and amateur ornithologists was the seedbed of a cultural image that rendered the bird as benign and as belonging to Germany. By tracing the bird and listing it in regional and national floras, they established its “range expansion” as a natural phenomenon. Reflecting their normative and affective commitment to what had become one of their favorite research objects, they represented the bird as a “hero” and as an enrichment of nature that deserved human attention and sympathy.
Instead of mobilizing natural scientific knowledge as an unproblematic explanatory resource, as scholarship in environmental history has sometimes tended to do, this article explores the social and historical processes through which environmental knowledge itself has been shaped and legitimized. Accordingly, the analytical focus is as much on the cultural semiotics that were enacted in the practices of birdwatchers (labels, classifications, narrative forms, etc.), as well as on shifts in the biophysical world (the bird's translocations), that have conditioned and shaped the trajectory of ornithological knowledge-making. Although I do not follow the assumption of full ontological symmetry between human actors and “non-humans” that has been advocated by promoters of Actor Network Theory (e.g., Latour Reference Latour2004), I seek to avoid the reduction of scientific knowledge production to a mere projection of social ideas on a passive natural world.
I will start my analysis with the first encounters of ornithologists in Germany with the Collared Dove, and show how their initial surprise gave way to the recognition of the ongoing range expansion of the Collared Dove as a biogeographic phenomenon. The next chapters will trace ornithologists’ further involvement with the bird along three focal dimensions: the production and exchange of observations that linked the bird to specific sites and thereby helped to establish the boundaries of its new geographic range; the causal interpretation and narrative ordering of the bird's biogeographic trajectory; and, finally, the construction of a cultural image through which the Collared Dove was legitimized as an integral part of the German and, more generally, the Central European avifauna.
Encountering a Stranger
When the Collared Dove arrived in Germany, a widely branched out network of birdwatching existed with a tradition that dated back to the mid-nineteenth century.Footnote 1 Whereas earlier ornithologists had hunted birds with the purpose of turning them into museum or experimental specimens, the observation of birds in “free nature” became both a popular hobby of the educated middle classes as well as a research practice in the field of ornithology.Footnote 2 Academics and amateurs collaborated in inventorying the birdlife of cities, regions, and entire nations. They traced the seasonal migration flows of birds, and they also recognized when new species arrived in their turfs. The exchange of such knowledge was promoted and organized by ornithological associations, journals, and conferences. Besides studying birds, many of these birdwatchers also sought to promote an appreciation of birds among the broader public, lobbied against bird-hunting, and called for conservation measures to protect threatened bird species (Schmoll Reference Schmoll2004). It was in these networks of observation that the Collared Dove emerged as a new object of attention. This was not only due to the actual displacements of the bird itself, but also to the definitional work, through which the bird was framed as a phenomenon of profound ornithological concern.
Before the 1940s, the Collared Dove had been an exotic species for most German ornithologists, known only indirectly via the reports of travelers to the Orient or the Balkans. The Hungarian medical doctor and naturalist Imre Fritvaldsky has been credited for having identified the species for the first time in the 1830s (e.g., Nowak Reference Nowak1965, 5–7). In 1834 he received a specimen that had been shot in Phillopolis, a town in what is now Bulgaria, but back then was part of the Ottoman Empire. Although the bird presented many similarities with the well-known laughing dove, or Streptopelia risoria L, Fritvaldsky maintained that it should be considered a separate variety, the Columbia risoria L. varietta decaocto Friv., as he called it. Later both birds were even considered to be completely different species of the genre Streptopelia: the North African Streptopelia rosegrisea (a new name of the former risoria) and the Steptopelia decaocto, the Latin name that came to be established for the Collared Dove (ibid., 7). The late nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed an increasing investigation of the Balkans by Western ornithologists – often soldiers who participated in military campaigns.Footnote 3 These observers witnessed occurrences of the orientalische Lachtaube (oriental laughing dove) or Tempeltaube (dove of the temples) as the bird was then called in German (Gengler Reference Gengler1920, 198; Bötticher Reference Bötticher1919, 241; Weigold Reference Weigold1913, 596; Schlegel Reference Schlegel1918, 177). As they reported, the bird was mainly found in towns where it populated public gardens and mosques, and benefited from the benevolent attitude of the local inhabitants, notably the Muslims (Pichler Reference Pichler1906, 538; Weigold Reference Weigold1913), who protected and fed them. It was already through these descriptions and names that a semiotic relationship between the bird and the Orient was established which was also characterized in the later public image of the Türkentaube in Germany.
In 1934, Jenö Nagy reported at the ornithological congress in Oxford that the Collared Dove had become a breeding bird on the Hungarian plains (Nagy Reference Nagy and Jourdan1938). Whereas retrospectively, this came to be viewed as the start of a continent-wide invasion, contemporaries seem to have seen this as a mere oddity.Footnote 4 Nonetheless, birdwatchers documented the spread of the bird all over Hungary and began to consider this a profound expansion of the bird's biogeographic range (Keve-Kleiner Reference Keve-Kleiner1943). In 1943 Günther Niethammer, a German ornithologist who since 1940 had been departmental director at the Vienna Natural History Museum, established the Collared Dove as a breeding bird in Vienna.Footnote 5 Referring to the political borders of the National-Socialist “Reich,” Niethammer announced the dove “as a bird species that is new for Germany” (Niethammer Reference Niethammer1943, 296). However, since the Vienna basin marked an important threshold in vegetation patterns, he figured that the expansion of the bird must have reached its “natural boundary” (ibid., 304).
It did not take long, however, to rebut Niethammer's estimation. After the end of WWII, the Collared Dove was observed at various places throughout Germany, including the North German town Celle.Footnote 6 During the following years, sightings and broods were also reported, for example from Sweden (H.T. 1949), the Netherlands (Tjittes Reference Tjittes1950), and Northern France (Laurent Reference Laurent1954). In 1955 it became acknowledged that the bird had even crossed the channel to England (Hudson Reference Hudson1965, 107). More or less parallel with its expansion to the North West, the Collared Dove reached the East Middle European countries and later even Russia (Nowak and Nowak Reference Nowak and Nowak1962).
Taking up an expression of environmental sociologist Matthias Gross (Reference Gross2010) we can describe the advent of the dove as a cognitive “surprise,” an event that runs counter to established scientific expectations and thereby generates opportunities for learning processes. Ornithologists often noted that local residents had alerted them about “strange pigeons” that had arrived some time ago (Hacker Reference Hacker1955). For ornithologists themselves the first occurrence of these birds was equally puzzling (Ammersbach Reference Ammersbach1952; Artz Reference Artz1950; Dankert et al. Reference Dankert, Wilding, Hagen, Stahl, Lambert, Michl, Nienack, Hofmeister and Janetzki1957; Kleinschmidt Reference Kleinschmidt1949). Although the bird was easily identified as a pigeon, it differed remarkably from the pigeons in the area that lived in the wild. The grayish collar and the marked ring on the neck of the bird motivated many observers to identify the birds as escaped “laughing doves” or Streptopelia risoria (ring-neck dove) (Artz Reference Artz1950; Taubenberger Reference Taubenberger1950, 64). Although of North African origin, laughing doves were often kept in cages throughout Europe and it was indeed not uncommon that escaped individuals were able to survive in the wild. We can see this explanation as an ad-hoc “repair strategy” (Henke Reference Henke2008) through which the surprising encounter with a strange bird was accommodated to the categories and expectations of preexisting ornithological discourse.
Frielinghaus’ assurance in 1947 that “famous ornithologists” had confirmed the observations of the bird in Germany shows that such claims raised fundamental concerns about credibility. This was exacerbated by the need to rely on local witnesses, such as village inhabitants, to estimate when the bird had actually first emerged in a place (Taubenberger Reference Taubenberger1950; Ammersbach Reference Ammersbach1952; Rost Reference Rost1953; Brinkmann Reference Brinkmann1961). Authors who reported such indirect observations explicitly emphasized that their witness was indeed reliable. It also happened that birds were trapped and caged so that their identity could later be confirmed by others (Artz Reference Artz1950).
The more the spread of the Collared Dove to the North became established as a stable pattern, the more ornithologists became convinced that they were witnessing an unprecedented process of “encroachment” (Vordringen) (H.T. 1949), and those who still lived beyond its actual range eagerly anticipated the bird's arrival (Weber Reference Weber1950).Footnote 7 All over Europe, amateurs and academics discussed how far this encroachment would go and how it would change the birdlife of their countries.
The acknowledgment of the bird's presence was also reflected in the search for a new German translation of its Latin name. Instead of “oriental laughing dove” observers in the 1950s preferred the name Türkentaube, a term that had already been used by Nagy (Reference Nagy and Jourdan1938). This name disconnected the bird semantically from the laughing dove, and associated it explicitly with “Turkish folklore” (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, 253, n. 8). It was notably the authority of Stresemann and Niethammer, who both used it in their publications, that contributed to the stabilization of this name. Whereas in English the term “Collared Dove” became popular, equivalents of Türkentaube also came into use in many other continental languages (Turkse tortel, turterelle turque, Turkduva, etc.).
The renaming of the bird however was not uncontested. Alternative proposals were derived from the name that had already been used in the Balkan languages, e.g., “Cumra-Taube” (Kleinschmidt Reference Kleinschmidt1949) or “Cumra-Lachtaube” (Rucner Reference Rucner1952, 73). In 1950 the Hungarian ornithologist Andràs Keve proposed the name “Balkantaube” (Balkan Dove) (Keve Reference Keve1950). These proposals sought to shift the emphasis from Turkey to the Balkans as the geographical area of semantic reference. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the rationale behind this move, patriotic motives of the authors might have played a role here. Moreover, the semantic disassociation of the bird from Turkey de-emphasized the supportive relationship that the Turks and the Balkan Muslims were often supposed to have had to the bird, and thereby threw a more positive light on the Christian tradition of the Balkans.
As this brief historical sketch makes clear, German ornithologists experienced the bird's arrival as a disruptive event that contradicted established definitions of the bird's identity and its range. Initial attempts to maintain the established order of biogeographic knowledge by repair, or by casting doubt on observers, failed in the face of the further multiplication of sightings of the bird. By establishing the bird's identity and by identifying an ongoing process of invasion, the confusing occurrence of the “strange bird” became transformed into a meaningful biogeographic phenomenon.
Observing and Mapping
Claims about the spread and distribution of the Collared Dove throughout Europe were based on the fieldwork of countless local observers and the practices of exchange, agglomeration, and analysis through which individual observations were transformed into representations of a large-scale process of “expansion.” Looking out for the new bird, reporting its arrival in new places, its first breeding trials, and later also the development and spatial distribution of local bird populations, became the nexus of a sustained collective observation campaign. Ornithologists published calls in the ornithological press, in daily newspapers, or on the radio that alerted local birdwatchers as well as ordinary residents to the new bird, and asked them to report any new sighting (Ammersbach Reference Ammersbach1952; Gebhard Reference Gebhard1955).Footnote 8 As the British ornithologist James Fisher suggested, German ornithologists were especially meticulous in recording the Collared Dove (Fisher Reference Fisher1953, 167).
The observation campaign revolved around a few persons who drew other birdwatchers’ attention to the bird, exchanged letters with local witnesses, or sometimes even checked their sightings. Nagy and Andràs Keve-Kleiner had already been brokers of an earlier campaign in Hungary (see Keve-Kleiner Reference Keve-Kleiner1943, 285). The German ornithologists Niethammer and Hans Kummerlöwe, the director of the scientific museums of Vienna, had been initiators of observation activities in Austria, which had been annexed by Germany in 1938.Footnote 9 However, from 1943 it was Emilie Adametz, an amateur ornithologist and secretary at the Natural History Museum (where Niethammer also worked), who approached local observers and published regularly about the spread of the Collared Dove (Adametz Reference Adametz1950/1951).Footnote 10 In the 1950s the Berlin professor Erwin Stresemann was a central broker of the campaign in both parts of Germany. Stresemann was based in East Berlin at the Natural History Museum and at the Humboldt University (until 1961), lived in West-Berlin and was president of the all-German “Deutsche Ornithologen Gesellschaft” (DO-G) (1949–1967). He was editor of the DO-G's Journal für Ornithology (which published articles from West- and East-German authors) and, through his various publications, had earned a widespread reputation as a scientific renovator of ornithology (see Haffner et al. Reference Haffner, Rutschke and Wunderlich2000).
As various cross-references in their publications show, the continental scale of the Collared Dove's migration also strengthened the transnational information exchange among ornithologists. This included publications in East-Central-European countries which referred to articles in Western publications and were themselves sometimes published or summarized in Western languages (e.g., Miczynski Reference Miczynski1951). The trading of information, and notably personal visits, however, were hampered by the division of post-WWII Europe into two geopolitical blocs. Although until the erection of the wall in 1961, at least Berlin remained a relatively open contact zone, the cold-war division also undermined the long-standing bonds between ornithologists in the two parts of Germany.Footnote 11
The basic form in which knowledge about the spatial extension of the bird was assembled was the local observation report. Such reports were written accounts that indicated the time and location at which one or more birds had been witnessed, including the name of observers (either the author of the report or a primary witness). Such accounts also included details about the circumstances under which the observations had been made and descriptions of the bird's individual physical characteristics or behavior. Keeping a field notebook, in which they jot down whatever they find remarkable, helped ornithologists to maintain and memorize their findings, and guide their further inquiries. Observation accounts are also a basic format of publication in field ornithology.
For ornithologists each of these observations constituted news about the geographical progression of the bird. The distance to previous observations, the fact that the bird had reached a new country or that it had crossed physical geographic boundaries all made these observations particularly newsworthy. At the same time, observation reports helped to attract and mobilize additional observers to join the campaign. For many authors of such reports, their observations were also a matter of pride and reputation, and ornithologists competed for credit with the first sightings or, even better, photographs of the bird.Footnote 12
Far from being disinterested observers, ornithologists experienced the rapid cascade of observations as an exciting spectacle of nature. As an observer declared in 1951, this was a “process of spread that proceeded with a speed that no one has ever seen before” (Bodenstein Reference Bodenstein1951, 158). Descriptions of the advance of the Collared Dove came with attributes such as “rapid” (Adametz and Stresemann Reference Adametz and Stresemann1948), “explosive” (Keve-Kleiner Reference Keve-Kleiner1943, 287) or “blustering” (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, 244). When Stresemann, in 1949, wrote to his friend Ernst Mayr in the U.S. that the Collared Dove had already bred in Hannover he declared enthusiastically: “A great creature, with this record the expansion of the serin has been totally beaten.”Footnote 13 Indeed the expansion of the serin, about which Mayr (Reference Mayr1926) had written a doctoral thesis in the 1920s (under Stresemann's guidance), had needed almost 100 years to spread into Europe. This celebration of the unbridled dynamics of the bird's spread resonated clearly with nineteenth-century romanticists’ fascination for the sublimity of nature (on nature as sublime, see Macnaghten and Urry Reference Macnaghten and Urry1995, 114).
Along with the rapid spread over large distances, the emergence and dynamics of local bird populations aroused ornithologists’ interest. In the 1950s, observers reported local mass gatherings of Collared Doves (Reinhard Reference Reinhard1957; Lachner Reference Lachner1963, 307; Lenz Reference Lenz1961). Detailed surveys appeared in which the authors traced the typical habitats – “community areas” (Hofstetter Reference Hofstetter1954) or “agglomeration areas” (Lachner Reference Lachner1963) – in their home towns. In 1964, local ornithologists cooperated in a systematic bird census for Greater Berlin (Löschau and Lenz Reference Löschau and Lenz1967). They roamed the area afoot, on bike, or in some cases even with a motorbike, searching for nesting sites of the bird. Although the work was organized by West-Berliners and the city already divided by the wall, they were still able to incorporate some input from East-Berlin observers.
The sequence which led from uncertain observations to a steady accumulation of data was also repeated in the countries that the Collared Dove reached on its North-Western move (see e.g., Leys Reference Leys1964 for the Netherlands; Hudson Reference Hudson1965 for the UK and Ireland). The reports about the spread of the bird in Germany and other countries that had already been populated, had thereby focused attention on the bird and helped ecologists to make sense of the dynamics of the range expansion in their own countries. For example, in Britain the ornithologist James Fisher (Reference Fisher1953) published an article in British Birds in which he sketched the state of the bird's expansion in Europe, building among others on the Stresemann's former publications. The direct occasion for this article was the identification of a Collared Dove in North Lincolnshire, which was, however, considered to be potentially the result of an escape (ibid., 165). Since the channel was seen as a major barrier for the bird, more evidence was required to establish that the continental dove had actually made it to England. This only happened in 1955, when Collared Doves were observed in Norfolk (Hudson Reference Hudson1965, 107).
Through their reports ornithologists also accumulated a collective stock of knowledge about the bird's physiology, its nesting behavior, its choice of food and habitat, and its relationship to potentially competing or hostile species, including the interaction between humans and the bird. Whereas former knowledge of the bird had been obtained exclusively through journeys of ornithologists to the Balkans, the bird now became the object of unprecedented observational scrutiny. Birdwatchers were amazed at the extreme adaptability of the bird to new ecological circumstances. The Collared Dove was identified as a “cultural follower” (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, 244), that is, a species that lives in close contact with humans and human-made environments (in contrast to its conspecifics in India). It assembled at poultry farms where it benefitted from fodder. It was widespread in cities and towns where it populated parks and gardens. As one observer asserted, the “elegant way the bird made use of products of civilization such as wires and igelit tapes” to build its nest was astonishing (Piechocki Reference Piechocki1953, 229).
For tracing the migration trajectory of the Collared Dove ornithologists also made use of the fieldwork technique of banding. The idea to mark birds with numbered rings had been invented by the Danish schoolteacher Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen and had been used widely to trace the tracks of migratory birds (see de Bont Reference Bont2011). Since the 1950s, ornithologists also started to band Collared Doves so that they could later be identified at other locations (Reinhard Reference Reinhard1957; Rost Reference Rost1953; Leys Reference Leys1964; Nowak Reference Nowak1963 and Reference Nowak1965, 75–84). The doves were then often spotted after a relatively short time in far-away locations, showing that they migrated in long-term jumps and that they spread in different directions.
It was through the agglomeration of observations to region specific lists and through their visual representation on maps that the bird's “range” and its expansion trajectories took shape (e.g., Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958; see also Fisher Reference Fisher1953; and Hudson Reference Hudson1965 for the U.K.). The Collared Dove was also included in bird checklists for Germany (Scholz Reference Scholz1955; Stresemann Reference Stresemann1955; Niethammer, Kramer, and Wolters Reference Niethammer, Kramer and Wolters1964), and was thereby certified as a new element of the national avifauna. Although many ornithologists still tended to refer to the whole country as a common geographical place of reference, thereby deliberately ignoring Germany's actual political division, in the late 1950s, the increasing self-assertion of the GDR as a separate state became reflected in the publication of data that focused only on its own political territory (e.g., Dankert et al. Reference Dankert, Wilding, Hagen, Stahl, Lambert, Michl, Nienack, Hofmeister and Janetzki1957).
Occasionally ornithologists also created maps that visualized the range of the Collared Dove. Following cartographic conventions of biogeography, these maps indicated occurrences of the bird by point symbols or – when more stable patterns had been established – by lines that circumscribed the species’ range.Footnote 14 Ornithologists were quite inventive in using maps to do justice to the dynamics of the particular range expansion that they were interested in. For example, they presented a series of maps, each one for a period of one to three years, to convey the successive shifting of the range boundary (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, maps 4–19). They also used icons to indicate on the same map in which year the bird was observed in which location (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, maps 4–8; Nowak Reference Nowak1965, 31, 34). On some maps arrows connected subsequent observation sites to display a dynamic picture of migration paths (Nowak Reference Nowak1965, 37); see also Fisher Reference Fisher1953, map 2 and 3) – a convention that bears notable similarities with the depiction of military crusades in history atlases.Footnote 15 Another way of tracing the migration paths was directly linked to the banding of birds: Lines were drawn that connected the sites where the birds were released and where they were rediscovered (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, 82; Nowak Reference Nowak1965, 82).
By describing, listing and mapping, ornithologists inscribed the myriad local observations into standardized formats. It was through these practices that the bio-geographic phenomenon of range expansion of the Collared Dove species became constituted as an accountable object of ornithological knowledge and began to occupy a stable place in academic discourse.
Making Sense of Range Extension
A key question about the Collared Dove concerned the reasons why this bird so suddenly spread over almost the entirety of Europe. The set of hypotheses that were established ranged from the claim that a genetic mutation had made the bird more mobile and more tolerant to a colder climate (Mayr Reference Mayr1951, 118; Fisher Reference Fisher1953, 170), to considerations about the species’ changing ecological survival strategies (Rucner Reference Rucner1952, 70; Stresemann and Novak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958; Leys Reference Leys1964), to population ecological explanations that considered overpopulation as the main reason for migration (Bernd and Danker Reference Berndt and Dancker1966). Although in the late 1960s the debate lost much of its momentum, the causes for the dove's expansion are still an open question in the ornithological community (see for example, Baumgart Reference Baumgart2000; Nowak Reference Nowak and Betzel1994; Reichholf Reference Reichholf2002).
To probe in more detail how such explanations were organized, I will focus here on the example of an article by Stresemann and his co-author Eugenius Nowak. Although many of the article's details remained contested, it was, at the time of its publication, the most complex attempt to make sense of the Collared Dove expansion. Stresemann had developed his basic ideas already in an article published together with Emilie Adametz in 1948 (Adametz and Stresemann Reference Adametz and Stresemann1948). Ten years later, an article by Stresemann and Nowak (Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958) provided an elaborated version of his explanatory framework. The basis of that article was an exam thesis that Nowak had written under Stresemann's supervision.Footnote 16
Looking back at the period of more than 30 years during which the bird had spread from the Northern border of Serbia to the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, and through a review of earlier observations from the Balkans, Turkey, and South and East Asia, the two authors treated the European expansion as the final stage of a worldwide migration process. The original home of the dove was identified in India. In the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries it had been caged and shipped northeastwards to China, Korea, and Japan. It was also with the active help of humans that, already in pre-Islamic times, the bird had made it beyond the arid regions of Persia to Mesopotamia and further to Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine. Since, according to a historical source, the French King Henry II had in 1547 received a “rare and extraordinary form of turtle dove” (ibid. 249) as a gift from the Ottoman sultan, the authors suggest that the Collared Dove had already been held in Constantinople. At least until the late eighteenth century the bird had spread over Asia Minor and the European part of Turkey, where it was protected by the Islamic population. When, in the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire lost its possessions in the Balkans, the bird lost its appreciation and protection, and was exposed to overt hostility. Between 1900 and 1920, however, the number of doves began to increase again, “probably because the Christian population had become indifferent to protecting them” (ibid., 253).
This was the starting position from which the bird in the 1920s began its further expansion to Central Europe. The central advance led the bird to Hungary and then further to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The bird also progressed along two further “flanks” (ibid., 255–266), one to the “left” to Dalmatia and later to Italy, and one to the “right” to Walachia, the center of Romania. The main part of the essay sketches the central advance, listing observations in different places chronologically country-by-country. The essential question was, however, which factors had caused the dove to cross its former range limits and to move into the Hungarian plains and then further northwestward. Stresemann and Nowak rejected Ernst Mayr's genetic explanation, and instead suggested that a change in the breeding habits of the bird had enabled it to move (ibid., 262). Since the dove used to breed in nesting baskets that were put out for it in the roofs of Islamic houses, it suffered “hard times” (ibid., 264) after the Islamic population had been expelled from the new Balkan states. From contemporary sources, they concluded that the Collared Dove had changed its behavior to breeding in trees. This ecological adaptation, accordingly, enabled the bird's population to grow and eventually to move to more remote areas and to also breed there.
A second element in their explanation concerned the situation in the newly entered territories. Accordingly, the dove had only a few natural enemies and competitors. As already mentioned it was considered a “cultural follower” (ibid., 244). As in earlier times in the Balkans, the dove benefited from the benevolent attitude of the human population, which did not rob their nests and tolerated their presence. The authors stressed the role of the “ethics of bird protection” (ibid., 264).Footnote 17 Conversely, the authors explained the relatively limited spread of the bird to France and Italy by the supposed lack of support for the idea of bird protection in these countries (ibid. 265).
Stresemann and Nowak also stressed that the bird invaded new territories relatively unevenly. In some cases, newly populated places were left again when conditions became less appealing. The authors explained this by the specific expansion strategy of the birds, which depended on very specific types of habitats, which they could find only around human settlements. Such areas were identified first by “scouts” (ibid., 276) who often traversed long distances to find a new habitat. Then other birds followed so that successively a stable population was formed. While the birds proceeded mainly along human settlements, they avoided areas of a less favorable character such as the mountainous areas or the sea, which both often posed obstacles that they had difficulty in overcoming or circumventing. Since the birds originated from a warmer climate zone, and notably their toes proved to be rather vulnerable against frost, the authors expected that the birds would find a definite range boundary somewhere in northern Europe (ibid., 271).
As this summary shows, explanations of the success of the Collared Dove did not simply pinpoint certain biological mechanisms. The two authors presented causal factors in the context of extended narratives about the bird's different phases of translocation. Their narrative included smaller sub-narratives about specific events or behavioral patterns. They told the story of the Collared Dove as a hero, who was faced with a series of challenges and mishaps, but eventually was able to find its own way. At the same time, this was a story about changing environmental conditions, and most importantly it was about the way in which humans shaped the environment thereby either hindering or supporting the bird's expansion.
Stresemann and Nowak used the term “expansion” to describe this process. In unfolding their story, however, they also mobilized a host of anthropomorphizing metaphors that presented the bird as having a “home” (ibid., 245), as “settling” in certain places (ibid., 245) and as “seeking” the proximity of poultry farms (ibid., 244). Many of these metaphors had clear military connotations such as “escapes” (Ausbrüche), “advances” (Vorstösse”), “flanks” (Flanken), and “scouts” (Kundschafter). In 1955 another ornithologist even used the term “invasion” (Ringleben Reference Ringleben1955, 19; see also Fisher Reference Fisher1953, 169). This martial idiom probably built directly on the still very recent experience of WWII, and the prevalence of such terms on the radio, in newspapers, and in political speech. Unlike the recent discourse of “invasion ecology,” however (see Larson, Nehrlich, and Wallis Reference Larson, Nerlich and Wallis2005), the use of military metaphors did not imply that ornithologists saw the advent of the Collared Dove as a threat. The dove spread on both sides of the cold-war division of Europe, and was thus hardly suitable for the projection of the geopolitical anxieties of that period. It is telling, in that context, that a journalist in 1952 even described birds, including the Collared Dove's “invasion” as “feathered air bridges” (gefiederte Luftbrücken) (referring to the Western Allies’ air bridge during the Soviet blockade of West-Berlin 1948–49) (Mann Reference Mann1952).
This narrative of the Collared Dove's expansion became a relatively stable landmark of ornithological discourse, although the details were interpreted differently.Footnote 18 Whatever causal factors were evoked for explaining the first move of the bird, it was beyond dispute that the bird's success was supported by its increasing connection with humans, in other words, that it was a “cultural follower.” Following earlier associations of the bird with the oriental culture, Stresemann and Nowak gave much prominence to the support given, or even active introduction by the Islamic population, to explain how the bird had reached the starting position from which it later invaded Central Europe (Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, 247, 249; see also Voous Reference Voous1962, 154). Although such a close association with the Turkish population was widely assumed, it was denied by some observers who claimed at least an equally supportive role of the Christian population (Keve-Kleiner Reference Keve-Kleiner1943, 285).Footnote 19 Second, it was also widely agreed that people helped the bird to survive in the newly populated zone (Rucner Reference Rucner1952; Stresemann and Novak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958; Berndt and Dancker Reference Berndt and Dancker1966, 49) by providing beneficial living conditions or even by feeding (Löschau and Lenz Reference Löschau and Lenz1967, 56). As two authors later summarized (Berndt and Dancker Reference Berndt and Dancker1966, 49), the Collared Dove had always spread where humans were “well disposed” toward it, but they did not spread where humans were not supportive.
Notwithstanding the critical role of human settlements and of the active promotion or protection, the hero-narratives of ornithologists framed the expansion of the bird as a spontaneous, natural process. This distinguished the case from the intentional introduction of birds, for example, for ornamental reasons or to combat pests, as had happened widely in Europe (see Niethammer Reference Niethammer1963, 7), and occasionally also with Collared Doves (Anon. 1955). This undisturbed dynamic legitimized the scientific interest in the bird's expansion as a research object (Bodenstein Reference Bodenstein1951), and therefore ornithologists were unhappy about active releases (Anon. 1955) and opposed hunting (Ringleben Reference Ringleben1955) of Collared Doves. Even Niethammer (Reference Niethammer1963, 279), who welcomed the release of other birds as useful bio-geographic experiments, warned against releasing laughing doves because he feared that these might hamper the study of the Collared Dove. If Richardson and Pysek (Reference Richardson and Pysek2007) are right, and before the rise of invasion ecology, ecologists tended to focus on natural systems and considered invasions only as human induced “background noise,” then such a de-emphasis of the human agency must have been the only way to kindle scientific interest in a bird migration case. As we will see later, the framing of the expansion as a spontaneous process has recently also received political relevance as an argument to protect the bird from harmful human interference.
Even when direct interventions were avoided, the narrative privileging of the agency of the bird was far from self-evident. Why should the active release count as a human disturbance of an otherwise spontaneous process, and why not also the provision of positive living conditions in human settlements? Why is the migration attributed to the heroic agency of the bird, when it had only arrived at its starting position in the Balkans because it had been supported by the Turkish population and when it had even already needed human support to travel from India to Turkey? Given the close interaction between humans, the environment, and the bird that ornithologists sketched in their narratives, the distinction between the active human introduction of the bird from such a spontaneous natural process was largely a matter of convention. Only recently have ecological explanatory models moved beyond such a distinction, using the Collared Dove to underline the need for an “anthropogenous ecology” (Baumgart Reference Baumgart2000, 30).
Shaping a Species Image
When a species settles in a new territory, it not only has to find its place in a different ecological setting: it also becomes the object of definitional processes through which cultural images of that species are formed and the presence of the entrant is either legitimized or problematized (see e.g. Coates Reference Coates2006). This final section shows how ornithologists contributed to the formation of a positive image of the Collared Dove in Germany, and how they countered the more ambivalent views that some of their contemporaries had about the bird. This positive image took shape not only in the disciplinary discourse of ornithologists; it also spread through publications that were directed to larger publics, including articles in newspapers and nature magazines, and small monographs and popular field guides that were sometimes written by journalists or conservationists.
Ornithologists’ image of the Collared Dove differed strikingly from the problematization of non-native species that could be found in other strands of nature conservation and ecology. For example, in the late nineteenth-century U.S., opponents of the “English sparrow” characterized the bird as dirty, and used it as a rhetorical vehicle to express their disdain of foreign immigrants or the country of the birds’ origin (ibid., 21). An often quoted example is in National Socialist Germany, where some landscape planners and horticulturalists had promoted the exclusive use of “native” plants in order to maintain the alleged purity of the German landscape (Gröning and Wolschke-Bulmahn Reference Gröning and Wolschke-Bulmahn1992).Footnote 20 Later, while the Collared Dove spread in Europe, the British biologist Charles Elton published his treaty on “ecology of invasions,” which in the 1980s was invoked to set the tone of the newly developing subdiscipline of invasion ecology (Elton Reference Elton1958).Footnote 21 Elton claimed that (due to intensifying human influence), the bio-geographic boundaries that hitherto had kept species apart had become so permeable, that the world was facing an “ecological explosion” (ibid., 15). The book considered a number of case studies of invasive species, mostly from the U.S, among them the spread of the European starling around 1900. At least occasionally concerns about non-native species seemed to have also found resonance in ornithological discourse in Germany. Thus when Stresemann in 1958 received a request to support the experimental release of a Canary bird on the Azores, he dismissed this proposal on the grounds of conservationist concerns about the “falsification” of the fauna.Footnote 22
The Collared Dove, however, was a different case. Ornithologists saw its advent as an exceptional event and sought to translate their own fascination into a broader public appreciation of that bird. Generally, they were less concerned about its “non-native” status, than with its actual role in Germany's nature. As they claimed, the Collared Dove did not cause any ecological harm (Nowak Reference Nowak1965, 93). The initial concern of some observers that the dove might crowd out the native Wood Pigeon was quickly resolved when a relatively harmonious cohabitation of the two species was reported (Riese Reference Riese1967; Löschau and Lenz Reference Löschau and Lenz1967, 62–63). Moreover, given the disappearance or retreat of birds in Germany, ornithologists welcomed the Collared Dove as a suitable replacement (Mann Reference Mann1952). This was very much in line with earlier attitudes in ornithology and bird conservation: In 1921 German ornithologist Otto Schnurre had already cherished the transformation of the landscape by man as a factor that would attract new birds (Schnurre Reference Schnurre1921, 9).
Ornithologists, however were not alone in discussing and debating about the advent of the Collared Dove. Already in 1950 Emilie Adametz reported that the bird had come to be seen as a menace in many parts of Lower Austria (Adametz Reference Adametz1950–51, 65). Later similar complaints were occasionally reported in Germany (Anon. 1968; Lachner Reference Lachner1963, 347). Since the bird tended to freeload from the feeding of poultry, farmers stood out as its most emulative objectors. For example, in 1966 a poultry farmer reported in a letter to the Hamburg newspaper Welt am Sonntag (Anon. 1966a), about his ineffective attempts to scare off the doves from his chicken farm and asked for advice. As some ornithologists observed, farmers did not refrain from even shooting the Collared Doves (Ringleben Reference Ringleben1955; Stresemann and Nowak Reference Stresemann and Nowak1958, 266; Löschau and Lenz Reference Löschau and Lenz1967, 62).
Another reason for hostility against the Collared Dove was its call, which was often perceived as nasty (Anon. 1963; see also Fisher Reference Fisher1953, 154). The journalist and book-author Walther Henkels, described it as disharmonious and contended that it had led to the bird gaining a rather “bad reputation” (Henkels Reference Henkels1964a). The amateur-ornithologist Rolf Lachner, a doctor at a hospital in Westphalia, reported how his colleagues complained that the bird annoyed their patients (Lachner Reference Lachner1963, 347). Although such complaints seem to have been widespread, they did not necessarily lead to a negative attitude toward the bird. Adametz noted that most residents in Austria actually showed sympathy for the bird (Adametz (Reference Adametz1950–51, 65). This is also consistent with the observations of German birdwatchers that residents tended to feed the dove (Löschau and Lenz Reference Löschau and Lenz1967, 56; Weimann Reference Weimann1965, 41).
One way in which ornithologists and other authors – for example of newspaper articles – shaped a positive image of the Collared Dove was the aesthetization of its appearance and call. They referred to the Collared Dove's visual and acoustic presence as atmospheric features of the coming of spring (Anon. 1966b; Henkels Reference Henkels1964b). As Nowak (Reference Nowak1965, 91–92) put it, complaints against the call only showed that these people were suffering from an unnatural nervousness, and thereby suggested that the bird itself should not be blamed. The ornithologist Frielinghaus described the bird as an “amiable and trusting animal” (Frielinghaus Reference Frielinghaus1949, 16). In the mid-60s, a birdwatcher from the Westphalian town Paderborn wrote about the doves: “similar to noble canonesses of a bygone area, they trip in their isabelline habits and the black ‘velvet’-ribbons across the road” (Weimann Reference Weimann1965, 42). Although he conceded that a further propagation might be problematic, he felt that he would miss the “pretty doves.”
In stark contrast to the “nativist” (Peretti Reference Peretti1998) attitude that gained prominence in conservation ecology, it was a certain exoticism that kindled the public fascination for the “new citizen” (Weimann Reference Weimann1965, 41). The story of the dove's journey was popularized in various handbooks and the descriptions of the bird were published in birdwatcher guides. Nowak explicitly stated that the “home of the Collared Dove is Asia” (ibid., 8). In a Hamburg newspaper the bird was called a “new guest from India” (U.D. 1959). In 1950 an ornithologist even mobilized German stereotypes about South European people when he noted the “Southern carelessness” (Taubenberger Reference Taubenberger1950, 64) with which the bird constructed its nest. Even if the quoted analogies might have reflected xenophobia concerning foreigners, they were not linked to any negative concern about the bird itself. Electronic research of four leading German newspapers from the period did not reveal a single case where the references to the exotic origin was obviously intended to delegitimize the presence of the bird.Footnote 23
A distinct issue concerned the approval or disapproval of hunting the Collared Dove. Whereas Germany and other Central and West European countries had restricted the shooting of birds, notably singing birds, bird shooting remained a common practice in France and Italy. This raised much concern about migratory birds from Germany which would constantly be “killed” on their winter tours to the Mediterranean (Meyer Reference Meyer2013). When ornithologists mentioned the modern attitude toward bird protection as a reason for the Collared Dove's success, this was therefore also a form of moral self-assertion, and implicitly a blaming of those other countries.
Already in 1950 Adametz (Reference Adametz1950–51, 65) argued that the dove should be treated with care in Austria and therefore not allowed to be shot. Five years later in Germany the ornithologist Herbert Ringleben criticized the shooting of Collared Doves by farmers. Indeed, as Ringleben pointed out (1955, 22–23), the Collared Dove was effectively protected in Germany. Although the hunting law listed wildlife pigeons as “huntable animals” it did not stipulate a period during which the hunt was actually allowed. In the 1960s, however, after a further stabilization of the bird's population, West Germany included the Collared Dove in the provision of the hunting season of the forest pigeon (Verordnung über Jagdzeiten vom 13. Juli 1967, § 1, BGBl. I, 723), and in the 1980s, hunting periods were also stipulated in the GDR (Dritte Durchführungsbestimmungen zum Jagdgesetz vom 28. Januar 1987, § 1, Gesetzblatt I, 3, 19). Recently the issue reemerged on the public agenda. Many observers had established that the Collared Dove was retreating in Germany (e.g. Witt Reference Witt2002) and conservationists therefore have even called for a full year of protection for the bird.Footnote 24
Also for ornithologists in other European countries the Collared Dove seems to have been primarily a matter of fascination and not of alarm (e.g. Fisher Reference Fisher1953; Brink Reference Brink1951). Yet occasionally the uncertainty about the long-term increase in the dove's population size raised some skeptical concerns. This was notably the case in Britain where Hudson (Reference Hudson1965, 137) reported that the call for controlling the bird was becoming widespread and where, given the barrier of the Atlantic to the West, and the continuing influx of birds from the Continent, he expected a further increase in population. Indeed, the bird was later considered the object of the so-called “general license” of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act which allowed it to be shot in order to prevent a public nuisance. More recently, the spread of the bird to farmland, has led to increasing monitoring and problem awareness among the British Ornithological Trust (Marchand et al. Reference Marchand, Wilson, Chamberlain, Gregory and Baillie1997, 15).
An interesting counter-example to the European perception of the Collared Dove is North America where, around 1986, the bird had started a “similarly explosive invasion” (James Reference James, Simberloff, Schmitz and Brown1997, 149). Relabeled as a “Eurasian” Collared Dove and routinely categorized as “non-native,” the bird was identified as a potential threat to biodiversity or even a transmitter of diseases (Smith Reference Smith1987, 1379; Romagoza and Labinski Reference Romagosa and Labisky2000). Notably, the possibility of a niche competition between the Collared Dove and the native Mourning Dove has been a central, yet still undecided, issue in ornithological publications (James Reference James, Simberloff, Schmitz and Brown1997; Poling and Hayslette Reference Poling and Hayslette2006) and birdwatchers’ blogs.Footnote 25 This is not only in line with earlier concerns about the negative effects of European species influx on indigenous biota. It also agreed with the view of invasion ecology which since the 1980s has increasingly problematized the negative effects of non-native species and the human-induced disturbance and connectivity which were identified as the driving factors of such invasions. Indeed the bird was supposed to have been shipped to the Bahamas before invading the U.S. (James Reference James, Simberloff, Schmitz and Brown1997). Although this was barely different from the spread of the dove to the Balkans by the Turks which preceded the European expansion, this made the bird particularly suspect.
Although there are obviously no attempts to roll back the spread of the Collared Dove, the rise of the bio-invasion discourse has meanwhile also changed the context in which ornithologists in Germany debate the status of the bird. This has led to increasing attempts to demarcate the Collared Dove from problematic invasive species. According to a recent report of the Federal Environment Agency, the expansion of the Collared Dove had to be accepted as a “natural process” (Geiter, Homma, and Kintzelbach Reference Olaf, Homma and Kinzelbach2002, 22). Also according to Nowak, its supposed “natural expansion” set it apart from the problem-species that have arrived through anthropogeneous transportation (Nowak Reference Nowak1991, 50). In public debate, the Collared Dove has even been presented as a positive counter-example, with the intention to de-dramatize the current concerns about bio-invasion (Anon. 1999).
Conclusion
Naturally occurring events such as retreating glaciers, floods, exploding volcanoes, or the spread of vegetation in bombed cities have opened-up fruitful windows of opportunity for field workers (Dörries Reference Dörries, Höhler and Schröder2005; Kohler Reference Kohler2002; Lachmund Reference Lachmund2003). The advent of the Collared Dove had a similar significance for the history of ornithology. As we have seen, however, the transformation of the bird and its range extension into an object of biogeographic knowledge was not self-evident. Ornithologist practices of observation, of naming, of story-telling, and of normative claims-making on behalf of the bird were mediating factors that redefined what kind of entity the Collared Dove was and how it related to the spaces that it had entered. In this respect, the traveling of birds and the cultural imaginations of those who studied them were inextricably connected to each other.
The extent to which the Collared Dove had become an iconic example of range extension was due to a number of features that made this bird a particularly suitable research object. First, the bird's arrival enjoyed a high public visibility. It moved into countries where a dense culture of observation existed. Since it settled next to human habitations it could not escape the attention of birdwatchers nor of the broader public. Second, the advent of the bird was considered and, through categorical purification work, actively consolidated as a spontaneous phenomenon that distinguished it from the intentional or unintentional introduction of birds. As we have seen, ornithologists were indeed keen to maintain the undisturbed character of the bird's spread and therefore criticized the release of Collared Doves as an incursion into their research field. Third, the bird was not seen to cause any major problems for humans nor for the stability of nature. Unlike species that are framed as vermin or invasive species, they could be approached in a contemplative manner instead of with some sort of a problem-solving attitude. Fourth, its unprecedented rapidity allowed for study of the bird's range expansion in a kind of natural time-lapse. Ornithologists were able to trace a kind of ecological process in real time that hitherto was supposed to have developed only over centuries. In all of these respects the story of the Collared Dove should be a reminder that the history of ornithology, and of naturalist fieldwork in general, cannot be disentangled from the environmental history of its object.
As we have also seen, ornithologists sponsoring of a benevolent cultural image of a non-native species makes this historical episode an important case of “ecological cosmopolitism” (Pauly Reference Pauly1996). And yet, ornithologists’ open attitude towards the Collared Dove was not unconditional. First, ornithologists considered its migration an exceptional case and cherished it as the sublime advance of natural agency. This sets their viewpoint apart from invasion ecology's prioritization of humans as the main drivers of ecological mixing. Second, the positive image of the Collared Dove was consistent with a general commitment to preserve the ecological stability and particularity of the invaded territory. As much as ornithologists celebrated the Collared Dove's exotic origin, they legitimized its presence in terms of its ability to integrate into, and thereby, to enrich the nature that was already in place in their country.
Acknowledgments
For their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article I want to thank Raf de Bont, Stefan Helmreich, Geert Somsen, the two reviewers of this journal, and the participants of a session at the 4S/EAST-conference (2012) in Copenhagen, and of the STS seminar at Maastricht University.
