The emotional story of how a group of British prisoners of war overcame hardship and boredom through a shared love of birdwatching was revealed at the Hay Festival today.
An audience heard how they even won over a German guard, who was also a keen ornithologist, as they spent years in captivity during World War II.
Peter Conder, John Buxton, George Waterston and John Barrett, who moved to Pembrokeshire after the war, bonded over their hobby.
And while the starving men existed in cramped conditions under the constant watch of armed Nazi guards, their feathered friends helped them get through the long arduous days.
Diaries, letters and sketches have been used as the basis of a new book by Derek Niemann, editor of the RSPB’s children’s magazine.
As well as providing an insight into their secret bird-watching society, Birds In A Cage also reveals how the legacies of the men now live on in institutions such as the RSPB and the British Wildlife Trust.
When they arrived at their first camp, the men didn’t expect to see birds but they had been mistaken.
In a letter to his family, Conder told them that they had spotted large numbers of skylarks.
He said: “We start watching at dawn and finish at dusk and try to get our notes written up before lights out at 11. Even in our dreams we can hear the skylarks calling and then we realise we’re half awake.”
During his talk, Niemann said it was at that point that they realised they could be distracted from the harsh realities of life in the camp.
“The four men were no longer Prisoners of War,” he said. “There was no shame in captivity. They were now ornithologists again, making notes and keeping records which could be useful when peace time came.”
And even though they were suffering from hunger themselves, they would look out for the birds.
He added: “They would leave out stale food for the birds in a bid to bring them into the camps.”
During the first couple of months at any of the camps they were moved to, the guards would be suspicious of the birdwatchers and demand to know what they were doing.
“After a while they realised they were harmless idiots,” said Niemann. “But the men setting up escape attempts realised they were quite useful,” he added, pointing out how Conder was able to note the times the guards changed shifts in his birdwatching books.
But one German guard, a fellow ornithologist, empathised with them.
“He sent them books and papers and even sent them metal rings so they could ring the birds. He didn’t see them as The Enemy – he saw them as fellow ornithologists and was helping them,” the author said.
After the war, the men went on to become figureheads in the natural world, with Conder becoming chief executive of the RSPB. When he took over the post, there were 20,000 members – that figure had swelled to 200,000 by the time he retired 12 years later.
Barrett settled in Pembrokeshire and became the Field Studies Council’s first warden at Dale Fort.
“He felt that he’d failed at the Prisoner of War camps to persuade the men to watch the birds with him so he dedicated the rest of his life to it,” said Niemann.
But he added that Barrett wasn’t a “natural birdwatcher” as he had taken up the hobby later in life than the others. In fact, after the war, before settling in Wales with his young family, he spent three months in Germany walking between the POW camps.
“He wanted to get the whole thing out of his system”
While Barrett remained in Pembrokeshire, the other men would meet regularly to share their passion for birdwatching.
Niemann added: “They would go outside in their own time with their wives and families to look for birds wherever they wanted and enjoy the kind of pleasure and freedom that none of us could understand.”