Denis Walls | Guest Contributor
It is with great sadness and deep affection that Cairns Birders and BirdLife Northern Queensland (BLNQ) have learned of the death last week of Andy Anderson at the age of 84.
Andy was truly a giant of the Cairns birding community for 30 years, and although he returned to his native New Zealand (NZ) after Covid restrictions were lifted, to be close to family, his reputation and legacy live on.
With Peter Everist’s help, the weekly publication of The New Frogmouth (TNF) enewsletter in its current format was at Andy’s instigation, and one of our regular birding site visits in Cairns is still referred to as Andy’s Patch. Long may that continue.
Birding events in the early 1990s, although far less frequent than nowadays, had a star-studded cast of luminaries. I was the Cairns neophyte and able to learn from John Crowhurst, John Seale, Brian Venables, and Andy Anderson. Every one of them had their own special characteristics and all were, or continue to be, generous with their knowledge. There was nothing competitive about the birding, and that continues to be the case today with our preferred and informal ‘structure’, after an unsuccessful period as an incorporated body in the 1990s.
Andy had an amazing ear for bird calls even after periods away from an area. On a trip with him to Georgetown, despite an absence of over a year, he was able to rattle off all the birds we heard. He put me to shame by insisting on taking the couch, while I got the bed in the cabin we shared. I thought I’d show him how dedicated I was by getting up at dawn to start birding, but he had already been up for two hours checking out the nocturnals!
As he got older he became more radical in his thinking as he realised, and then articulated in TNF, the connections between birding and the need for environmental protection in a time of biodiversity loss. Naturally, he had to be cagey on that front as many birders were (and some still are) very conservative and uncomfortable about drawing attention to anything that could be considered political.
He started turning up at events or meetings with groups such as Cairns and Far North Environment Centre (CAFNEC), Save Our Slopes, Cairns Wetlands Park, Places You Love, that I told him about, or was part of. When he was leaving for New Zealand, he told me his goal was to write a definitive work on the actions required to link social, political, and environmental concerns into a global protection framework: a grand project perhaps, but one that demonstrated his desire to remain mentally active despite signs of his physical decline. In his fairly recent final piece for TNF, he wrote (and demonstrated in his writing) that he was still as sharp as a tack despite the rigours of ageing.
Andy was, in many ways, a free spirit despite being of the generation that preceded the Swinging Sixties and Seventies. He took risky tours to PNG that others may wish to write about. And, several years ago, he decided that after visiting an overseas daughter, he'd return to Mexico, a place he loved, and just drive around, bird, and sleep in his car. “Weren’t you scared?” I asked him. “Naw, what’s the worst that could happen? Murder? I’ve had a good life.” He then proceeded to tell me that he had been woken in the middle of the night by some burly blokes hammering on his car window. “OMG”, I said, “you must have been terrified.” “No” he replied. “They were just worried about me and wanted me to seek shelter in a safer spot.” All this, by the way, without Andy speaking a word of Spanish in an area where no one spoke English – “I’m no good at languages” he said.
In many ways Andy was a birding iconoclast. “To hell with name changes” he once said. “A bird is what you want to call it.” So, he stuck with Peewee instead of Magpie-lark and was comfortable with Plover for Masked Lapwing. Leave pedantry for the pedants of which, I suppose, I am one!
Returning to NZ was tough for Andy. “Why do you think I’ve spent so long in FNQ” he once said. “There are no birds in New Zealand.”: a slight exaggeration, but we know what he meant. Far North Queensland (FNQ) and Cairns Birders were where Andy’s heart lay for so long, in the sweetness of that human friendship and sharing of avian pleasures. Andy, we miss you and hope that, somewhere, a guardian Resplendent Quetzal or Yellow (or Green?) Oriole is looking after you.