David Hollands' Birds

Doctor, Naturalist, Writer and Wildlife Photographer, David Hollands was born  in England and educated at Oundle School and Birmingham University.

David writes. “I was about eight years old when I started my first bird notebook. Apparently, my initial entry read ‘Sighted one Blackbird’. My younger brother spotted this and thought it was the funniest thing that he had read for a very long time. Nearly eighty years on, he still occasionally ribs me about it. Despite this mirth, I have since seen many more Blackbirds, plus birds of all persuasions, and it marked the start of a life-long passion.”

This love of birds and wildlife photography was already deeply embedded when David and his wife, Margaret, came to Australia in 1961. Their intended short stay was soon converted into something much more permanent when, in 1963, they bought a busy medical practice in Orbost, far-eastern Victoria, which they then ran for nearly 40 years.

In those early years, writing books had never entered David’s head.

Sailing provided a welcome change from medicine. He had already sailed competitively in England and, for several years, raced a 505 dinghy in Australia. This included a World championship, where he and his crew finished 58th out of 68, not an outstanding achievement but the experience was priceless.

Then there was farming. In 1980, David and Margaret left the old bank building, where they had lived since arriving in Orbost and bought a 250 acre farm a short way out of town. There they lived and, for the next 35 years, bred Angus cattle, with sometimes as many as 70 calving females.

Throughout these times, the love of birds was never far below the surface and, in 1973, he gave up sailing to start writing and photographing for his first book. Medicine and family left little time for this but, in 1984, he was able to complete ‘Eagles Hawks and Falcons of Australia’.

With the first book under his belt, David had developed the passion for combining photography with writing and could not stop. Since ‘Eagles Hawks and Falcons’, he has written and published six more books. In 2000, he retired from medical practice but always claimed that this was not retirement at all, just a change of jobs.

There have been some marvellous expeditions along the way; the remote Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks, verdant flower gardens in a wet year, like the surface of the moon in drought; the forests of East Gippsland and North Queensland, at night places of mystery and incredible atmosphere; the tidal shores of north-western Australia, temporary home to vast numbers of migrating shorebirds. These are just a few of the places where dreams turned into reality. He has also travelled to almost a dozen countries overseas in search of his beloved owls.

Through all these adventures, David has been hugely fortunate to have the unflagging support of Margaret, of his friends and of the family, who regard their father’s eccentricities with some amusement but also a large dose of pride. In 2015, he was awarded an OAM for services to rural medicine and ornithology. For him, this was a welcome and unexpected honour but was also tempered with sadness for Margaret, who, as a woman dealing with the enormous challenges, and sometimes male prejudices. of country medicine, surely merited a similar award?

To return to David’s books. Their unique feature is that he is a naturalist first and a photographer second. The photographs are a vital part of every book, with all but personal pictures taken by him, but it is the writing that sets them apart. He has personally studied all of his subjects in the field and writes about them with passion; clear, thoughtful and detailed, with equal emphasis on the birds and what they are doing, on their surroundings and the life around them and the expeditions to find them. He regards himself as one of the most fortunate people in the world.

Very sadly, Margaret died in 2018. Writing his books became David’s main occupation and, in 2021, he completed a new book on Birds of Prey, entitled “David Hollands’ Birds of Prey of Australia”. Since then, he has been working on his autobiography, “Better Born Lucky than Brilliant”, which is due to be published in October 2023.