On 5 September 2020, the Australian ornithological community lost one of its most respected and internationally acclaimed behavioural ecologists: Douglas David Dow passed away, aged 81. Although he lived most of his early life in Canada, Doug was born in Scotland. His early years were spent in Dumbarton, near Glasgow, where his ornithological precocity was first demonstrated by a fascination with the local seabirds from age 7. His family moved to Ontario in 1951 and he soon became enthralled with the spectacular bird migration he witnessed there. His first public presentation was at age 14 to an audience of 200 on migratory birds, while his first publication (at age 16) was on Empidonax flycatchers, a group notoriously difficult to reliably identify.
Not unexpectedly, he was soon an active and committed bird bander, at age 18 becoming the youngest person in Canada to be granted a banding licence. He then served as Director of Point Pelee Bird Observatory, which, being located on a narrow finger of land penetrating Lake Erie, is one of the most important sites for migration research in North America. After obtaining a B.Sc. at the University of British Columbia, Doug returned to the east to undertake his PhD at the University of Western Ontario. Immediately after completing his doctorate, he made the momentous decision to move to Australia to take up a lectureship at the University of Queensland (UQ).
Arriving in Brisbane, Queensland, in September 1968, Doug very soon realised that he had landed in what many ornithologists referred to as the country’s most backward state. The Queensland Government’s Fauna Conservation Act of 1952 had left no provision for research so bird banding permits were issued with reluctance, while Wedge-tailed Eagles and Rainbow Bee-eaters, declared as Pest Fauna, were fit to be killed without permit. Under the enthusiastic though informal leadership of the legendary Jiro Kikkawa, a vibrant group of students and junior staff rapidly developed into one of the most productive and imaginative hothouses of ornithology in the country. At this time Doug was starting to uncover the dark secrets of Noisy Miner social life at a remote site in central Queensland.
We both met Doug while post-graduate students at the University of New England in Armidale during the early 1980s. Jiro and Doug joined with Hugh Ford from UNE, to organise a series of workshops dubbed rather dauntingly as the Southern Queensland and Northern NSW Ornithological Colloquia, which involved these luminaries and students travelling to either Brisbane or Armidale to hear about avian research being undertaken at the two institutions. The meetings were extremely stimulating and opened the eyes of many of the younger attendees to the possibilities of more ambitious bird studies.
These events coincided with the peak in Doug’s well-recognised research on Noisy Miners and Grey-crowned Babblers. His careful investigations of the remarkably complex social organisation of these species were ground-breaking and unexpected, particularly as they were ‘Just Aussie bush birds’, as he liked to say. The many publications to have emerged from this enormously productive period were foundational to the emerging field of behavioural ecology and, in particular, the attention given to the Austral-centric phenomenon of cooperative breeding. Doug was also the first person to recognise the landscape-level significance of Noisy Miner interspecific aggression, providing a sound basis for the decades of critical research on what is now regarded as a national threatening process in Australia.
Doug was very much a scientist first and diplomat somewhat later, but always advocated for facts, proof and sound argument over sentiment and anecdote. He was as articulate as he was thoroughly informed, and not shy about expressing his opinion, though he always did so in a softly spoken and unaggressive way. Many of his colleagues recall his powerful logic and careful choice of words, led by an intense focus on the topic at hand as well as an ability to see plausible alternatives and their implications. These were skills and mental habits which influenced generations of the young biologists fortunate to have been taught, supervised or instructed by him. This description of Doug’s persona could be construed as indicating someone without a sense of humour. Nothing could be further from the truth. It seemed impossible to be in his presence for more than a few minutes before hearing an unlikely story, hilarious anecdote often delivered with some outrageous pun, always delivered with a wicked sparkle, in his familiar dead-pan but still distinctively Canadian accent.
Doug had been a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (the original ancestor of BirdLife Australia) since 1963, while still in Canada, where he received his secondary and tertiary education. He had read every issue of The Emu from cover to cover. This enthusiasm was rewarded soon after his arrival with his appointment as Assistant Editor of the journal, and an invitation to serve on the RAOU’s newly formed Research Committee. At the time, the Queensland branch of the RAOU was largely a clearing house for reports from the organisation’s headquarters in Melbourne, and the growing number of amateur and professional ornithologists in Brisbane wanted something more. After an informal meeting of interested UQ staff, including Doug, a more formal meeting was held in the university’s Zoology Department on 15 October 1969 (just over one year after Doug’s arrival!), when it was decided to establish the Queensland Ornithological Society (QOS). Doug was elected Outings Officer, and served on the QOS Council from 1970 to 1979. After a stint as Vice President from 1972 to 1974, he became President in 1976 and 1977, and later an Honorary Life Member. Re-branded Birds Queensland, the society celebrated its 50th anniversary with a dinner in December 2019, but as Doug was already suffering from a terminal illness, he sent his apologies with a delightfully warm greeting.
Just as ‘birds don’t recognise State borders’, Doug saw the need to support ornithology nationally as well as locally. To that end, he strongly lobbied QOS to become an affiliate of RAOU, and organised joint meetings in 1971, a tradition that continues to this day between Birds Queensland and BirdLife’s Southern Queensland branch. Doug was elected as RAOU President from 1983 to 1986 and remains the only person to have served as President, as well as Councillor, for both organisations. His outstanding contributions to ornithology and his service to BirdLife Australia (and its earlier identities) were recognised in 2018 with a Fellowship of BirdLife Australia.
Doug Dow will be long remembered for his quiet manner coupled with a rapier-sharp wit, combining intellectual rigour with a wicked sense of humour, and his ability to encourage and enthuse younger generations of ornithologists. In accordance with his wishes, Doug’s ashes will be returned to the land of his birth.