Birdwatchers use a term with ANZAC roots – Jizz – to identify birds that at first sight may look similar.
The acronym is actually GISS (General Impression of Shape and Size) and this was a vital aid in helping the Diggers and Australian air and naval crews distinguish between Japanese planes and those of the allies during the Second World War.
In birding terms, the more informal Jizz helps to separate similar species by focusing less on shape and markings and more on behaviour ¬– how the target bird feeds, flies and walks.
By coincidence the ANZAC connection to birding came to mind two weeks ago as I walked along St Kilda Rd in Melbourne on ANZAC Day. It was not the servicemen and women returning from the Shrine of Remembrance nearby that stopped me in my tracks but a Jizz impression of birds contained in an art installation along St Kilda Rd’s central nature strip.
British artist Julian Opie has been commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria to create the art work. As part of the gallery’s Triennial exhibition, Opie uses LED screens to project a basic white outline of seven bird species on black screens.
What is remarkable is how the birds move – silver gulls scurry with fast feet as they do on a beach, a heron extends its long neck from hunched shoulders, a cape barren goose bobs its head and a pigeon pecks at the ground. In all, there is also a pelican, an ibis and a moorhen.
We are used to seeing birds in our cities so the examples illustrated do not look totally out of place. The artist, though, is looking for deeper meaning. Opie says he wants to connect the clean visual language of modern life with the fundamentals of art history. His figures resemble Egyptian hieroglyphs of birds and he says this is one of his influences, along with the art found in public signage.
The Egyptians were great observers of the natural world. The white ibis that Opie portrays is called the sacred ibis in Africa, sacred especially to ancient Egyptians because it was believed it lead the dead to the afterlife.
In contrast, the ibis is known as the “bin chook” in modern Australia, a name derived for its penchant for raiding rubbish bins in parks. In a perfect study in Jizz, that’s behaviour that separates it from a family member, the straw-necked ibis.
Bin chooks aside, my favourite mainland city bird is the magpie-lark which I always see on Melbourne streets. It might look similar to the magpie but Jizz will point to its smaller size and its upright stance when it walks.
There was one sharing the nature strip with the electric birds. But it ignored the exhibits, while I was left to reflect on this curious link between the world of war and the world of birds