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We tend to date the beginning of the First World War from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant consort. But for those who enjoy the game of “what if,” it was\u00a0another archducal death, equally violent, that created the circumstances leading to the greatest slaughter in European history — until the next, of course.<\/p>\n
The argument goes like this: If Archduke Rudolph, born on August 21, 1858, as\u00a0the only son\u00a0of Emperor Franz Joseph, hadn’t murdered young Mary Vetsera<\/a> and then killed himself on that winter’s day in 1889 at Mayerling<\/a>, Rudolph — famously and openly sympathetic to the cause of decentralization — might have tempered his father’s absolutism, and the promise of his eventual succession to the throne could have mollified the nationalists in the empire. Instead, the crown prince’s death only strengthened the hand of the conservative forces at the Hapsburg court, and the frustration of the empire’s national minorities festered, only to burst in Sarajevo.<\/p>\n Enough — far\u00a0more than enough — has been jabbered over the past 125 years about Rudolph’s death, but little is said nowadays about his scant three decades on earth. And today almost no one remembers\u00a0that he was a birder.<\/p>\n Rudolph’s mentors in matters natural historical\u00a0included Alfred Brehm<\/a> and Ferdinand von Hochstetter<\/a>, two of the most famous and influential scientists of their day — sometimes it paid to be a Hapsburg.<\/p>\n Ornithology, both observing and collecting, was for\u00a0Rudolph a refuge<\/a> from “the petty, irritating\u00a0matters of daily life”:<\/p>\n A man needs\u00a0diversion to keep his spirit and his body fresh, he must have the chance from time to time to flee everything he has created and the company of cultivated people; to hasten out into wild nature, into the only true magnificence, a magnificence that he himself is not capable of creating but that out of which he himself once emerged…. Only there can a real\u00a0man feel truly comfortable\u00a0and exist in the awareness that elements surround him that are mightier than he himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In April 1878, Rudolph and Brehm, accompanied by Eugen von Homeyer<\/a>, the “father of Pomeranian ornithology,” Rudolph’s brother-in-law Leopold, and their collectors and crew set off down the Danube with a single question in mind<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u00a0 whether the Steinadler and the Goldadler represented distinct species of eagle or should be lumped as a single species.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There was a great deal of what we can only call recreational collecting on that trip (“we were surprised ourselves by the number of birds we shot<\/a>“).\u00a0The party\u00a0took a total of<\/a>\u00a0eight griffon vultures, one black vulture, seven imperial eagles, three lesser spotted eagles, two greater spotted eagles, fourteen white-tailed eagles, two ospreys, one short-toed eagle, three common buzzards, one red kite, nine black kites, five goshawks, one hobby, four common kestrels, one marsh harrier, two eagle-owls, one tawny owl, six ravens, seven hooded crows, one rook, one jackdaw, one magpie, one jay, five European rollers, two lesser gray shrikes, one nightjar, three cuckoos, two hoopoes, four turtle-doves, two rufous-tailed rock-thrushes, one ferruginous duck, one mallard, one graylag goose, eight great cormorants, five black terns, eleven black storks, one white stork, nine gray herons, two purple herons, four black-crowned night-herons, and “a series of twenty-six additional species of birds of less interest.”<\/p>\n And, of course, lots and lots of indeterminate Aquila\u00a0<\/em>eagles. Brehm was able to use the shocking number of specimens taken to answer the question of their identity or non-identity to his satisfaction. In the second edition of his\u00a0Thierleben<\/em>, published the following year, he wrote<\/a> that<\/p>\n![\"Screenshot](\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Screenshot-2014-08-14-13.59.55.png\")
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