Birdwatchingwatching Read online

  Even the moorhen and coot conveniently bobbing along the stream near our hotel did little to perk me up. I was glad to finally work out which was which (mooR hens have Red beaks, cooTs whiTe, that’s how I remember it now), but I couldn’t help thinking the few birds I had ticked off were the ones seen by us all everyday. I didn’t feel as though I’d made any progress at all.

  3 January

  I pondered this early rut with our friends Phill and Fiona on our third and final day in Warwickshire. We’d met them for lunch and a wander round their local town, Luddington, and birdwatching proved to be a fecund topic of conversation. I’ve discovered that no matter how far removed they think they are from the hobby everyone has something to say about birds. Whether you have a twitching uncle, live near a bird reserve or occasionally feed the ducks, birdwatching will at some point or another stick its beak into your life.

  Phill is quite a romantic sort of chap. He directs plays and is passionate about the good things in life. Birdwatching, he told us theatrically, was good for the soul. In an excited and quite high voice he told me about a sparrowhawk he’d seen over Christmas. I asked him how he knew it was a sparrowhawk. He told me it looked a bit like a hawk and a bit like a sparrow.

  Fiona, meanwhile, said she thought birdwatching was like trainspotting.

  Pausing by the lock behind a church, we watched two swans swim stoically past. I got out my notebook and jotted down ‘Two swans on the Luddington Lock’. Maybe Fiona was right (my soul certainly didn’t feel markedly improved).

  They were, in fact, mute swans. You do occasionally find whooper swans and Bewick’s swans in the UK, but if it’s got an orangey beak with an odd black nubbin affair on the top, then you’re looking at a mute swan. And yes, I know it’s noisy – honking or hissing, depending on its mood – but it’s definitely a mute swan. Most swans in Britain are mute swans.

  Some people are terrified of swans on account of the rumour put about, I guess, by the swans, that they can and will break your arm in an instant. Every schoolboy knows that at the slightest provocation a swan will get you in a headlock, give you a Chinese burn then snap your upper limb in two. Many people also think that swans are beautiful birds. But what people like best is the tremendously anachronistic fact that The Queen Owns Them All! Lucky Queen! And she can eat them too, something she does as often as possible. ‘Swan soup, your Majesty?’ ‘Yum yum, James!’ is, I suspect, a typical exchange between the Queen and her head waiter (James) most evenings in the palace.

  Two other sightings of note that morning were a canoeist, braving the swan-infested waters, and a colourful duck that wasn’t a mallard. The trouble was that they were sitting side by side on the water, so to have a good look at the bird meant staring hard at the now self-conscious novice. In the end, the situation became too much for everyone and we scurried off. I couldn’t say what I’d seen. A shelduck maybe? A pochard? Who knows? Not me.

  After a brave final lunch of ox’s cheek and calf’s liver in Lower Quinton (an interesting combination but on balance, I’d rather have had ham and chips), Rachel and I looked, once more, for the M40, this time to head back to London and our normal lives. Picking our way across the countryside, we were to have our final birding incident of the trip.

  Rounding the corner on to a straight stretch of road, yearning for a sign to help us on our way, our eyes fell upon a large shape sitting right in our path, a hundred or so yards ahead. ‘It’s a goose,’ I said. ‘Canada goose,’ Rachel corrected me. We were both wrong.

  I slowed down to get a closer look and protect the car. It wasn’t a goose. It was more like a griffin. ‘What is that?’ cried Rachel, not taking her eyes off the beast. It was then that I realised Duncton was right about one aspect of birdwatching. To be a proper dad I needed to know these things. One day it wouldn’t be Rachel asking me, but a smaller version of Rachel in the seat behind her. And right now, I didn’t have a clue.

  The mythical bird turned towards us and stared us down. Even he could tell I didn’t know what he was. I looked away and groped around behind me for my binoculars and bird guide only to discover I’d amateurishly stowed both away in the boot. Before I could start to manoeuvre over seats and towards the rear of the vehicle, the brutish creature spread his bulky wings, flopped over the hedge, and disappeared.

  On our way back to Kensal Green, Rachel and I compared notes. We both agreed it was sort of a mottled brown colour and quite tufty. ‘It had big, chunky legs,’ said Rachel. ‘It looked hairy and arrogant,’ I added. Back home I wasn’t allowed to look at the bird guide till we’d unpacked and when I finally turned to the ‘Birds of Prey’ section I saw, to my dismay, that the most likely candidate was a red kite. The image fitted – I hadn’t seen the forked tail this time, but it was mottled and brown and the legs were definitely furry. What’s more, all the other details fitted perfectly. It was dining on some carrion left on the road, and that road was close to the M40, where kites tend to dwell.

  But then again, it might not have been a red kite! It could have been an imperial eagle! They are also big and tufty and fairly hairy and arrogant.

  The more I looked at the picture of the imperial eagle, the more convinced I became that this was exactly what I’d seen. It wasn’t particularly red, and it was especially imperial. It might even have been a vulture! After all, it was big. As big as a dog, at least. And a big dog too – not a spaniel – one of those large terrifying ones. Or a small horse. A small, terrifying horse.

  I closed the book. In my heart of hearts I knew it was almost certainly a red kite. I’d already ‘got’ a red kite. But there was still a chance that it was, in fact, something spectacular. A genuine birdwatching find. A golden eagle maybe. Or a condor. It was my responsibility, I felt, to learn these things. Not just for me, not just for my hypothetical children, but for the birdwatchers, for the birds, for Britain.

  4 January

  Kensal Green is an idiosyncratic segment of London, trapped between the rough reputations of Harlesden and Kilburn and the more trendy expensive likes of Queen’s Park and Notting Hill. What it is not, is green. Or Kensal for that matter (the word comes from ‘King’s Holt’ meaning ‘King’s Wood’, which disappeared a very long time ago).

  Immediately after our wedding Rachel and I moved in to the ground floor flat of one of the many Victorian terraced houses that criss-cross their way from the Grand Union Canal up to Willesden, which meant that although there was no grass to speak of, we did have the tiniest of gardens. ‘We need some outdoor space,’ we’d said to our estate agent. ‘I’ve got just the thing!’ he told us many times, before eventually showing us something that was sort of almost pretty much ‘the thing’.

  I’m no gardener but I liked looking after our ten-foot-square patch of land. A fig tree whose roots were actually planted in the garden next door had leaned over the wall and reached out towards our kitchen, offering shade and, in the summer, wizened figs that I insisted on testing every other week, to the bitter dismay of my tastebuds. Beneath its broad, flat, hand-like leaves we set some irregular slabs of fossilised sandstone, surrounded by a border of bits and bobs that we’d picked and mixed from the nearby B&Q. And when I say, ‘we set’, I mean that we paid a man to come and do what I couldn’t. As Jez the Gardener wielded spades and cement, I watched enviously from the kitchen, thinking ‘I could do that,’ but knowing that if I tried I’d only end up calling in a real man to mend my mistakes. Employing an expert now was cutting out the middle man. And that middle man was me.

  At the beginning of 2006, I didn’t want to be a middle man any more. I wanted to be a man in my own right. For some time I’d been paranoid that I wasn’t as masculine as I should be. Lying in bed, waiting for sleep, I’d think, I look pathetic. I’d be in the foetal position, duvet drawn up to my neck, cosy, but not manly. A real man, a proper man, would sleep on his back, probably with his eyes open, on some sort of hard wooden mattress and only a scratchy sack for warmth. Occasionally when I was in the shower, w
ashing myself with some of my wife’s opulent Imperial Leather Shower Gel, I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, gleefully covering my unmanly body with the lather, and again be ashamed at just how feminine I looked. A man of any worth wouldn’t behave like this. He’d just wander – maybe even stagger – out into his yard, find a rusting trough and scrub himself with a brick.

  After I’d bade a swift4 goodbye to Jez with as firm a handshake as I could muster, I grew quite obsessed with the process of planting and waiting, then watching as shoots poked their pointy heads out of my ground, before being strangled viciously by invidious weeds. I was particularly proud of a chilli pepper tree that survived this murderous process and eventually produced bright red fruit, almost as tall as the plant itself, which we proudly picked and sliced and added to everything we ate.

  The garden was my responsibility. I made regular trips to the hardware shops where I rubbed shoulders with proper men and bought two small sheds (my friends insisted they were just plastic cupboards, I maintain to this day that they were sheds), tentatively I drilled nails into the walls and hung wire for our climbers to grip. When leaves blew onto the patio I was there to shoo them away with my brand new, definitely masculine, broom.

  And then one day some birds discovered the figs. I wasn’t there when they first arrived, but returning home after lunch in my favourite café5 I found several splashes of bird faeces on my beloved sandstone. As the fruits started swelling, so did the number of these lumpy white puddles, and most evenings I’d be out scrubbing the ground with water and determination, while Rachel watched, trying not to giggle.

  Eventually my patience snapped and after some brief research on the internet I selected my most embarrassing CDs (The Spice Girls, Genesis, Motörhead) and tied them to the branches. The garden looked slightly less immaculate, my Anglo-Italian neighbours were perplexed, and Rachel thought I was even more ridiculous, but it did the trick. Whether it was the threat of the music or the light bouncing alarmingly off the swinging discs, the birds no longer dared set foot on my patch. Or shit on my patio.

  A year later, my priorities had changed, and I now regretted this hasty action. On returning from our trip, I looked out at the garden and knew what I had to do. Wondering how much lasting psychological damage I’d done to any potential avian visitors with this brash light and sound display, I mounted a chair and chopped down the offending CDs. By way of an apology I then got in my car and raced to B&Q, where I ignored the manly aisles of nails and chainsaws and went straight to the hitherto ignored section containing garden ornaments and bird food.

  Although embarrassed to be seen in this decidedly fanciful corner, I must admit that my eyes lit up at the display that greeted me. For, to my surprise, five shelves had been entirely devoted to bird accoutrements, a treasure trove of bird delights featuring everything from daisy-shaped food dispensers to what looked like squares of savoury fudge, injected with dead flies. After much deliberation I chose the ‘RSPB Bird Care Defender II Seed Feeder’, persuaded mostly by the use of roman numerals after the word Defender. It’s clearly better than the Defender I, I thought. This is the seed feeder for me!

  The Defender II was simply a perspex tube mounted on a metal pole, but its packaging promised so much more: ‘Feeding the birds is a popular and rewarding activity … most likely visitors will be house sparrows, tits, greenfinches, goldfinches and siskins.’

  This was exactly what I needed. I was now going to be providing the birds with ammunition with which to sully my patio, but I hadn’t seen any of these birds yet, and to be able to add them to my list without leaving my home was an opportunity not to be missed. Siskins in particular caught my attention. I liked the idea of having a cup of tea with a friend and casually pointing out a siskin on my Defender II.

  Of course, the siskins wouldn’t alight on an empty Defender II. Duncton had thoughtfully provided me with some ‘Energy Packed Hi-Energy Seed’ as a good luck gift after Christmas. If it was ‘Hi-Energy’ before and then ‘Packed’ with yet more ‘Energy’, this was powerful stuff. The ingredients included kibbled maize, sunflower hearts, peanut granules, millet, canary seed, pinhead oatmeal and hemp seed. While I didn’t know what most of these were, I was fairly sure they’d been banned in modern athletics. ‘The highest energy value of any seed mix in the range’ boasted the label. I’m going to have some pretty hyperactive siskins, I thought to myself.

  After an hour-long struggle with a mallet, scaring off a pair of blackbirds in the process, the mighty Defender II was finally mounted and filled to the brim with Hi-Energy Energy food. I also retrieved a house warming present that I had secreted in one of the sheds – an ‘Original Tom Chambers Pitch Roofed Seed Feeder for Garden Birds: The Seed Shack’. Two friends had presented me with this miniature food barn, adorned with a hand-painted picture of a generic bird and the message ‘Come here Birds! Eat and Tweet at Key and Donk’s Hut’. If this didn’t make up for my CD torture, nothing would.

  5 January

  After a young brother and sister died in Turkey from bird flu, the papers were today full of doom-laden predictions about the virus. Headlines like, ‘UK Told Don’t Panic over Turkey Bird Flu Threat’ in the Daily Mail did little to ease anxiety.6

  The article went on to say that the ‘deadly’ H5N1 strain, as it is always referred to, has ‘crept closer towards central Europe’ after killing at least seventy people in Southeast Asia. It quoted a reassuring yet evil sounding microbiologist, who said: ‘We can all do our bit to keep bird flu away from these shores. If you see a dead bird, stay well away from it and report it immediately to a vet … If the virus does mutate, it could go through the human population like a dose of salts.’

  Was I doing my bit to keep bird flu away from these shores? Should I tear down my Defender and re-mount my CDs, in a bid to combat the inevitable pandemic? And what is a dose of salts and how fast do they go through a human population?

  I made myself a calming cup of tea and tried to think about something else.

  6 January

  Three days after installing my majestic bird feeders, I hadn’t seen a single bird on either. I grew impatient. The only animal I had spotted was a sly black and white cat which seemed to be watching the seeds with as much interest as me. I was fairly sure he was also the one responsible for digging up the bulbs I had planted the previous year. I began to hate that cat, considering it less someone else’s pet and more my nemesis.

  Worried that perhaps I’d filled the Defender II incorrectly – not leaving a hole for the birds to get at the seeds, for instance – I checked the packaging once more and noticed some fine print: ‘It can sometimes take several weeks for the birds to have the confidence to start visiting a feeder.’ Several weeks? I didn’t have that sort of time. Luckily, I did have a weekend of gigs lined up in Leeds, so I could stop worrying about the shy birds and their feline adversary for a short while at least.

  Being a comedian is a lot like being a travelling salesman. You drive around the country, stay in bland hotels and try to show off your wares to people who are sometimes interested, sometimes not. One main difference though, is that we work at night, so hardly see the towns we’re visiting. We could be anywhere. So a whole weekend at one venue is, in theory, a refreshing change, a chance to explore a new place, learn about its culture and history and meet a few of its people.

  In reality, once you’ve checked in to your convenient Holiday Inn or Travelodge, it’s far too easy to watch a film or go to sleep and I rarely see more of the town than the cinema, the local shopping centre or my room.

  I was determined that this trip would be different. On Saturday morning, after the gig the night before, I actually got up for breakfast and then, armed with a map, drove excitedly out to a place named Fairburn Ings for my very first solo trip to a nature reserve. Obviously I hadn’t mentioned to the other comedians that I’d be spending the day birdwatching, fending off a tempting invitation to an eat-far-too-much Chinese buffet lunch with a white lie abou
t meeting ‘a friend’, but inside I was genuinely looking forward to the day ahead.

  Strolling tentatively towards what I assumed was the site’s reception area, I was heartened to note that entrance to this particular RSPB reserve was entirely free. That, I thought, was a very good thing. If I did end up liking birdwatching, it’d be a cheap hobby. We’ll examine football more closely later in the year, but I do have trouble justifying the £40 price tag for a premiership football match that far too often ends in disappointment. And I’m well aware that as a Liverpool fan I’m spoilt compared to supporters of most other clubs, but it does seem a lot of money to spend watching people (most of whom are, terrifyingly, now younger than me) half-heartedly kicking a ball about.

  Having said that, in May 2005 I paid more than £800 to watch a single football match and didn’t regret a penny. Through a combination of luck, fate and good life choices, my new brotherand father-in-law were also Liverpool fans, proper Liverpool fans with Liverpool season tickets. After Liverpool had thrashed Chelsea 1–0 over two legs in the semi-final of the European Champions League, my father-in-law Terry said I could take his ticket for the final in Istanbul in an unrivalled act of generosity. On 25 May 2005 the mighty Reds came back from 3–0 down at half time to beat the Italian giants AC Milan on penalties in what is widely considered to be one of the best football games of all time and (slightly less widely) the most important event in the history of the world.

  The journey back home from that game was nightmarish. We had to walk over fields of broken glass to the coach park. We had to try to find ‘our coach’ in a coach park full of a thousand identical coaches. We were herded like cattle into a boiling hanger at the airport where all flights had been cancelled. We had to scrummage our way onto any available plane without really knowing where it might be heading.