Birdwatchingwatching Read online

  4 A fairly unusual example of a bird’s name also being an adjective. See also ruff and puffin.

  5 It’s an Ethiopian place called The Bole Diner and Café and is still there. Do pop in if you’re nearby (and hungry or thirsty).

  6 The fact that it wasn’t quite clear whether they were talking about Turkey the country or Turkey the bird probably didn’t help either. Also, ‘bird flu’ is an inherently ridiculous name for a deadly disease. First, because it sounds like the female version of ‘man flu’. Second, because it also sounds like a childlike sentence: ‘Bird flew.’ It’s a silly name.

  7 I did meet one non-birder during the year who thought the birds were inside the hut and the birdwatchers were outside looking in through the windows at them. This would make the whole thing a lot easier. It would also be a zoo.

  8 ‘I haven’t even got a golden plover,’ he’d said. I thought he meant some sort of yellow jumper. I liked the idea of Duncton birdwatching in a bright gold pullover.

  9 The second half of that statement is a guess.

  10 A highly unusual example of a bird’s name also being a wizard.

  11 Named not, as I’d hoped, because it hatches out of nuts but because it eats them. What it’s particularly good at, however, is climbing head first and vertically down a tree trunk, an excellent talent. A better name would be spidermanbird.

  12 Most proper birders have got used to the whole ‘tit’ business. In fact, birding slang for the ‘great’ variety is ‘Dolly Partons’, which I think is a nice way of dealing with the problem.

  13 That figure comes from the veteran biologist Edward Wilson. It does sound conveniently round but give or take some hotly debated sub-species, a few that have recently become extinct and others that are yet to be discovered, it seems to be accepted as about the right number. Whatever the exact total, considering you would then have to times it by two, it would be a lot of birds to fit on one Ark.

  14 Since my Big Year, Phoebe Snetsinger’s record has been broken by two men, one of whom has a brilliant name: Tom Gullick and Jon Hornbuckle. But her story is so good I’m going to leave it in. So there.

  15 I’d heard of Lee Evans, the hugely popular physical comedian and actor, but not Lee G R Evans. They’re definitely different people.

  16 Another ex-GP and recently converted birder. ‘It’s odd how some people come to the hobby later on,’ Duncton once told me. ‘I’d always thought people like me suffered from our affliction from a very early age, but apparently you can catch it late too …’

  CHAPTER 2

  Home and Away

  ‘My honesty, integrity, ability and physical and mental stamina were all up for public and self-examination, and I could simply not afford to fail in any department. It was only February, and already there was a dawning of this realisation.’

  – Adrian M Riley

  Alex:

  27 species

  Duncton:

  85 species

  3 February

  AT EXACTLY MIDDAY on 3 February, a dashing great tit dared set foot in my garden for the first time. While not necessarily a miraculous occurrence, I was excited. This was a sign. I’d seen great tits on the stag in Herefordshire but to have one in my backyard was, for that one moment on that one day, tremendous.

  A year before, I’d probably not even have noticed the fourteen-centimetre-long creature clinging to its perch, let alone cared that it was the largest of the tit family, easily identifiable by its thick black neck-tie markings and cheerful chirrups. A year later, I’d be so used to them, so blasé about my birdwatching, that I’d rarely even raise my binoculars in their direction. So the arrival of this small but great bird represented a magical time in my birdwatching career, a short-lived period of innocence and wonder, a childlike time. And while ‘childlike’ wasn’t the quality I was aiming for when I set off on this quest, I was briefly content. There were birds out there and I could find them.

  Before long, this ingenuousness would morph into cynicism, treachery and frustration, but for now I was happy to devote myself to my garden birds. The great tit himself seemed less comfortable with the situation, flitting in nervously, grabbing a seed and scuttling off, almost as if he knew he was being watched. The blue tits were just as hurried, always in pairs and always in a rush. ‘Come on, darling,’ one seemed to say to the other. ‘We’ve got so much on today. You can’t just dawdle round the kibble.’ And while the blackbird couple hopped clumsily below, pecking at worms and each other with equal abandon, the now fattened robin watched on with an expression that suggested he was cross, full, bored or all three. One afternoon he even stared down Nemesis Cat from his perch on the wall as his potential killer sauntered across the paving stones towards him. I was worried his newly acquired heft might hinder a sudden take-off, but the cat eventually turned away from the robin’s death stare and the little bird burst into triumphant song.

  4 February

  Keen that my renewed enthusiasm did not wane, Duncton sent me what in other circumstances might seem a bizarre gift: a cutting from The Times with the headline ‘Get Your Lard out for the Tits’ and half a coconut stuffed with fat and raisins, a sort of homemade bounty bar. Miraculously, within twenty-four hours this mystical object had worked its magic. As I drew back the curtains the following morning I saw the large hairy nut being savaged by the two starlings I’d seen on next door’s Mighty Bird Attractor Tower 2000 the week before. I smiled in disbelief. The next day not one, not two, but three woodpigeons were marching round the garden, pecking at the coconut scraps left by the blackbirds, tits and magpies that had now joined the starlings on the husks above. My garden had become a veritable Ark, an aviary, filled with feathers, squawks and, I had to admit, shit.

  But the mess didn’t bother me. I was so pleased to have created this bird-friendly environment in my own backyard that I didn’t care about the dirty side effects. My theoretical kids will love this, I thought, they’ll be proud of their dad. I loved the fact that Duncton knew the secrets of the starlings and could summon them at will with his secret recipe. He might not have the faintest idea about texting or celebrities or anything relevant to modern life, but his was a more fundamental knowledge. He was the keeper of forgotten formulas and it was my duty to pass them on to the next generation of Hornes.1

  5 February

  On Duncton’s advice, I tore myself away from my beloved bird fun park of a garden and headed south of the river to the London Wetland Centre, the capital’s capital bird reserve where, he told me, I could continue my training. Wanting to share the experience with someone else and eager for the hobby not to swallow my entire social life just yet, I invited my friend Tim along.

  I’ve got quite a few friends called Tim. Scrolling through the contacts list on my phone2 I discovered that Tim is my fifth most popular name after John, Chris, David and Steve. I know twelve Johns! But only two Jameses. Over eighty per cent of my contacts are male.

  Two of these five Tims I see fairly often, one almost daily, the other roughly monthly. They’re not strictly regulated meetings; that’s just the way it seems to happen. I work and play with Tim Key (called simply Key elsewhere, in a dismissive but practical manner) so spend what is probably an unhealthy amount of time in his company. Being self-employed at something that isn’t really a job means that my work and social lives tend to blur together.

  After performing three consecutive shows at the Edinburgh Festival together (on the sciences of laughter, body language and Latin), Key decided not to join me on my birdwatching mission. When I suggested he join me in exploring my dad’s hobby for a year, he told me I was on my own.

  The other Tim, meanwhile, would become my birdwatching soul mate as the year progressed, earning the title of Tim both here and in my notebooks in the process. Without a birdwatching dad, he was even less knowledgeable of the pastime than me, but far more naturally curious, enthusiastic and open to new things. He’s a teacher, and a fine one at that. If my prospective children were to be taught
by someone like him, it would take a great deal of pressure off me.

  So, after getting over the shock of having to pay £6.75 to enter the centre (‘London prices,’ we were told when we queried the cost), the two of us strolled into the reserve. By now, I should say, I was flushed with the first fruits of my labour, and so assumed the role of wise old guide. A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but it’s also quite annoying.

  Unfortunately, I was completely unprepared for the sights and sounds that we discovered within. Having spent a month carefully noting down the particulars of my handful of garden birds, I suddenly found myself confronted by the most extraordinary looking freaks, some tall and bulky, others weighed down by ridiculously outlandish plumage, all jabbering away in a clearly foreign tongue. I felt lost and confused, like a first-time visitor to the capital.

  I didn’t have a clue what any of these birds were. Well, I did have clues – quite big clues, really, because not too far from each of these exotic creatures was a convenient sign identifying them and explaining where they were from. This was no ordinary bird reserve, this was no Fairburn Ings. Here there were no walking boots, few binoculars and hardly anyone who looked like Duncton. There was neither mud nor rain, instead there were young people, couples, tourists, all noisily chatting away, not skulking in the shadows. People were having fun!

  Not me though. I soon realised that none of these birds would count on my list. These were captives in what was basically a zoo. Their wings, I later found out, were pinioned – an apparently painless procedure by which crucial feathers are removed rendering flight an impossibility – so they weren’t going anywhere. Sure, it was interesting and informative to see such spectacular species close-up, but I was fifty birds behind Duncton. Fifty birds! And not one of these would make that gap any smaller! I didn’t have time for the interesting and informative.

  Thankfully, Tim’s enthusiasm overcame my impatience. I began grudgingly to have a nice day out, enjoying Tim’s company, making slanderous comments about fellow visitors and admiring the birds like pictures in a gallery. And what birds they were, all shapes and sizes from all over the world, including a black-necked swan (think normal swan but with a black neck, ‘complacent’, according to Tim), an oldsquaw (basically a duck with a long tail, ‘low key’ said Tim), magpie geese (yes, pretty much a cross between the two, ‘angry’) and my favourite, an East Indian wandering whistling duck. Now that’s a classy name for a duck. And this was a duck that could carry it off. It was wandering (within its enforced boundaries), it was whistling (sort of) and it was, apparently, from East India. Very much the Bob Dylan of the duck world. We decided this species alone was worth the honk we’d had to shell out.

  The reserve was divided into geographical zones and as we walked from ‘Iceland’ straight into ‘Hawaii’ we admired more eccentric birds, some with heads that were clearly too big, others with haunted expressions that looked like they’d seen things birds should never see. We both said ‘boo’ to some geese in a bid to prove our manliness and were on the verge of nicking a duck when we spotted a tree house structure called the Wild Side Hide. We liked the sound of that. What’s more, tucked away inside the hut were several bona fide birders, with binoculars and even telescopes trained out through the windows towards the Thames beyond. So despite the fact that there were no more East Indian wandering whistling ducks and rather a lot of mallards, this really was the wild side. At last, birds that would count on my list – and some comfy seats. Tim and I shuffled on to padded stools next to a suitably camouflaged married couple and looked out, taking turns with my binoculars. Now I was keyed up. Now I could show off to my friend.

  ‘That’s a moorhen,’ I exclaimed right away.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ countered Tim. ‘Moorhens are just black with a little white bit.’

  ‘How about we look it up in the book,’ I said.

  ‘But how do you look them up if you don’t know what they are?’ A sensible question, the paradox of the novice birder.

  ‘What I tend to do,’ I said knowingly, ‘is think, well, it’s some sort of waterbird, so I go to the waterbird section and look at all the pictures. So, it’s one of these … there. It looks like that one. And then you look at the description: “Stout blackish bird on pond margins, pigeon-sized, long green legs with long toes. Bill red with yellow tip.” There, that’s a moorhen.’

  ‘Oh yes, well done. I guess that is pretty much a moorhen.’

  Further scanning of the river in what I hoped was a professional manner revealed several birds that I hadn’t seen before this year, their shapes and colours unfamiliar. This was both good and bad news. Good for my total, but no chance for me to display my hard-earned bird knowledge. But I recognised a few of them, and was able to impress Tim by pointing out one grey heron and two cormorants in a quite Zen-like fashion. Again, Duncton’s subliminal training was paying off. I knew these distinctive, distinguishedlooking birds. The herons were graceful and surprisingly large; the cormorants dark and brooding but occasionally letting themselves down by striking ridiculous poses, arms outstretched, like scarecrows, to dry their feathers in the breeze.

  We went on to tick off tufted duck (‘I like that because it looks like what it says it is,’ said Tim) and a great crested grebe,3 Tim’s favourite of the day (although when he first saw it dive beneath the surface he was sure it had drowned). Only by looking at the grebe through binoculars can you truly appreciate the crest itself, displayed proudly on the summit of its slender neck. There’s a medical complaint birdwatchers are particularly prone to, like tennis elbow and jogger’s nipple, called ‘warbler neck’. After years of looking up, binoculars raised, at tree tops, clouds and occasionally birds, a birder will often experience a swelling of the neck area and pain in the upper back. Even after a single year’s birding, my neck size increased to a slightly manlier fifteen-and-a-half inches. Duncton’s, of course, is enormous, a huge eighteen inches, a size barely catered for by the short-sighted collar industry. From a distance he looks like the opposite of a great crested grebe. Instead of an oversized flower balanced precariously on a willowy stalk, Duncton’s head and neck look more like an apple perched on the trunk of a mighty oak (a bearded apple, with glasses and greying hair, but size-wise, definitely an apple).

  What most appealed to first-timer Tim was the process of spotting a bird, noticing its features then trying to work out what it was. He enjoyed the detective work, piecing together the evidence, poring over pictures of potential suspects and the eventual Columbo-like revelation.

  We sat on our stools for a good couple of hours, vaguely trying to identify the birds, but mostly enjoying the peaceful view back across the Thames. Apart from Tim’s occasional outbursts, the tranquillity was broken only by a commotion at the other end of the hide where the shout of ‘parrot’ suddenly went up, followed by much scrambling of children and me to see if this could indeed be the case. A parrot? I thought, I bet Duncton hasn’t seen a parrot!

  To my surprise it was indeed a parrot, and no, Duncton hadn’t seen one yet. Even more remarkably, this one wasn’t a captive. It would count on my list. For as I admired its lurid green feathers, a ridiculous outfit to be wearing on a winter’s day in London, a man with a very long camera next to me grumbled, ‘Bloody nuisance.’ For the benefit of the bird novices around him he went on to explain that having been brought over in the 1960s these ring-necked parakeets had settled and thrived and could now be seen in their thousands all over the city.

  When we’d finally had our fill of birds, we spent the rest of the afternoon in a pub watching Liverpool lose 2–0 to Chelsea in the Premiership. We always lose to Chelsea in the League. On my wedding day, some of the first words my fellow Liverpool supporter and now father-in-law, Terry, said to me after the service were, ‘We lost one nil.’ Bloody Chelsea.

  After the game I tried to work out which experience I had enjoyed more, the birdwatching or the football. I was certainly happier with the bird score (eight new s
pecies in one afternoon), but if I was honest I’d have to say I cared more about the football. I was getting quite excited about new birds, but I wouldn’t have missed the game for them. Then again, ninety minutes of football had left me feeling depressed. And drunk. I could already see which was the healthier of the two pursuits, and perhaps with time would start to redress the current imbalance.

  10 February

  Determined to sharpen my identification skills, I followed the Wetland adventure with trips south and then north.

  It seemed like a logical decision to spend a day at my parents’ house in Midhurst. Duncton had been cultivating his own bird haven for the last twenty-five years, and I was keen to see just how many of the ninety-odd species he’d already counted were literally on his doorstep. On the side of a cupboard in the kitchen an elderly piece of paper entitled ‘Birds Seen On or Over Silvertrees’ (the once accurate but now misleading name of our house) had been gathering dust for as long as I can remember.4 The moisture from its blue tack had years since seeped through on to the page itself, and while the words, typed on a typewriter, had begun to fade, the list was still legible and the forty or so original species had been joined by an appendix of more recently spotted birds, neatly handwritten beneath. In total a remarkable fifty-nine species were listed, plus ‘teal’, but teal was written in brackets and when I asked him, Duncton couldn’t remember why.

  The day I dropped by my parents had gone out. This was not unusual; they’re always out. I find it quite frustrating. I guess about ten years ago it was me who was always out, and they who didn’t know what I was up to. Now I’m the one who’s meant to be working and they’ve got all the free time. As I say, I find it quite frustrating.

  Tiptoeing round like a burglar (I don’t know why I tiptoed, it wasn’t necessary), I headed for the place with the best view of the various bird contraptions strategically positioned around the garden, in a chair by the window of a room currently known as The Study. Originally The Playroom, this was a place where the Horne children once played with their LEGO, progressed to fighting over table football, then graduated to hours and hours of Kick Off 2 on the Amiga.5 When we all flew the nest, Duncton reclaimed the space for himself, filling the shelves with his stereotypical stethoscopes, spooky sample jars (empty) and piles (not a pun) of medical journals. These in particular were a source of grim fascination for me. They’d flop through the letterbox like any normal monthly publication only to surprise you with a graphic front cover featuring gaping wounds or mangled kidneys. One of my proudest moments as a child came when I was featured in an article in the British Medical Journal. I’d had my appendix removed, and during the operation the surgeon discovered a dog hair had pierced and infected the ineffectual organ. I had got appendicitis by swallowing dog hair, a medical curiosity that was deemed worthy of the great periodical.