This Birding Life

by Stephen Moss

  What only occurred to me as I was compiling this book were the extraordinary changes that have occurred in such a short time – not much more than a decade since I wrote my very first Guardian column (the piece on gulls that opens this chapter).

  For example, in 1993 I wrote about gulls’ habit of wintering inland; today we have tens of thousands of pairs breeding inland, too, on the roofs of our major cities. When I first wrote this column, if you wanted to see Red Kites you had to travel to mid-Wales; today, thanks to a successful reintroduction programme, they are a common sight in many parts of the country. And who could have foreseen that for a period we would be forced to avoid some of our favourite corners of the countryside as a result of foot-and-mouth disease?

  Finally, several of the pieces in this chapter reflect on the wider meaning of birding – not just why we do it, but why we need to do it; why, in essence, watching and enjoying birds is good for us.

  The joy of gulls

  JANUARY 1993

  At first sight, gulls don’t have a lot going for them. Compared with the beauty of Kingfishers, the grace of Avocets or the splendour of Golden Eagles, it’s no wonder that, for many people, they are low down the bird-appreciation hit parade.

  But gulls have something else in their favour – something pretty useful in today’s world. They’re successful. No other group of species is quite so well adapted to late twentieth-century life – a life lived alongside all the effluents, pollutants and rubbish produced by humans. Gulls are a kind of avian waste-disposal system. Especially during the winter months, great flocks of them gather at rubbish tips and sewage outfalls – anywhere there’s something to eat.

  Gulls appearing inland in winter is a relatively recent phenomenon, and numbers have increased dramatically since the Second World War. Indeed as recently as 1945 the Black-headed Gull was described as an ‘uncommon visitor’ to the London area. Today, this species spends virtually all its life away from the coast, so the word ‘seagull’ is becoming less and less appropriate.

  During the short daylight hours, gulls’ main concern is finding food. Being more or less omnivorous, they find waste-disposal sites most to their liking. Almost any edible refuse, from carcasses to vegetable peelings and chicken bones to excrement, will eventually find its way down their ever-open gullets. In recent years the sheer numbers of these flocks – anything up to 50,000 birds at a single site – has caused problems. Many of these are associated with the gulls’ habit of communal roosting during the night.

  Gulls are creatures of habit. Every evening, an hour or so before dusk, they begin to leave their feeding grounds and head towards a roosting site – usually a large area of water such as a reservoir. The health hazard of thousands of gulls defecating into the water supply is truly mind-boggling. But in west London, roosting gulls present an even greater danger. The gulls’ own flight-path, from Poyle rubbish tip, near Staines, to the nearby Queen Mary Reservoir, passes right across the busiest man-made flight-path in the world – the main runway in and out of Heathrow Airport.

  But not all our gulls spend the winter inland. Despite Britain’s dwindling fishing fleet, ports and harbours are still a good place to find the more marine species. The archetypal ‘seagull’, the Herring Gull, predominates, usually accompanied by its larger cousin, the predatory Great Black-backed Gull.

  For the sharp-eyed birdwatcher, there are more unusual visitors to be found among the gull flocks. A Ring-billed Gull from North America is currently spending its fifth successive winter on a recreation ground in Uxbridge, Middlesex. And as many as 50 Mediterranean Gulls have taken up winter residence at the sewage outfall at Copt Point, Folkestone.

  Hundreds of miles to the north, at Scottish fishing ports such as Ullapool and Stornoway, two refugees from the Arctic can be found. Glaucous and Iceland Gulls can be told apart from their commoner relatives by their all-white wing-tips, giving them a ghostly appearance in the fading afternoon light, as they follow the fishing fleet home.

  This winter, the eastern Scottish port of Fraserburgh has played host to an even rarer Arctic wanderer, the legendary Ross’s Gull. This tiny bird, less than half the size of its larger relatives, has a plumage tinged pink by its main diet — shrimps from the Arctic Ocean.

  After breeding in the remotest corners of Siberia, Ross’s Gull normally spends the winter around the Arctic Circle – one of the most northerly winter ranges of any bird. But for at least three wandering individuals, the lure of the fish-offal of Fraserburgh has finally proved too strong.

  Flight of the skuas

  MAY 1993

  Aird an Runair is, as Private Frazer of Dad’s Army might have said, ‘a wild and lonely place’. On the north-western edge of the island of North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, nothing but the Atlantic Ocean separates it from North America. This makes it the perfect spot to watch the British weather approaching from the west, the clouds rushing in from the sea like film that has been speeded-up.

  One May during the 1970s, a Kentish birdwatcher, David Davenport, made the long journey to North Uist, on a specific quest. Spring is the perfect time to visit the Western Isles: tiny flowers carpet the meadows, breeding Lapwings perform tumbling flights over the machair, and if you’re lucky, a splendid Golden Eagle may soar into view. Most prized of all, the elusive and mysterious Corncrake, returned from its African winter-quarters, keeps islanders and visitors awake all night with its repetitive call.

  But Davenport had other things in mind: having looked at the weather maps, and studied seabird migration routes, he was convinced that he would discover one of the most extraordinary avian spectacles in the British Isles – the passage flight of skuas past the Hebridean coast.

  Skuas are the hawks of the sea: the scourge of weaker seabirds such as terns and auks. They prowl around a seabird colony until they spot a bird which has just caught a fish. Then they pounce, swooping down on the unsuspecting victim and harassing it until it drops or regurgitates its catch.

  Two species of skua breed in Britain: the Great Skua or Bonxie, and the smaller and more falcon-like Arctic Skua. Both nest on the moors of Scotland and the Atlantic islands. But two other species of skua also visit our shores from time to time. The bulky Pomarine and the slender, tern-like Long-tailed Skua are rare passage migrants, usually seen only briefly as they pass by our coasts in spring or autumn. Both breed in the high Arctic, sharing their nesting grounds with polar foxes and snow-white hares.

  As David Davenport looked west from Aird an Runair that windy spring day, he must have been amazed at what he saw. Tight flocks of Pomarine Skuas flew over the waves in close formation, like a squadron of fighter planes. These birds, with their extraordinary twisted tail-feathers, were joined from time to time by delicate Long-tailed Skuas, many sporting the magnificent elongated tail plumes worn by breeding adults.

  What brought these skuas so close to land were the weather conditions that day. A deep low pressure area, moving north past the islands, brought strong westerly winds, veering north-westerly. These had blown the skuas close inshore – so close that some passed directly over the beach.

  Given suitable weather conditions, the Hebridean skua passage has been noted most years since. The record was set in mid-May 1991, when 622 Pomarines and an astonishing 1346 Long-tails flew north in a fortnight, shattering the previous record of 388 birds in May 1983. The greatest spectacle was on 19 May, when lucky observers logged 540 Long-tails and over 100 Pomarines.

  But skua-watchers already packing their bags for the Hebrides may be disappointed. When the winds fail to blow from the right direction, a whole season can pass with hardly any sightings.

  Goshawk quest

  JULY 1993

  A warm evening, somewhere in the west of England. Just a few yards from a forest path, a man carrying a rope, a ladder and a rucksack is preparing to climb an oak tree. No, he’s not up to mischief, though at first sight you might well be suspicious. His mission is to find, catch and ring the young of Britain’s most eni
gmatic bird of prey: the Goshawk.

  Few birdwatchers have ever seen a wild Goshawk in this country, even though more than 200 pairs now breed here. For such a huge bird, the Goshawk is remarkably elusive. One reason is its secretive habits: it lives deep in our largest forests, rarely venturing beyond the confines of the trees. When it does, its huge size and powerful flight action distinguish it from its smaller relative, the Sparrowhawk.

  Another reason is that the Goshawk is itself a hunted creature – by humans. Unscrupulous egg-collectors and falconers frequently raid nests, taking both eggs and young for profit. Hence the need for secrecy during my visit to one of the Goshawk’s most successful strongholds, in the heart of a lowland forest.

  The ringer was barely halfway up the tree when we glimpsed the largest chick raising her head above the rim of the nest. After the three young birds were brought down, they were duly ringed and weighed, while I heard the story of the species’ colonisation of Britain.

  Goshawks nested here until the mid-nineteenth century, when they were driven to extinction by a combination of deforestation, the gamekeeper’s trap and the Victorian bird-collector’s gun. Then, in the late 1960s, they were discovered breeding in several parts of the country. Given that many of these early colonisers wore falconers’ jesses, it seems certain that most, if not all, were escaped birds.

  In this particular forest, the first bird was seen by a teacher leading a school party in 1978. He returned the following year to find a nesting pair, from which today’s healthy population has grown. Since then he and a dedicated group of watchers have monitored the fate of the birds, spending their spare time tracking down new nests each spring.

  Goshawks prey mostly on crows, jays and pigeons, so they are not short of food. But their catholic diet isn’t the only reason for their success. At a second nest, we found telltale feathers, barred brown and white – revealing that the hen bird was in her first season, unusual among birds of prey.

  Well able to survive the vagaries of the British weather, and with large areas of potential habitat not yet colonised, there seems little reason why the Goshawk should not become fully established throughout Britain. Provided, of course, that secrecy is maintained. In other parts of the country, they’ve been prevented from establishing themselves by constant persecution. Thanks to the efforts of the people with me, this particular population has avoided that fate.

  Deep in the forest, as the sun went down, the ringer placed the young Goshawks in his rucksack. After a swift ascent, they were safely back in the nest. Meanwhile the female flew overhead, occasionally visible through the forest canopy as she called in apprehension. But this time at least, her fears were groundless, and her haunting, repetitive call only a false alarm.

  Tit flocks in winter

  DECEMBER 1993

  Visit a wood on a dull, grey winter’s afternoon, and you could be forgiven for thinking no birds live there at all. There is no song, no movement, no sign of life. It’s tempting to give it up as a bad job and to return home to the comforts of central heating and supper.

  But wait. Was that a bird calling – at a pitch almost too high for the human ear? Perhaps it was just the wind … No – there it goes again: a thin, sibilant whistle, so quiet you have to turn your head this way and that to try to work out where it’s coming from. Then, just as you think you must be mistaken, you hear another sound. Then another, and another – a whole chorus of off-key squeaks. After perhaps an hour of searching you’ve discovered the only birds in the whole wood – a roving flock of tits.

  Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they’ve discovered you. Keep still, don’t make any sudden movements or noise, and they may pause for a moment in the bare branches above your head. Even then, they can be surprisingly difficult to see. The key is to fix your sights on any movement, carefully lift your binoculars to your eyes and focus. You may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a tiny bird, the owner of that high-pitched squeak, before it springs off to another branch and out of sight.

  In winter, small birds need to eat about one quarter of their body weight every day – simply to survive. Their strategy depends on hunting in flocks for the few remaining grubs and insects lurking among the twigs and branches. A flock may consist of anything between ten and a hundred birds – mostly Blue Tits, with their striking blue-and-yellow plumage. These will usually be accompanied by Great Tits – larger, white-cheeked, black-capped and with a yellow breast.

  Just as you’re beginning to wonder whether anything more unusual is tagging along, a smaller bird flits across your field of view. More rounded, almost ball-like, and with a brown and black plumage, Coal Tits have left the dark coniferous forests where they breed to join their cousins in this broad-leaved woodland.

  Tit flocks often attract one or two fellow-travellers: perhaps a Nuthatch or the small, brown, mouse-like Treecreeper. Our smallest bird, the Goldcrest, gives its presence away by its thin, high-pitched call as it flits from tree to tree. If you’re really lucky (it’s happened to me just once in many years of birding), you may even see a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, hardly bigger than a sparrow, tagging along behind the flock.

  Suddenly, you hear a new, three-note call, repeated by a chorus of birds. You glimpse what looks like a ball of fluff with a tail, shooting across the sky between the trees, followed in quick succession by two or three more. These are Long-tailed Tits, immortalised by the nineteenth-century poet John Clare using a local name from his native Northamptonshire:

  And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove

  Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain

  And hang on little twigs – and start again …

  Still accompanied by an orchestra of calls, a flurry of activity fills the trees. Then, as quickly and suddenly as it appeared, the flock has gone – to some more productive area of the wood. By March, when the frozen ground is thawing, and the buds begin to sprout on the trees, perhaps one in five of these tiny birds will have survived. The rest lie in the leaf-litter, forever silent.

  Birds over the Broads

  MARCH 1994

  There aren’t many birds which have given their name to a piece of machinery. The crane is a notable exception. But the comparison fails to do justice to this magnificent species. Standing almost as tall as a grown man, with a long, curved neck and dagger-like bill, the crane fully deserves its reputation as the aristocrat of birds.

  In medieval times, the crane was a dish fit for kings, when along with roast swan and stewed heron, it was served at royal banquets. The pressure from hunting, together with the draining of its native East Anglian fens, eventually took its toll, and by the year 1600 it was extinct as a British breeding species.

  Since then, the crane has continued to survive on the Continent, though it has declined steadily, as its wetland habitats disappear. Cranes are shy birds, needing large areas of undisturbed land to breed. Today the species is mainly confined to the wet meadows, marshes and bogs of Scandinavia, where the returning birds perform their famous courtship dance each spring.

  Each autumn, vast V-shaped flocks of cranes travel southwards, to spend the winter in the warmer climes of Spain, North Africa and the Middle East. En route, they run all kinds of risks: from the disappearance of feeding areas through habitat loss, to the shotguns of Mediterranean hunters.

  Yet despite these problems, there is a small glimmer of hope for this splendid bird. For the past decade or so, a tiny population of cranes has bred in a remote corner of England – the Broadland area of north-east Norfolk. Despite their natural appearance, the Broads owe their existence to our ancestors’ need to dig for peat to burn as fuel. Today, these reed-fringed lakes have become a holiday destination for thousands of pleasure-boat owners and day-trippers.

  Yet even during the noise and bustle of the summer season, a few pairs of cranes have found an undisturbed spot to build their nests. Since 1981, they have raised at least four young, despite the ever-present threat from foxes, rats and, of course, humans.
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  For birds of their size, the Norfolk cranes have been remarkably successful at keeping out of sight. Their nesting-place remains a closely guarded secret, but during the winter months they can often be seen from the quiet road running along the coast. Their presence here during the winter is due to the relatively mild British climate, which enables them to forgo the risks of a long migration and to stay near their breeding grounds.

  On a visit to Norfolk last month I came across the flock, now numbering nine birds, feeding along the edge of a ploughed field near the village of Waxham. With their elegant gait, steel-grey plumage and mass of curling tail-feathers, they looked more like Victorian ladies out for a Sunday-afternoon stroll than their mechanical namesake. They fed in a leisurely manner, bending their long necks to turn the soil in search of morsels of food to satisfy their omnivorous appetite.

  It is hoped that eventually this small family flock might colonise other suitable areas and re-establish the crane as a British breeding bird. Stately and proud in the afternoon mist, the Norfolk cranes are true pioneers.

  Millennium fever

  DECEMBER 1999

  Millennium fever is upon us, and with it a glut of articles looking back over the past thousand years. My aim is more modest: to review some of the changes that have taken place in Britain’s birdlife during the past century and to look ahead to what we can expect during the next.

  At the start of the twentieth century, Britain’s birdlife was, like the curate’s egg, good in parts. Farmland birds generally thrived, benefiting from the gradual replacement of forests by agricultural land during the previous millennium. The birds of woodland, wetland, moor and mountain weren’t too badly off either, for the Industrial Revolution hadn’t affected most rural habitats.