This Birding Life

by Stephen Moss

  But one group of birds was in big trouble: birds of prey. Almost any kind of hawk, buzzard or eagle was shot, trapped or poisoned, in some cases virtually out of existence. By 1900 Red Kites were down to a handful of pairs, and even these were subject to what Max Nicholson described as ‘the Victorian leprosy of collecting’. Egg-collecting, known in pseudo-scientific circles as oology, had a very real effect on populations of rare breeding birds. It almost certainly hastened the extinction, in 1916, of our largest raptor, the magnificent White-tailed Eagle.

  Later on in the twentieth century, raptors faced another hazard from pesticides such as DDT, which thinned their eggshells and led to catastrophic population declines. When I was growing up in south-west London during the 1970s, any bird of prey other than a Kestrel was a rare sight indeed.

  Today, things are very different. Several species of raptor, including the Peregrine, Hobby and Sparrowhawk, are doing very well indeed. Others, such as the Red Kite, Osprey and Marsh Harrier, are still fairly localised, but much more common than they once were. I can still recall seeing Britain’s last remaining pair of Marsh Harriers at Minsmere in 1973. Today there are more than a hundred pairs, breeding in suitable habitat all over southern Britain.

  There have been other success stories, too, though some are less welcome than others. Introduced species, such as Canada Goose and Ruddy Duck, are doing very well in the absence of competitors, while native birds such as the Woodlark and Dartford Warbler are also thriving. Mild winters have helped the Wren displace the Blackbird and Chaffinch as our commonest bird, while the ample supply of food on waste-disposal sites has enabled several species of gull to spend the winter inland.

  So what of the future? Have our farmland birds finally turned the corner, or will once widespread rural species such as the Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer continue their seemingly inevitable decline? Will seabirds such as the Arctic Tern and Kittiwake overcome food shortages, or will there be a sudden population collapse? Can the Red-backed Shrike and Wryneck come back from the brink and return to breed in our countryside?

  In my view, by far the greatest threat facing our birdlife at the turn of the millennium is global warming. For some species, a warmer climate spells extinction, as habitats change irrevocably or disappear. For others, especially birds whose breeding ranges lie to the south, it offers an opportunity to colonise Britain and Ireland.

  Early casualties are likely to include the Ptarmigan, whose arctic-alpine habitat looks set to disappear during the first half of the coming century. Others, such as the Snowy Owls that bred on Shetland during a spell of cooling during the 1960s and 1970s, have already gone.

  At the other end of the country, birdwatchers have a more pleasing prospect to look forward to. Recent colonists such as the Little Egret and Cetti’s Warbler will undoubtedly extend their ranges northwards, while future breeding species are likely to include Black Kite and Cattle Egret — both common on the near Continent. Meanwhile the aliens, such as Ring-necked Parakeet, should take advantage of mild winters and plentiful supplies of food to spread throughout southern Britain.

  Bring me sunshine

  MARCH 2000

  Before the First World War, when my grandmother was growing up in Devon, she recalled her father saying that a bird was calling out his name. Of course it couldn’t manage his full name – Edgar George Russell Snow – so it settled for a less formal greeting: ‘Snowy, Snowy, pay the rent, pay the rent!’

  Almost a century later, even on this meagre evidence, I can identify the species my great-grandfather listened to all those years ago. That insistent, repetitive, rhythmic phrase could only belong to one bird: the Song Thrush.

  Using a mnemonic to remember a particular call or song is one of the most enduring aspects of our long-standing relationship with birds. Even today, when I hear a Yellowhammer singing it’s hard to resist calling back: ‘A little bit of bread and no cheeeese!’ Pied Wagtails (at least those living in London) call out ‘Chis-ick’; and on spring evenings in the suburbs, thrushes tell little children to ‘Go to bed! Go to bed!’

  Other birds quite literally call out their own name. Cuckoo, Chiffchaff and Kittiwake are perhaps the best-known examples of onomatopoeic bird names. In the Cuckoo’s case this goes back at least as far as the thirteenth century, when the bird made an appearance in one of the first poems written in modern English: ‘Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu!’

  Less obvious examples include the word finch. This comes from ‘spink’, a local Norfolk name for the Chaffinch — a reference to the bird’s call. Many of the crow family also bear names derived from their harsh calls, including Rook, Jackdaw and Chough (originally pronounced ‘chow’, rather than ‘chuff’). Many people assume that the name of our largest wader, the Curlew, refers to its decurved bill, but it actually comes from the bird’s evocative call.

  With bird songs and calls so deeply imprinted on our minds, it is hardly surprising that composers have taken advantage of our familiarity with these natural sounds. A recent report claimed that a Mozart composition was inspired by, of all unlikely sources, the sound of the Starling. During the twentieth century, the French composer Messiaen drew inspiration from a wide range of birds, including the fluty song of the Woodlark.

  Nor is the traffic purely one-way. Starlings themselves are masters of mimicry, able to imitate car alarms, telephone bells and even snatches of song heard on a distant radio. Parrots, mynah birds and a whole host of other species have the ability to mimic pieces of classical and popular music.

  Other birds have songs which bear an uncanny, though presumably unintentional, resemblance to well-known tunes. A recent correspondent to the Guardian letters page recalled hearing a bird singing the theme tune to the BBC’s six o’clock news bulletin. But this was no case of slavish imitation – the bird and the listener were both thousands of miles away, in South Africa.

  A couple of years ago, when I was in Kenya’s Masai Mara, I had a similar experience. Each morning, as the sun rose over Governors’ Paradise Camp, a bird would sing the first phrase of Morecambe and Wise’s famous signature tune, Bring Me Sunshine. Each morning I would scan the forest canopy in the hope of catching a glimpse of this elusive songster, but without success.

  After about a fortnight, I finally pinned down the bird, and was rather disappointed to find that it wasn’t dressed in top hat and tails. With the help of a field guide, I identified it as a Chin-spot Batis, a tiny, tit-like songbird. Where this little black-and-white creature learnt to pay homage to Eric and Ernie, I never managed to discover.

  Driving me crazy

  JULY 2000

  Most birders keep lists. A British list, of all the birds they’ve seen in this country. A life list, of all the birds they’ve ever seen, anywhere in the world. And in my case, a journey to work list.

  Depending which way you look at it, I am fortunate that my journey to work takes longer than most. Although I live in south London, I travel once a week to Bristol, a return trip of almost 300 miles. So I spend a lot of time on the road, and while Radio 4 staves off the boredom for a while, inevitably I turn to other means of amusement. Hence the list.

  There are several drawbacks to birding while driving. First, because I obviously can’t use binoculars, I don’t see many small, hard-to-identify species. And if I really wanted to maximise my list, I could have picked a better route than the M25, M4 and M32. Britain’s motorway system hardly ranks among the world’s top birding hotspots, but even so, I do get a few surprises.

  Take last Monday. There I was, stuck in a traffic jam on the M25 (what’s new?), when a small, fast-flying bird whipped across the carriageway. I only saw it for a second or two, but its identity was never in doubt. A Kingfisher, doing its own spot of commuting from one gravel-pit to another and diverting my attention away from the traffic news for a moment.

  Some birds are commonplace on motorways. Crows, Wood Pigeons and the ubiquitous Kestrels, hovering above the verge in search of their rodent prey. Sparro
whawks, too, though you have to be quick to notice them as they speed low past your windscreen. And more remarkably, Buzzards. I’ve often seen them on the western section of the M4, past Swindon. But one warm summer’s evening, I noticed a pair of these majestic birds of prey loafing over the motorway near Maidenhead, barely 30 miles west of London.

  Stops for rest and refreshment can be productive, too. Membury Services is home to the best coffee and croissants on the M4, consumed to the musical accompaniment of singing Skylarks. Pied Wagtails forage for crumbs in the car park, as do Rooks, as befits the rural surroundings. At the end of my journey, the entry to Bristol usually produces Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls, refugees from the nearby docks.

  Sometimes I take a short diversion, driving through Hampton Court to drop my son David off at school. One frosty winter’s day was particularly busy, with Long-tailed Tits, a Mandarin Duck and the usual flocks of parakeets screeching overhead. I am sometimes tempted to cheat and take an even longer route, but feel that the potential new species would hardly compensate for the horrors of a five-hour journey.

  And the most unusual thing I’ve seen on my travels? Well, the Mandarin and Kingfisher come close, and I’m pretty sure I saw an Osprey once – but it was gone too quickly to be certain, and you can’t really do a U-turn on the M4. In fact the best sighting of all came the same morning as the Kingfisher. Having escaped the M25, I was just getting used to the unfamiliar sensation of fifth gear, when a traffic jam forced me to slow down. A police car was trundling along the hard shoulder, presumably escorting a heavy load or broken-down motorist. Or so I thought.

  But as we crawled past, the true nature of the policeman’s errand became clear. Waddling along behind the panda car was a swan, accompanied by half-a-dozen cygnets, all enjoying the benefits of a VIP escort. I smiled all the way to work. Well, to the next traffic jam, at least.

  Wetland wonderland

  AUGUST 2000

  Back in the 1970s, when other kids were playing with their Chopper bikes and Spacehoppers, I had other things on my mind. And if I had to disobey the law to get what I wanted, so be it. Thus it was that early on a Sunday morning I could regularly be found ‘breaking and entering’ at an industrial site in south-west London. Fortunately, I rarely fell foul of the boys in blue, who obviously did not mind that a 13-year-old boy was climbing a fence to get into Barn Elms Reservoirs. After all, I could not really get up to much harm – apart from drowning, perhaps.

  I was there, of course, to watch birds. And these four basins of water alongside the River Thames at Hammersmith provided birds aplenty. Ducks, with wintering Goldeneyes and Goosanders. Passing waders, such as Ruffs, Green Sandpipers and Little Ringed Plovers. And the chance of a real rarity, like the Desert Wheatear which arrived all the way from North Africa one warm spring day, and which I still managed to miss.

  Today, the birds are still at Barn Elms. But apart from that, things have changed a bit. The site is now London’s latest visitor attraction, with hordes of eager families walking along manicured paths, delighting in the variety of birds, insects and plants to be found there. It even has a new name: the London Wetland Centre.

  The Wetland Centre was the brainchild of the twentieth century’s greatest conservationist, Sir Peter Scott. Sadly he did not live to see the fulfilment of his dream, but if he had, I am sure he would have been overjoyed. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) has transformed the derelict and disused reservoirs into a haven for wildlife, no distance from central London.

  Funnily enough, the first thing that struck me was not the birds, but the richness of the habitat itself. WWT ecologists have lovingly recreated natural ponds and reedbeds by taking plants from elsewhere in the country and replanting them here. In turn, the plants have attracted an impressive array of insects, including dragonflies and damselflies. One of the highlights of my visit was close-up views of a huge Emperor dragonfly laying its eggs on the surface of the water.

  I am no plant expert, but the variety of colours and textures managed to draw my attention away from the birds, at least momentarily. Purple loosestrife, reed-mace and flowering rush provided a stunning sight, glowing in the afternoon sun.

  There were birds, too, of course: families of Coots and Moorhens, a surprisingly confiding Little Grebe, and flocks of Linnets and Goldfinches feeding on the banks of thistles or perched on the surrounding fence. Clouds of House Martins and Swifts decorated the sky, although the expected Hobby failed to materialise.

  Further along the trail, there were displaying Ruddy Ducks in an area of open water, while Common Sandpipers and Little Ringed Plovers fed on the muddy edges. Lapwings breed, and Snipe and Kingfishers may soon do so — little short of a miracle this close to the heart of a major city.

  Local birders have already found a few scarce visitors, with regular Avocets and the occasional passing Osprey or Red Kite. If and when a really rare bird turns up, families out for their Sunday afternoon stroll will undoubtedly find themselves surrounded by an invading army of twitchers.

  Whether you are a keen birder or just a casual visitor, it is worth trying the café, whose food is a cut above the usual standard at bird reserves. A few years ago, the V&A ran a much-derided advertising campaign in a misguided attempt to attract the casual visitor. Maybe the Wetland Centre should market itself with a revised version: ‘An ace caff with a very nice wetland attached’.

  Desert Island Birds

  SEPTEMBER 2000

  Anyone who has ever listened to Radio 4’s longest-running programme, Desert Island Discs, has no doubt thought about which records, book and luxury item they would take with them to that imaginary isle. Birders can play a variation on the game: choosing a selection of birds which bring back memories of a lifetime’s birding. Putting questions of practicality and habitat aside (would a Snowy Owl survive?), here are my eight desert island birds.

  First, Coot, because without this humble waterbird I might never have taken up birdwatching. It was on a cold winter’s day back in 1963, when my mother took me to feed the ducks on the River Thames. I saw some Coots, identified them using The Observer’s Book of Birds, and was hooked.

  Next, Great Crested Grebe: partly because it is such a beautiful bird, but mainly because it was the local speciality on the gravel-pits at Shepperton, where I grew up. I remember spending hours watching them, especially during the breeding season, when adults carried the humbug-striped young on their backs.

  Third, another bird of my youth, Little Bittern. This is an elusive, reed-dwelling species of heron, which hardly ever shows itself, and is a rare vagrant to Britain. Its presence in my pantheon of all-time greats rests solely on the efforts of one wandering individual, which turned up at Stodmarsh in Kent in May 1975, when my teenage companions and I enjoyed brief but close-up views of this skulking beauty.

  I did not get out birding much in the 1980s, mainly as a result of the demands of career and children. So I was always grateful to my fourth choice, the Swift, for reminding me that there was a world out there, beyond the city. Every May, regular as clockwork, screaming packs of Swifts would arrive in whatever part of London I was living, and tear across the sky like demons. Even today, I still await their arrival with a child-like eagerness, as they seem to sum up the hopes and dreams of the coming summer.

  My fifth and sixth choices are birds which, in different ways, gave me memorable experiences while I was making the television series Birding with Bill Oddie. The first of these, Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, was a lost and lonely individual catching bumblebees in the unlikely setting of a Shetland garden. The other, Common Crane, was in northern Israel, where I watched thousands of these majestic birds flying into their winter roost at dusk, calling as they came. Simply unforgettable.

  If I were to pick a desert island to spend the rest of my life, then it would be Little Tobago, which lies just off the coast of its larger neighbour. Little Tobago plays host to one of the world’s finest seabird colonies, with boobies and frigatebirds soaring around
its cliffs. It is also the home of my seventh choice, arguably the most beautiful bird in the world: Red-billed Tropicbird. Watching these angelic creatures waft through the air against a topaz-blue sky is a fabulous experience.

  And my final choice? A bird that I had to travel to the ends of the Earth to see: Wandering Albatross. Tragically, like all the world’s albatrosses, this magnificent seabird is in danger of extinction because of deaths caused by longline fishing in the southern oceans. Seeing it, as with any albatross, is a privilege.

  Oh, I almost forgot. What about my book and luxury item? Choosing a single bird book from so many is tough, but for comprehensive coverage of birds on any desert island, and indeed everywhere else, I would have to pick the multi-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World. And my luxury item? Yes, you’ve guessed it: a pair of binoculars!

  Return to the desert island

  FEBRUARY 2002

  A little while ago, I devoted this column to ‘Desert Island Birds’: my eight all-time favourites. They were all birds that bring back special memories: Coot, Great Crested Grebe, Little Bittern, Swift, Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, Common Crane, Red-billed Tropicbird and Wandering Albatross.

  I have been fortunate to have seen all these in the wild, but there are another 8000 or so species I have still not caught up with. So here is my wish list, the birds that I can only dream of seeing, some time in the future.

  I have picked one bird from each of the world’s eight great birding regions. My first choice, representing Europe, is Gyr Falcon, a bird that epitomises the stark beauty of the frozen north. To see it, I would travel to Varanger Fjord at the northern tip of Scandinavia, one of Europe’s last truly wild places.