A Sky Full of Birds

by Matt Merritt

  Along with the truly wild swans, the whoopers and Bewick’s, mute swans have left their mark on the wider culture of Europe. From Greek myth, in which Helen of Troy was conceived as a result of a union between the Queen of Sparta and Zeus, disguised as a swan, through to Wagner’s operas Lohengrin and Parsifal, both of which draw on Norse myths involving swan-maidens, the birds have been an inspiration to artists, writers and composers, symbolising beauty, as well as love and fidelity, because of their habit of mating for life.

  And then there’s the enduring story of the ‘swan song’, a phrase that has passed into much more general usage to mean a person’s last act or performance. Chaucer and Shakespeare both mention the original, literal version: the belief that swans sing a song just before dying, having previously been silent.

  It seems to have some basis in truth, at least where the whooper and Bewick’s swans are concerned, as both have been known to issue a series of long drawn-out musical notes as their lungs collapse before the moment of death. But neither, of course, are silent throughout their lives, so perhaps somewhere along the line there was some confusion with their mute cousins. However, even mute swans hiss and grunt extensively when the mood takes them, so perhaps the myth is the result of good old poetic licence, and the understandable desire to make a story better than it really is.

  Ten days after visiting Welney, I’m on my way up to Edinburgh from Newcastle. It’s a journey I’ve made many times, and although there are frustrations aplenty on the single-carriageway stretches of the A1 between Newcastle and the border, there are compensations for the birdwatcher. Slightly dangerous compensations, because they can turn what should be a drive of ninety minutes or so into an all-day affair …

  I manage to resist the urge to turn off the road shortly after passing Morpeth and trawl the many small reserves along Druridge Bay for unusual migrant waders. These sites, most of them former industrial workings, can look distinctly unpromising at first glance, but they have an astonishing roll of honour to their credit, including the much-disputed record of a slender-billed curlew sighting in 1998, which if genuine would be one of the last good sightings of a species now possibly extinct. The slender-billed curlew once bred in the vast, still partially unmapped taiga of Siberia, and used to be a regular winter visitor around the Mediterranean, until hunting and habitat degradation sent numbers into a down-curve not unlike that of the bird’s own bill: steady and regular, but growing more and more exaggerated. A final concerted scientific effort to find the last remaining birds took place during the last decade but met with no confirmed success, merely a handful of intriguing and far-flung possibilities: a sketch of an unusual wader from Andalusia; unfamiliar calls from overflying birds in eastern Europe. And the Druridge Bay bird? In recent years the British Birds Rarities Committee and the British Ornithologists’ Union Records Committee have reconsidered the sighting and removed it from the British List. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a slender-billed curlew, and there are scores if not hundreds of British birders who will go to their graves convinced they saw one of the last hurrahs of a tragically doomed species.

  I digress, but this stretch of coast has that effect on you. Even after you’ve overcome the temptations of Druridge, there are the harbours and estuaries to consider, such as Alnmouth and Seahouses, where in winter the eiders crowd, oohing and aahing like so many pensioners catching up on a week’s news. And there’s the history. This was once the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia, one of the two main constituent parts of Northumbria, and here more than in most parts of England the pre-Conquest past is still there to be seen. Up in the dark hills, there’s Yeavering Bell, where archaeological digs have uncovered the sort of royal hall that you can imagine Beowulf being recited in – that you can imagine the story of Beowulf taking place in, in fact.

  On the coast, there’s Bamburgh Castle perched dramatically atop its rock, no less impressive now, as a Victorian rebuild, than it was through the medieval period, when it guarded against Viking and Scottish invasions (not always successfully), and played its part in internecine struggles such as the Wars of the Roses. Beyond it, I catch glimpses of the causeway curving out to Lindisfarne. The castle there, too, is more nineteenth-century reconstruction than original, but it’s not difficult to picture things as they once were, with the monastery that was one of the cradles of English Christianity rising above the tidal island.

  But no. I resist this too, and drive on towards the border with thoughts of reaching Auld Reekie in time to take a daylight stroll. A skein of pink-footed geese arrows over at one stage, returning to their roost on the coast after a day foraging on the hills, but I don’t follow. And then, just when the danger seems over, I’m ambushed.

  I turn off to go into Berwick for petrol just as the sun starts to touch the Cheviot tops, spilling a warm, golden wash over the town, and as I drive across the high bridge over the widening Tweed, I glance sideways to be met by an extraordinary sight. For a moment it looks like a scene from a documentary on Alaska or Canada, where ice-floes crowd some Arctic river, and bears and bald eagles hunt salmon. There are still salmon in the Tweed, but here the bald eagles are replaced by cormorants. And the ice-floes? The ice-floes are hundreds of mute swans, clustered on the estuary in little huddles that gather and disperse, gather and disperse, at the command of invisible, unfathomable forces.

  I stop in town, and walk back to the bridge to spend half an hour watching this strange gathering. Strange because mute swans are so legendarily territorial. While the old story about them breaking arms might be an exaggeration, they’re often willing to vigorously attack anything they see as a threat. In this case, it turns out that they’re willing to put aside rivalries, at least for part of the year, because the estuary of the Tweed provides the perfect safe environment, in late summer and early autumn, in which they can moult, which is to say replace part of their plumage, including their flight feathers. During such a time, the birds are of course more vulnerable, so a safe haven is a must. Later in the year, these normally freshwater birds take advantage of the seaweeds and algae that can be found where the river meets the salt waters – like all British estuaries, the Tweed remains free of ice during even the hardest winter.

  Even as I watch, a couple of small flotillas nose their way in from the North Sea. There’s always something strange about seeing the birds of your local park out on the ocean, and if anything the effect is amplified by the swans’ size and obviousness.

  The birds stay to feed and grow their new plumage in this peaceful spot. Some birds, up to two hundred non-breeders and juveniles, remain all year, but up to six hundred more birds arrive from late summer onwards from their breeding sites all over Northumberland and the Borders region. Quite why the Tweed is so much more attractive than other estuaries isn’t clear. The town has historical connections to royalty, both English and Scottish, so it’s possible that there was a certain amount of swan husbandry in the past, building up the core of the modern herd. Having said that, the large numbers seen today seem to have developed from the middle of the twentieth century, so perhaps Berwick just boasts a perfect combination of circumstances for the discerning mute swan.

  Whatever the reason, they’re a glorious surprise to even the experienced birdwatcher, a perfect example of how even the most everyday (and partially domesticated) of birds takes on a whole new character when seen in a different context, or much greater numbers than usual, or both.

  I drive on towards night and a new country, my mind swept clean by the white wings of this sudden snowstorm.

  13 Parrots, Pests and Garrulous Bohemians

  Learning to recognise the silhouettes of different species is a key part of becoming a birdwatcher, especially if a lot of your birding is of the casual variety – snatched moments in between chores and errands and appointments and the diary-clutter of modern life. Your binoculars might not be to hand. The light might be poor. You might, as I am now, be standing in the car park of your local branch of Lidl, cradling an ar
mful of discounted comestibles while rummaging through your trouser pocket for the car keys.

  Just beyond the end of the car park, where the land slopes away towards the bypass, there’s a single, moderately large passerine in the top of a bare rowan tree. It’s a sad comment on the population status of the fast-declining starling that I am, to begin with, delighted to see one of the speckled, strutting mimics so close to home. Just recently, they’ve been hard to find away from a few regular roost sites.

  However, when the bird shifts slightly, its head is clearly visible against the ice-blue sky beyond, and my heart starts to race a little. The general shape and size are right for starling, true, but what’s that rather chunky crest doing jabbing jauntily towards the daylight moon? I’m pretty sure I know what I’m seeing, but I inch my way round my car anyway, closer, closer, until a little more detail becomes visible. Yellow fringes to a wing flashed with white, and a yellow tip to the tail. I think I can see a few droplets of red on the wing, too, but maybe they’re just rowan berries on one of the nearer branches. No matter. This is a waxwing, so-called because those red feather-tips on the wings were once thought to resemble sealing wax. It’s a gorgeous creature, colourful without being gaudy, and I silently curse the fact that I left my binoculars at home, but it’s still a pleasure to stand and watch it here, half a mile from my home.

  Such a pleasure that I lose all track of time. After a few minutes, my hands are so cold that I don’t notice I’m losing grip on a jar of strawberry jam, which slips from my grasp and smashes on the tarmac. The waxwing, predictably, takes fright and flight.

  The smashed jar poses a dilemma. I really, really want that jam – what else am I going to have on my toast tomorrow morning? But I can’t face the embarrassment of walking straight back into the same shop, to the same, lone cashier, to buy exactly the same thing. A man has to have some self-respect.

  This is where the recent diversification of the British supermarket sector pays unexpected dividends. Just across the road, there’s a branch of Lidl’s rival, Aldi. I sheepishly climb into the car, edge out of one car park, and straight into another. As I climb out of the car again, I catch movement in the line of small rowan trees planted in the bay-dividers. A sudden flurry of movement, in which berries and waxed-look wingtips become one and the same. There’s a flock of perhaps sixty waxwings, moving through the trees, methodically stripping off the remaining rather shrivelled fruits, and gorging on them. There’s a certain amount of chattering from the excited birds – the second part of their scientific name Bombycilla garrulus refers to this noisy jabbering – but for the most part they give their meal their full attention. It’s the avian equivalent of a swarm of locusts. Once they’ve finished here, they’ll be straight off in search of their next meal – yet no one seems to be watching them but me.

  Well, me and a mistle thrush. This large, powerful-looking songbird, famously so unfazed by extreme winter weather that it was known as the stormcock in centuries past, is watching with mounting fury as the invaders loot one of the food sources that might have seen it through the darkest, coldest months. From a nearby hawthorn hedge, it makes a sound like one of those football rattles you see on newsreel clips of 1950s FA Cup Finals, occasionally making a darting flight towards the waxwings. Each time, a few of them take flight, their wings making their own clattering noise as if in echo or mockery of the thrush’s alarm call; then they circle in a loose flock before returning to the rowans. They’re not about to be deterred by any single thrush, let alone a butter-fingered buffoon in a fleece.

  My hands become cold again, but I just can’t drag myself away from these glorious creatures. This time, even without binoculars, I can make out all those beautiful details on the wings and tails, but there’s more. The black eye-stripe and ‘beard’ gives them a bandit look that, as that mistle thrush might tell you, isn’t wholly inappropriate, while the orangey-red blush under the tail and around the forehead and cheeks is the leaves of vast Siberian forests brought out of the mysterious east. So, I stand until the last shades of yellow and pink disappear from the western sky, the car park empties of vehicles, and I hear the shop doors being locked somewhere behind me.

  I never do get that jam.

  Even a single waxwing is a truly wonderful thing to behold, an exquisite little miniature, a masterpiece of fine detail. But an equally important part of their appeal to any birdwatcher is what they represent, and the twin auras of exoticism and adventure they carry.

  Waxwings come to us from Siberia, as well as European Russia and Scandinavia (although their full name is Bohemian waxwing, this refers to their general foreignness, rather than any actual connection to central Europe). When they arrive in Britain, it’s at the end of an odyssey that takes them across thousands of miles, including the cold and inhospitable North Sea. These invasions, or irruptions, to use the correct term, are triggered by a lack of suitable food in their home territories; the very cold, snowy winters there would make movement south necessary anyway, but if the nearest mild wintering areas have had a bad berry crop, or are colder and snowier than usual, then the birds have to set their sights much further afield.

  Sometimes – most years, in fact – they’ll find what they seek en route through Europe, dropping off flock after flock as they go, until what reaches us is a thin trickle of birds that don’t get far past our north-east coasts. But there are years when even eastern, central, and finally the near edge of western Europe are all having their own bad weather, or have had poor berry crops, and so the birds keep on going, giving the UK what’s become known as a waxwing winter.

  These winters generally happen every four or five years. Trees and bushes don’t produce the same harvest every year. Warm, wet springs mean that a lot of fruit and seeds are produced the following autumn, which in turn means that more of the birds that eat these foods can survive through the winter. If the following spring is cold and dry, that year’s berry and seed yield will be proportionally lower, yet will have to feed an increased population. It’s a complex equation that, ultimately, always comes up with the same simple answer: at least some birds must move, or die.

  So, usually around the end of October, there comes a day when a report arrives of a small group of waxwings in some coastal town such as Whitley Bay or Scarborough. And, when that happens, birders around the country shift nervously in their chairs in office buildings and business parks, or scan the skies for compact, starling-like flocks as they pause at traffic lights. Over the succeeding days, more waxwings will start to pop up along the coast, anywhere from Fraserburgh to Felixstowe. This is when things grow really tense for the average British birdwatcher. There’s a nervous pause, a collective held breath, as the voracious visitors strip the berry trees of their chosen out-of-season resort. Are they the overspill from an avian tide that has largely spent its force on the near-continent? Or are they the scouts for a vast invasion force, outriders of a constantly moving horde of insatiable fruit-guzzlers?

  Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to find out. Those original birds move on to find their next food source, but in a good waxwing year they’ll quickly be forgotten about as larger and larger flocks make landfall along the east coast, before the invaders start to make their way south and west, leapfrogging each other in their search for sustenance. By the end of November, they can be found pretty much everywhere, and their nomadic gluttony will continue well into the spring.

  They’re not the only species to perform these irruptions, by any means. Bramblings, crossbills, and the continental populations of familiar birds such as coal tits all roam far and wide in response to adverse weather or food shortages. What makes waxwings easier to track than these and most migratory birds, for that matter, is their habit of sticking together in single-species flocks, and their liking for habitat that’s bizarrely at odds with their exotic appearance. Waxwings, you see, love car parks.

  They’re not restricted to them, obviously, being birds of the Siberian taiga at heart, but the fact is that,
in most of the UK, the best place to look for berries is often in the middle of a town or city, between serried rows of vehicles. That’s because car parks – and especially supermarket and hospital car parks – tend to be built to much the same pattern the country over. At least some of the bays will be divided by small flower beds and, as well as rowan trees, shrubs such as cotoneaster, pyracantha and guelder rose are favoured. All produce exactly the sort of berries that waxwings love, and so on a given winter’s day it’s possible to watch one of our great wildlife spectacles unfold a few yards away from the irritable, irritating crush of the Christmas shopping rush. In fact, that’s partly why it’s one of our greatest wildlife spectacles: no other juxtaposes untamed, wild nature and crass commercialism, the sublime and the ridiculous, quite so closely.

  There’s also the fact that you never quite know what you’re going to get when you stumble across a flock of waxwings. They are usually rather nervous birds, but their need for large amounts of food, fast, can lead them to throw off their natural caution and approach humans closely. An apple impaled on a stick has been known to be enough to lure them down into a garden, to within touching distance.

  Once they’ve gorged themselves on fruit, they can become distinctly sluggish, intoxicated, in fact. A diet consisting entirely of sugary berries might be thought to be asking for trouble, and because the berries are generally low in most nutrients, they have to be eaten in very large quantities – often more than double the bird’s weight in a day. Waxwings do have large livers, and can actually metabolise ethanol better than humans, but nonetheless there are instances of the birds becoming drunk on the fermenting fruit in their stomachs and coming to ruin as a result, flying into buildings and cars, or being picked off by grateful predators. More commonly, they merely appear rather sluggish, and remarkably tame. Like all the best drunks, they’re your best mate, honest.