Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? 200 birds, 12 months, 1 lapsed birdwatcher

by Lev Parikian

  More movement, and there, on the fringes of the path, playing hide-and-seek among the mottled pebbles and thin, scrubby grass, is some sort of small brown bird.

  Then it’s gone.

  I inch forward. It pops up again, well camouflaged but discernible. Definitely not a house sparrow. This bird has a demure look to it, with a fetching hazel blush on its cheek. There’s black and white on the outer wing feathers, and a stout yellow bill.

  This, unless I’m mistaken, is a snow bunting. Sweet, mobile, tickable.

  We establish a pattern. It moves, I follow. I get close, it moves again. Repeat until fed up and begging the bird to sit still, dammit. At last I pin it down, and it poses long enough for a couple of photos so I can check its identity later. This is frowned upon by the old school, who will be heard to complain that birders nowadays are more like photographers. Get a bird book, do your homework, don’t mumble, pull your trousers up, tuck your shirt in, turn that racket down, young people today, I’ll have a tea with three sugars and one of those biscuits, been birding 140 years man and boy, and I’ve never needed to take one of those newfangled photographs.

  I ignore these objections, viewing the photography as both a learning aid and a harmless pastime, and snap away to my heart’s content. Later, I look at a bird book and confirm its identity, and now I really do know what a snow bunting looks like, so yah boo sucks to the old school.

  The snow bunting marks the geographical and emotional peak of our morning. We head back to the village, lunch on sandwiches and crisps, and part ways, Tessa and Oliver exploring the island by bike, me striking out on foot. I don’t want to be stopping them every five minutes to look at something that might be a Pallas’s warbler but will inevitably turn out to be a dunnock. But I also want to make the most of my time here. They seem happy with the arrangement, so we agree to meet at dusk back in the village.

  The heartiness engendered by a long walk in wild scenery lasts as long as you let it. Bolstered by the snow bunting, there’s a spring in my stride. It sees me all the way up Straight Lonnen, the path that leads towards the northernmost tip of the island. It sustains me over the dunes and up to the cliffs at Nessend, then along to the spectacular viewpoint at Castlehead Rocks. It’s still in full flow as I scan a small flock of waders on the beach at Sandham and find yet more starlings noodling around in the seaweed. I rest for five minutes on a considerate bench at the white pyramidal beacon at Emmanuel Head, the heartiness showing no sign of abating. It only subsides as I trudge back towards the village, coming to terms with the realisation that I’m done for the day. As I pick my way through some patient cattle in the gathering dusk, I become aware of a distant hubbub. It’s a mild hubbub, no more than a high-pitched chattering carried to me on the light wind, and gone as soon as I hear it. I plough on, my legs reminding me I’ve walked nearly twenty miles today.

  A hundred yards further on, another hubbub, louder, persistent. Or maybe it’s the same one and I’m closer to it. As I try to get a handle on its source, a visual commotion sneaks into my eyeline from the right. Twenty birds. Fifty. A hundred. Arrowheads in the sky, birds with a purpose, converging on an agreed destination. More come in from the left, their collective shape billowing slightly as they approach a reed bed a hundred yards away.

  Starlings.

  I’ve stumbled on a murmuration and now nothing else matters, the paucity of sightings on the island instantly forgotten and the tiredness in my legs evaporating. I change tack and head towards the hubbub, which morphs into a downright hullabaloo as I approach.

  By the standards we’ve come to expect, it’s not a huge gathering. Not long ago these astonishingly fluid skydances, thousands strong, were commonplace, but the decline in the native starling population means they’re now sought-after events, with the displays at Brighton, Aberystwyth and the Somerset Levels attracting crowds throughout winter.

  I text Tessa.

  –Can you get to the east side easily and quickly?

  –Not really. We’re near the village. Why?

  –Starling murmuration.

  –Oh. Bugger.

  I take that as a ‘no’, and realise on reflection that cycling across rough and squelchy terrain on road bikes wouldn’t be the best use of their time and resources, no matter what the incentive. I’m also heartened by what seems to be her genuine regret at missing the spectacle. No matter how many times they reassure me that my idiotic project isn’t causing them perturbation and despair, I’m nonetheless beset by the worry that I’m going to be ‘that’ guy, the one who makes his family do the things he wants to do without consideration of their preferences. Accordingly I pounce on any display of even moderate enthusiasm as validation.

  My attention is drawn back to the starlings by another group joining from the west. I’m at a loss to know how many birds there are here. More than a thousand. Less than a million. Somewhere in that ball park. The ‘counting bunches’ technique works less well when the birds are closely grouped and moving fast and unpredictably, and I lack the experience to make an educated guess at what a thousand starlings look like. I’m reminded of the family legend about my brother’s first efforts at counting. ‘One, two, lots and lots.’ That’ll do me.

  More birds arrive, from all compass points. A smallish group, let’s say a hundred birds, swoops in low and fast, sashays round the reed bed and then goes down, joining the multitudinous chatter, adding a decibel to the noise, an extra level of shading to the dense mass of birds already assembled. Now, from the south, comes the biggest group yet. I’m going to say 400. Enough to catch the eye from a distance and for me to follow their progress as they approach. They come in from higher than the last group, sweeping round to the west, bunching closely, then ballooning before shape-shifting over the reed beds no more than twenty yards away, as smooth as if thoroughly rehearsed. There are no stragglers. It’s easy to think of them as a single entity, so fluid is their morphing from shape to shape, their reactions too fast for the human brain to comprehend. As they perform this everyday miracle, I become aware of a voice above the white noise of the birds’ ceaseless chatter. A human voice, coming towards me on the path.

  ‘Yeah, we said thirty, no more. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. Inbox me.’

  He hangs up and walks past, looking neither at me nor the birds, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. Thirty what, I wonder? Thirty pounds? Thirty Ferraris? Thirty large bags of John Innes No. 2 potting compost?

  Ten yards behind him come his presumably wife and presumably daughter. They stop, look at the starlings for a few seconds without comment or expression, then scuttle off.

  I stay, watching the birds settle in for the roost. The hullabaloo dies down until it’s a hubbub again, and then a mere commotion, the sight and sound staying with me all the way back to the village and beyond, battling for attention in my head with the desire to kill the person who first made a verb out of the word ‘inbox’.

  Our almost barren day on Lindisfarne leaves me disappointed but unbowed. We still have a day and a bit.

  I consult local knowledge, thanking the gods of ornithology for dedicated people who share information on the internet. As I browse, I realise I missed a trick on my pre-dawn excursion. At Stag Rocks near Bamburgh there should be a flock of turnstone, and with them purple sandpipers, one of the birds I haven’t looked into. They’re the suspect in the murder case who doesn’t get investigated because the detective’s always distracted by something else, but who turns out to be the killer.

  There’s only one thing that gives me pause. I know Stag Rocks. I avoided them yesterday. I call them Vader Rocks. Flat, shiny, slippery. To see these purple sandpipers I’ll have to put myself into physical danger. Never the best start to a weekend.

  There are moments, the next morning, when I doubt the wisdom of my decision. Moments when I feel my foot slide on the rock, the balance of my body shift, my heart race as I try to rearrange my weight forwards. I’ve seen birds from the safety of the dunes, but all I can tell is tha
t they’re waders. I need to get closer, and that means picking a way across the rocks. There are patches of seaweed and the occasional encrustation of barnacles, both offering a more stable footing, and if it came to it I could go down on hands and knees, and to hell with dignity. But mostly it’s the glossy mirror of Darth Vader’s face.

  We all have to go one day. Charming and enticing as the purple sandpiper is, do I really want to risk it all in pursuit of one?

  Apparently so.

  Inch by inch I shuffle forward, feeling increasingly like a Galapagos turtle. Quite how I’m going to manoeuvre binoculars to eyes without coming a cropper is a mystery, but as I get closer the terrain becomes more reliable, my footing firmer, and I find I can sidle across to a ledge, park my bottom and reassess. The birds are within range now, but hopping up and down off the rocks, dodging the spray, showing an uncanny ability to know when they’re about to swept out to sea, and moving out of the way at the last second. A dozen of them are turnstone, stout tortoiseshell-plumaged birds named, like wagtails and woodpeckers, after their defining activity rather than their appearance. Where others recoil from the wriggling life forms found under rocks, turnstone seek and devour them. My first of the year was at Minsmere back in spring. I pounced on it, not knowing whether I’d see another, not understanding that they’re relatively common birds at the right time of year and in the right place. Now I’ve seen enough of them to be blasé, and turn my attention to the darker, less eye-catching birds dotted amongst them. I find one standing helpfully still, wrestling with a clump of seaweed, and tick off its distinguishing features. Dark grey upper body – check; whitish underneath – check; orangey-yellow legs – check.

  Purple sandpiper, consider yourself ticked.

  After this life-or-death struggle, a relaxing beach walk in the afternoon is in order. The beach in question, Ross Back Sands, is just to the south of Lindisfarne, and subject to the same tides, so there’s a bunch of beach at our disposal. It’s a lazy afternoon of strolling through the dunes, experimenting with camera settings, and wishing we’d brought a ball or Frisbee. The bird activity is equally lethargic. Distant blobs on the sea, wafting in and out of view, are gradually brought close enough by the tide for an attempt at identification. A couple of eider bobbing up and down, some low-flying cormorants, the usual gulls, and a pair of non-specific grebes with flattish heads. They’re enough to quicken the pulse a fraction. I walk as close as I can to the tide, forgetting that some waves come further in than others. But wet feet will dry, and these birds might disappear at any moment. An instinct tells me they’re not the run-of-the-mill little or great crested varieties. Even at this distance there’s something about their shape and size, the flatness of the head, but they remain frustratingly on the cusp. Too close to give up on completely, too distant for certainty.

  Providence, in the shape of a young man with better binoculars and more knowledge than me, comes to the rescue. He knows grebes all right. I wonder out loud if they might be Slavonian, and when they drift close enough he confirms the identification with a crisp nod and a muttered comment about head shape, and we part ways.

  They’re a boost, those birds, but the trip still isn’t meeting expectations. I need two more ticks to fend off coffee-related lachrymosity. It’s the longest of long shots, but desperation is my spur, so I leave my sleeping family for another pre-dawn start the next morning, the last of our visit, and drive to Lindisfarne once more. We go home in four hours. No sooner have I made my way to the east of the island than I waste 2 per cent of that time admiring the sunrise.

  In my defence, it’s spectacular. Rendered in paint it would have critics berating its lurid vulgarity. Thin, low cloud heightens the drama, battleship grey against light blue underpinned with the burning coral of refracted sunlight. As the sea turns orange, a black-headed gull, standing on a rock on the shore, is silhouetted against it. It would make a fantastic photograph, except it doesn’t, the gull drowned by the brightness of the light, which changes so quickly I’m unable to adjust the settings in time to capture the splendour of the sight. Perhaps that’s for the best. Maybe it’s healthier to have the memory of it rather than add it to the unceasing digital parade of our minutely recorded lives.

  Three minutes later, both gull and light are gone, and the morning can continue as normal. I walk, hoping against hope that something will turn up. Flocks of starlings pass me, dispersing from the night roost to their constituencies.

  After twenty minutes I turn round. My time here is limited, and this excursion has the cloak of futility around its shoulders. Maybe there’ll be something around the harbour, I tell myself, unconvincing and unconvinced.

  The tide around the harbour is at its lowest, transforming the landscape. It’s now possible to walk across to St Cuthbert’s Isle, where two days ago swimming would have been the only option. This tiny island just off the harbour, pinpointed with a plain wooden cross, is where the eponymous saint gave hermiting a try-out before undertaking the real thing on Inner Farne just down the coast. The isolation he sought from human company in both places would have been more than compensated for by the presence of birds, and I’m hoping for plenty of the same. His name is enshrined for birders in the local nickname for the eider: cuddy duck. I see at least a dozen cuddy ducks on the surrounding mudflats as I pick my way across to the islet. It’s not the easiest of going, ragged rocks combining with seaweed to make it almost as treacherous as Stag Rocks.

  I spend as long as I can there, scanning the mudflats for unfamiliar shapes to no avail. The thought that six months ago I wouldn’t have been able to identify half these birds is scant consolation. There’s no single moment in this enterprise when hope disappears completely, just a gradual erosion of expectations until you realise the run rate is too high and all you’re left with are tailenders. But here, on this little island, surrounded by all the wrong birds, I can feel it slip out of my grasp.

  For the first time I begin to hate the birds. I’m tired, I’ve got up at stupid o’clock, and we’ve got a five-year drive home. The birds in front of me are unwitting recipients of my ire. Those brent geese, standing around brazenly not being bean geese. Bastards. That great crested grebe, resisting my efforts to will it into the shape of a red-throated diver. Selfish git. That duck over there, floating away from me, would it kill it to be a goldeneye?

  It’s a goldeneye. A female, its distinctive head shape conveniently silhouetted to help me.

  All right then. As you were.

  You’re gorgeous, every last one of you. I want to marry you all.

  Paranoia about incoming tides sends me off Lindisfarne earlier than strictly necessary, and I drive back to Bamburgh, there to scoop up the others before heading home.

  As I park, a text comes through.

  –Gone to castle. See you car park 12ish?

  It’s 11.15. Extra time. I can walk along the top road, scan the fields for grey partridge, or maybe there’ll be a brambling hanging around with the chaffinches. Or perhaps a Rüppell’s vulture will decide today’s the day, after a lifetime in the Sahara, for a jaunt to colder climes.

  The truth is more mundane, but equally welcome. A small bird of prey, agile and nippy, on the chase low over the field, its size, slate-coloured upperparts and pointed wings giving me the clues I need.

  Merlin. The smallest British raptor, and my new favourite bird.

  It does a couple of passes across the field then dips over a low hedge. I look at my watch. It’s 11.53. My work here is done. I’m still, just about, in the game.

  October ticks (13)

  RSPB Dungeness, South Norwood Country Park, RSPB Rainham Marshes, Regent’s Park, Budle Bay, Bamburgh, Lindisfarne

  Great White Egret Ardea alba, Water Rail Rallus aquaticus, Ring Ouzel Turdus torquatus, Yellow-legged Gull Larus michahellis, Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus, Pink-footed Goose Anser brachyrhynchus, Bar-tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica, Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator, Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis, Purple Sandpiper
Calidris maritima, Slavonian Grebe Podiceps auritus, Goldeneye Bucephala clangula, Merlin Falco columbarius

  Year total: 178

  Notes

  * The trick, incidentally, is not to add letters that aren’t there and not to make a big deal of how foreign it all looks. Stress the ‘Man’ and then the ‘rik’ and you won’t be a million miles away.

  * It was 1974. Give me a break.

  * Visitors to the Farne islands in breeding season are recommended to wear a sturdy hat. Seriously.

  * I do, despite my protestations, love Mahler. But, like his contemporary Strauss, he was a bit of a show-off. The story goes that while on a day’s walking in the mountains, his friend Bruno Walter stopped to admire the view of the Höllengebirge. Mahler swept on, throwing over his shoulder the dismissive comment, ‘Don’t bother looking. I’ve put it all in my Third Symphony.’

  † Mute swans have a repertoire of hisses, snorts and clicks that quite strike terror into the human heart, petrified as we are that they will rise up and break our arm under the full protection of the Queen. And the sound of their wingbeats as they fly past in formation counts as one of the top five non-vocal nature sounds I’ve experienced.

  * Moronic.

  † And, to be fair, quite easy at the time.

  NOVEMBER 2016

  When life gives you lemons, summon barn owls.