Birdwatchingwatching
Page 9
Mat was also, of course, taken on innumerable birdwatching outings as a child. But while I shunned the trips as soon as I reached the age of any sort of independence, Mat remained loyal to Duncton’s hobby throughout his youth and while only a part-time birdwatcher today, he’s a veritable expert compared with me. He still got into the other things boys get into as they grow up – football, mainly, of course – but he’d caught the birdwatching bug while I was, apparently, immune.
During our respective childhoods, Duncton organised various father-son bonding events in the form of one-off, one-on-one trips to a destination of our choice. When we were each thirteen years old and moving from one school to the next, he decided he’d take us off to wherever we wanted to go, to do whatever we wanted to do. We were more than happy with the idea.
Being the eldest, Mat became a teenager first. That’s how age works. So in the summer of 1989, soon after Liverpool had beaten Everton in the FA Cup in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, he and Duncton made the laborious but exhilarating trip up to Fair Isle, that bird-magnet of a Scottish Island mentioned earlier. Having driven from Midhurst to Gatwick, they caught a plane to Aberdeen, another plane to Shetland, then a boat to the island itself. It would have been cheaper and quicker to fly to New York. Once there, they spent a merry week working for free on the island’s bird observatory, trapping birds for research purposes, attaching rings to the legs of gulls and being mobbed by vicious auks (this story may well have been exaggerated around the dinner table in the adrenaline-fuelled weeks that followed their return – I know I thought they meant ‘orcs’). It was, I’ve always imagined, a perfect father-son bonding event. You couldn’t get a much tighter bonding experience than a week on a remote Scottish island grappling with furious Scottish beasts. Duncton still gardens in his Fair Isle Bird Observatory sweater.
When it finally came to my turn (three years that felt like decades later), I decided not to go quite as far north, requesting instead to spend a weekend in Liverpool on something called a ‘Soccer City Weekend’. I have no idea where I’d heard about the scheme, but over the course of a couple of days we were taken on a tour of both the Liverpool and Everton football grounds (there was no option to omit the latter from the schedule), given the opportunity to walk out onto the sacred Anfield turf and admire Liverpool’s trophy hall and the corresponding cupboard at Goodison. On top of those treats, we were promised a trip round the city itself, a visit to the Beatles Museum, meals at both club restaurants and, of course, the chance to watch whatever game was on that weekend. On our weekend, Liverpool were playing host to the mighty Coventry.
I was immensely excited by the whole thing and it passed in a blur. I remember being peculiarly enchanted by our guide Lorraine who spoke with the first live Scouse accent I’d ever heard, almost fainting at the sight of Jan Mølby in the hotel’s reception on match-day morning and getting a little bit bored in the Cathedral. I remember more about our grown-up meal in Est Est Est on The Albert Dock than Liverpool’s scrappy 1–0 win. I do recall Lorraine, a Blue, smiling and saying ‘You were lucky!’ when we got back on the magnificent coach. But then, all too quickly, it was over. The trip I’d been looking forward to my whole life was already a memory. Surely any serious bonding would take more time than that?
Four years later and Chip’s time arrived. I guess this is as good a time as ever to explain why he’s called Chip. He’s not really called Chip. Well, he wasn’t originally. My parents didn’t go on a mental safari after Mat and Alex and name their third child after a potato-based snack. Chip used to be called Christopher. But at the age of two (or whenever babies start talking) he struggled with the hefty consonants in his Jesus-bearing name and referred to himself simply as Chip. Chip stuck. Teachers called him Chip. Chip continued to call himself Chip. After leaving university he actually changed his name by deed poll to Chip. Outwardly, Mat and I have always derided our little brother’s American-sounding moniker, but I think we’re both secretly a tiny bit proud. Saying your brother is called Chip is a little like saying your dad is a birdwatcher. It’s not particularly odd or interesting but it is intriguing. There’s a hint of ‘isn’t he wacky’ about it that we hope might rub off on us.
Then again, when I ordered some mother’s day flowers from the three of us last year I was asked what message I’d like on the card.
‘Lots of love from Mat, Alex and Chip,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Mat, Alex and Chip. Chip’s the dog is he?’
Influenced partly, I like to think, by me, Chip also made the pilgrimage to Liverpool after his thirteenth birthday, this time with the focus on the Blue half of the city. He’s an Everton fan. Our football allegiances are shamefully glory-based. But by now the father-son thing was even more diluted. Chip brought his friend Seth along, due to some administrative mix-up they and Duncton were the only three people on that week’s tour so went round in a taxi rather than a coach and Everton ended up losing to a Shearer-led Blackburn. I’m sure he had a brilliant weekend but it didn’t sound quite as memorable as Mat’s (or mine, for that matter).
Being boys, the three of us have obviously never discussed our respective trips in more detail than what food we ate and what souvenirs we brought back, but for some time now I’ve wondered what Mat’s expedition was actually like. Was it the experience that set him on his birdwatching course? Or was his interest already there, the trip merely a manifestation of his inner birdwatching self? This is a classic nature versus nurture debate. We hold the key to one of science’s great riddles! Would I be a birder now if Duncton had whisked me off for a week on a wet and windy island? Or would I have turned my back even more emphatically on all things winged and wild?
I had plenty of time to ask Mat all about Fair Isle on this, our maiden brotherly birdwatching outing, but I never quite got round to it. I guess I didn’t want to make things awkward just before he left for a year in Africa by talking about anything remotely personal. Instead we pottered along, amiably discussing this and that (probably football and Africa), content to spend a rare day in each other’s company doing something a little out of the ordinary.
Ready to explore the next frontier beyond my back garden and the graveyard, I’d found out about a place called Brent Reservoir on the internet. Located just inside the North Circular, this seemed to be the main birdwatching spot in my particular borough of London. The grim journey up the Edgware Road through Kilburn and Brondesbury wasn’t all that encouraging, but turning left by a pub called The Welsh Harp, we suddenly saw the water stretching out before us, like a mirage in some barren tract. I found out later the pub was named after the reservoir, which was in turn given the musical nickname on account of its shape. Whether or not it actually looks anything like a harp from Wales, The Welsh Harp certainly sounds more romantic than the Brent Reservoir.
After reluctantly leaving my car all alone in the carpark of some disused playing fields nearby, Mat and I walked over to the lake then followed a path into the woods and around the water’s edge towards a couple of hides he’d seen on the far bank as we drove in. I hadn’t noticed them, and was already worried that my observational skills would come up a little short as the day progressed. I was relieved, therefore, to point out a group of long-tailed tits as we skirted the reservoir. I wanted Mat to see that I was finally taking this bird business seriously.
The London Birders4 website on which I’d read about the lake showed pictures of a still, clean and scenic sanctuary. Unfortunately, the page had last been updated in 2002. While the website remained pristine, the birdsite was strewn with litter, walls covered in graffiti and the water itself dotted with several requisite shopping trolleys. Hurdling fallen trees and squelching through a mud bath that was once a footpath, the first hide we came to bore a plaque reading: ‘Opened by Bill Oddie in 1991’. Unfortunately someone, who didn’t get a plaque, had since closed it. The door was firmly bolted shut. In fact we couldn’t even find a handle with which to try to open it. Neither of us had
Bill Oddie’s phone number, so we decided to move on.
Thankfully the second hide was open, although that was because the door had been smashed in by, it appeared, an axe. As we approached, we noticed the shattered door swinging eerily on its hinges, allowing us brief glimpses of wood splinters scattered around the floor inside and the remains of the lock, torn in two as if by some frenzied metal-shearing werewolf. Feeling a little bit like characters from The Blair Witch Project we cautiously entered the battered hut, where, aside from the fractured wood, there was no evidence of criminal activity. If there had been an axe-wielding murderer or man-eating beast, they’d been very careful not to leave any traces of blood. Deciding that we were probably not in any immediate danger we perched ourselves on the two stools that had survived the attack and concentrated on the view outside. Quite a view it was too. A bigger expanse of water than you’d expect to find in northwest London, but also, looming up above the streets and houses, the arch of the new Wembley stadium, recently raised and straddling Brent like a rainbow. We sat serenely for a couple of hours, occasionally munching on some Mr Kipling Lemon Slices, two brothers in a shed by a lake.
The whole adventure was a lot of fun. The hides may have been a disappointment (and when I got home I did leave a sanctimonious comment on the London Birders website saying how sad I was they’d been so badly maintained), but exploring a place we felt we weren’t allowed to be made us feel like kids again. As Mat taught me the difference between teal and tufted ducks or common, black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls, our status of older and younger brothers was restored. I was slightly in awe of his instant knowledge, he seemed happy to share it. The highlights for me were two birds we saw on the walk back to our car (which happily also escaped any sort of axe attack). First, a large magpie-like bird, perched in a tree a good fifty yards away that I would never have spotted. More colourful than their more common cousins, with a stripe of blue on one side, these are the subject of more confused phonecalls to the RSPB than any other. ‘It’s a jay,’ the patient person at the other end will tell you when you phone to say you’ve discovered something exotic. You’d have been right though. They are exotic, glamorous birds, and while not really rare, they are well worth a closer look.
As soon as we lowered our binoculars and turned back to the path, a fast-moving green smudge swooped past in front of us. ‘Green woodpecker,’ said Mat without even raising his glasses. ‘You see how it bobbed up and down as it flew along, that’s what they do.’
Tremendous. I never knew that. But he was absolutely right. If you see a greenish bird with a swoopy sort of flight it’ll almost certainly be a green woodpecker. And if you can follow its flight to where it lands you’ll also see it has a brilliant red, punk-like cap and a Sherwood Forest outfit that befits such a quirky creature. Thank you Mat.
9 March
We’ve never quite figured out how to say goodbye, Mat and I. We’ve both now got other halves who are really very good at reaching out for a peck on the cheek and a hug, but that’s normal protocol for those relationships. There’s no norm for brothers. A handshake would be far too formal and really quite odd, a hug just a bit over the top for people as typically English as us. We see each other a couple of times a week; we can’t cuddle each other every forty-eight hours! So I dropped Mat back home with a slightly hesitant wave and wished him all the best for his year in a different continent.
Duncton, on the other hand, has got his familial salutation ritual sorted. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but some time after I left school and before I finished university, he adopted a full back-slapping embrace as his way of marking the moment a son leaves or arrives. It took a little while to bed in, the first few awkward attempts were accompanied by a slightly embarrassed laugh and an involuntary intake of breath, but I think we’re all glad he initiated more physical contact amongst the Hornes. Being a four-males-to-one-female family, all hugs had previously been directed to Mum, so I guess Duncton felt it was time for him to get his fair share.
When I drove to Midhurst for the second time in the year, it was with such a clinch that Duncton greeted me. I’d actually driven down in the evening so we could head out birdwatching early the next morning, meaning I wouldn’t get to watch Liverpool play Benfica in the Champions League so I think he wanted to express his appreciation at my commitment. As it was, Liverpool were beaten 2–0 and so had to bid farewell to the cup they’d won so magnificently the year before. I wasn’t as gutted as I might have been in previous years. Perhaps this was a sign that birdwatching is more important than football. No, that’s too strong, I’m not sure even Duncton would agree with that – a sign that birdwatching is as important as football.
We rose with the sun the next morning and drove out to Pulborough Brooks, where Duncton did most of his RSPB volunteering, including the tiny egg chase. Stopping off at Burton Mill Pond, one of Duncton’s favourite spots, I felt an unexpected sense of pride that I was on a proper birdwatching outing with my dad. Duncton had his best pair of binoculars round his neck and his telescope slung over his shoulder. I had only the mini pair of binoculars he’d given me for my honeymoon, but I was wearing a pair of his Wellington boots and his second best hard-wearing outdoor coat, so I looked the part. People even stopped and asked us bird-related questions, like whether or not we’d seen the bittern on the pond. I scrunched up my face knowledgeably and gestured to Duncton as if the question was beneath me. ‘Oooh, they’re so hard to see,’ he explained. ‘A couple were spotted out by those trees last week, but they’re more likely to be found in the early evening. Somebody reported them at about 8.30 a.m. a few days ago, but I’ve never heard of them being around in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ I murmured in confirmation, ‘it was by those trees but only in the evening usually.’
Unfortunately, when we returned to the carpark my car alarm went off and refused to stop going off, thus ruining my short-lived birdwatching cred.
At the reserve itself, Duncton led me to his preferred hide and pointed out yet more waterbirds on the marshes. There really are a lot of different types of duck. The mallard has done very well to steal so much of the limelight. As well as nearly all the species I’d already seen, I added pochard, gadwall and pintail, all ducks (dabbling ducks to be precise) and all with uniquely attractive characteristics. Pochard and Gadwall I thought were particularly gallant names, as suited to Arthurian knights as these wildfowl.
I saw my first wader in the form of a lapwing which instantly shot to number one on my favourite bird chart, mostly due to its catwalk-fashion-style wispy crest. The sound they made as they flew aerobatically in front of us was similarly outlandish. It’s hard to do it justice on the page, but Mat’s Collins Bird Guide described it as ‘Heartbreakingly shrill’ which is pretty close. Considering it’s a technical, almost scientific book, that’s some pretty emotive language. Much to Duncton’s disappointment, we managed to dip a snipe, a phrase I wouldn’t have come close to recognising just a couple of months earlier.5 As we scanned the water’s edge in vain I asked Duncton what a snipe looked like. ‘Oh, it’s a light brown, speckled bird,’ he said. I nodded. Great.
‘Is it particularly light brown, or particularly speckled?’ I asked, conscious that quite a few birds might fit that description.
‘No, it’s about average,’ he said.
Exasperated, I looked the bird up in my bird guide and was amazed to find a picture of a bird average in every way except for the most disproportionately long beak I’d ever seen. Compared to any other bird I’d set eyes on this was a remarkable sight, much more remarkable than its light brown speckled-ness. To me this was like describing Cyrano de Bergerac as having distinctively mousy hair.
‘Why didn’t you mention its incredibly long beak?’ I protested.
‘Oh yes, sorry,’ said Duncton, ‘I thought you’d know that. But no, you don’t know anything do you. Right, sorry.’
There really can be a huge gulf between birdwatchers and non-birdw
atchers at times.
As thoughts of lunch began to crowd any others from my head, a thunderclap sounded and thick rain began to dollop onto the roof of the hide. A couple of minutes later, a noisy crowd of school children was herded into the hide. Weighing up these new conditions, Duncton and I decided we weren’t going to get a lot more meaningful birdwatching done, so braved the rain and scuttled back to the cafeteria for sausages, beans and a baked potato. Duncton was disappointed not to have seen anything more spectacular during the morning, and I tried to reassure him by saying that for me everything was novel, and, in a way, spectacular. In truth I was slightly relieved we hadn’t seen a particularly impressive bird, lest I had failed to recognise it. I’ve watched football games with people who’ve never seen the sport before and know how irritating it can be when they cheer at a throw-in or look nonplussed by a thirty-yard screamer. But could I ever get excited by the birding equivalent? I would have to wait and see.
17 March
I was well aware that with spring approaching, any lapse in my birdwatching education could be fatal, and so I took the opportunity of a gig in Manchester to explore what I hoped was a good local bird spot. I saw its name on one of those brown signs you usually ignore on the way in to a city, and on impulse stopped for a look.
My first impression of Etherow Country Park was that it wasn’t nearly as nice as Pulborough Brooks, partly because it seemed to consist only of a pond and some unremarkable buildings, but mostly because I didn’t have Duncton to show me round. At reception, however, I was spoken to at length by a loud couple who seemed both overjoyed and alarmed by a visitor and who took it upon themselves to guide me.