by Alex Horne
I did go for a wander round the streets, peering discreetly into gardens and listening out for any hint of an American accent. I did chat for quite some time with a very nice elderly resident, who told me cheerfully that I should have been there two days ago. Had she seen the bird? I asked her. ‘Oh yes,’ she grinned, ‘everyone saw the bird. It wasn’t very good though. It was just a bird.’
I even sat clutching my binoculars in the car for an hour, looking like the most inept private detective in the world, when actually I was the most inept birdwatcher in the world. I was certain the bird had flown, but I also knew that even if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be able to recognise it by myself. It would look to me, and most of the residents of Peckham, like any other little brown bird. I was counting on being able to follow the gaze of a crowd of dedicated birders and find it that way.
On my dejected drive home I got stuck in another horrendous traffic jam and only had about ten minutes to spare before having to drive to Derby for another gig. It’s not always the most relaxing hobby, birdwatching.
2 April
If missing the American robin was something of a false start to the month, the next day I left the blocks a little later than I’d have liked but went on to run a fantastic race.
Just before leaving for Derby I’d checked my emails to find two bird-related messages in my inbox. The first was from Lee G R Evans. In a brief but helpful note he got my hopes up by explaining that ‘Israel is the top birding destination in the Western P.’ then dashed them with the clause, ‘but only in spring I’m afraid.’ To underline how bad my timing was he went on to say that ‘By August the heat will be in the 40s and birds will be scarce apart from a few returning warblers in the wadis and larks at K40 and flamingos at K20 Reservoir.’2 Of course I appreciated him taking the time to advise me and was thrilled to receive any sort of communication featuring the words, ‘All the very best, Lee G R Evans’, but Israel suddenly looked less like the promised land.
The other message, however, was more hopeful. It came from the London Birders Forum and, to be precise, a man called David. ‘Yes,’ he wrote, ‘I’d be happy to take you under my wing (ha ha). I’ve got kids so am pretty busy but could do Sunday (tomorrow) morning. How about you meet me at Ferry Lane in Tottenham Hale at about 7 a.m.? If we have a good walk round the reservoirs there we should be able get you quite a few more species – maybe even rock pipit, red-breasted merganser and ring ouzel?’
Nearly all this was music to my ears. I’d never even heard of these mythical sounding birds. But 7 a.m. in east London? After a late night in Derby? Is that ever wise? I emailed back to say I was incredibly grateful but couldn’t really make it before 8 a.m., if that was OK. David agreed and I managed to race back from the Midlands and slip into bed by 2 a.m.
My alarm went off at 6.45 a.m. I didn’t even stir. Being a comedian (and naturally lazy), I’m not used to getting up much before 9 a.m. Being a journalist (and naturally far more hard working) Rachel is, and so even at the weekends her body clock will often wake her ridiculously early. So, at 7.30 a.m. she dug me in the ribs, I looked at my watch, swore very quietly and ran out to the car. Thankfully at that time on a Sunday morning most other people aren’t rushing out to their nearest bird reserve, so the roads were quiet and I arrived just two minutes late, setting off only one speed camera on the way.
I’d never met a stranger from the internet at 8 a.m. by a reservoir in east London before. And if I do happen to again, I doubt they’d be as good company as David. He was instantly disarming, intelligent, funny, calm, self-deprecating (‘It’s a stupid hobby really,’ he said within the first hour. ‘You spend a lot of time standing still and looking at bushes!’). But above all, he was extremely knowledgeable on the subject of birds.3 After a hearty handshake and the briefest of acknowledgements that this was a little odd, his first words were, ‘Have you got a redstart yet?’ Of course I hadn’t, but I did recognise that he was referring to a species of bird, and so looked as excited as I could at that time of day.
‘Come on then, there’s one over here.’
Sure enough, after ten minutes of patient waiting on a path just down from the carpark, we heard a few sharp whistles from a bush, then saw a small black and red thrush burst up and out into the open. I’d decided to say, ‘Yes, I saw it’, whether or not I set eyes on the thing, but it sat obligingly on a branch for at least ten seconds. ‘Brilliant,’ I said. One new bird in the first few minutes, this could be quite a trip.
David had given me no hint as to how long we’d be out. Rachel was meeting friends for lunch, so I had no particular deadline, but I assumed I’d be back in time for the lunchtime kick-off in the Premiership. None of my outings with Duncton or Mat had lasted more than a couple of hours. So when I looked at my watch on our eventual return to the carpark I couldn’t believe that we’d spent more than six hours walking round the urban waterscape.
The birds had performed well: dinosaur-like cormorants resting on dead trees with the skeleton of a waterworks looming up behind them, meadow pipits, chiffchaffs and wheatears dancing round just yards away from us, and several green woodpeckers swooping and diving as we crossed bridges, ducked under tunnels and circumnavigated endless pools of water. My personal favourite was a grey wagtail, pottering about by the water’s edge. Another bird with a name that doesn’t really do it justice, it had a yellow chest brighter than anything I’d seen in the zoo and seemed entirely out of place in this metropolitan environment.
David tried to teach me about the birdsongs we (well, he) could hear. ‘That’s a little grebe singing there,’ he whispered, ‘they always have that on the soundtrack to jungle films. I hear it and say, “That’s a little grebe! What’s that doing in the jungle?” It really annoys me!’
And this was the most amazing thing about the trip for me. There wasn’t one awkward moment during the entire morning. I’m normally fairly bad in social situations, even with people I’ve known for years or am related to. The whole business of interaction, whether it be looking someone in the eye, shaking their hand or delivering a baby, I just find difficult. I suppose I’m too self-conscious. But with David leading the way, I was more than happy to walk at his side, chatting sometimes, silent at others, just birdwatching.
After reading my message on the forum David had Googled me to see if I was who I said I was and was intrigued at the idea of a comedian observing his hobby. He wondered how I’d make it funny. I did too. He apologised for not being the geeky caricature people might expect and which would, of course, be an easier target for comedy. But I was glad to have discovered a different sort of birdwatcher. After all, Duncton may be a typical dad in many ways, but he’s not the stereotypical twitcher lazily alluded to in the media during the American robin furore the week before. Birdwatchers aren’t all the same, they don’t all wear anoraks and they’re not all loners. In fact, I’d say I was definitely more socially awkward than any of the bird lovers I had the pleasure to spend time with over the year, and I’ve probably got a similar amount of waterproof clothing.
Having been interested in birds as a boy, David was in bands most of his adult life, releasing seven albums before calling it quits and heading off in a different direction.
This desolate collection of manmade lakes was David’s patch. He came here three times a week to do a couple of circuits and keep an eye on what was coming and going. Today he couldn’t believe we’d missed common sandpiper, stock dove and willow warbler. ‘Well, I’ll just have to come back for them,’ I said.
Although exhausted by the end of the trip, I was also exhilarated. To me, walking almost non-stop for that long represents an expedition, a hike, a dedicated ramble. To David, this was a normal birding outing – except it started a bit later than usual. By the time we’d reached my car I’d learned a lot and seen eight new species, a modest but welcome haul. More than anything, though, I felt considerably closer to the birdwatcher breed than ever before.
And just to turn it into the perfect in
ternet date, we found the nearest watering hole and carried on nattering away. I asked naive questions about birds, David gave me answers.
‘So why are there so many seagulls so far from the sea?’ I asked.
‘Good question,’ he replied patiently. ‘Seagull is a misleading name. Gulls can live near any sort of water, a lake, a river, an estuary or the sea. But they’re also scavengers and can survive just as easily by a rubbish tip as on the beach. Black-headed gulls are often found on farms, following farmers as they plough their fields and churn up worms.’
‘And what’s the best way to find all these birds?’
‘I’d say you should join something called Birdguides. They’ll text you with rare sightings. So next time there’s an American robin around you can get there in time. You’ll be on call twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Like a doctor or a fireman.’4
‘A bit like that, yes.’
‘And where do Mandarin ducks come from?’
‘Good question. Birders tend to be quite snobbish about them as a species because they were introduced from China, so they’re not native birds. But a fossilised Mandarin duck from about 40,000 years ago was recently dug up here in Britain so they were actually here first.’
‘Good answer.’
That’s the sort of trivia that could grace any pub.
It was probably only the fact that I was driving which prevented us staying in the pub all day. As we said goodbye I thanked him a little too profusely. I didn’t want to say, ‘Do you want to see me again?’ Thankfully another warm handshake and a ‘That was a good morning,’ from David reassured me that this might not just be a one-off.
5 April
One thing the trip round Tottenham Hale taught me was that birds can thrive even in the bleakest of landscapes. I still hadn’t learned that getting up early is the best way to see them though, so at 10 a.m., with a newspaper, a cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich on the passenger seat beside me, I pulled up for the second time beside The Welsh Harp.
Marching round the reservoir more purposefully this time, I passed the first hide, still locked, only to be denied access to the second one too. The axed door had been bolted shut with some basic plank and nail carpentry and when I squeezed my head through a hole in the wall to have a closer look I saw that everything, splinters, bolts, even the two stools, had been removed. Not to be thwarted, I perched on a log at the water’s edge and tucked into my breakfast, still not quite able to shake off the feeling that something bad was going to leap out at me from either the water or the woods.
Watching the coots and swans float serenely by, I relaxed. After thirty minutes I’d finished my supplies and hadn’t seen any new birds. I began to get restless. I was pleased to be able to identify everything out on the water, but was, frankly, a bit bored. I thought I’d seen some sort of bird of prey out on the horizon but without David to identify it, it could have been anything. I had a look at the newspaper, but since a dead swan apparently carrying the deadly avian flu virus had been discovered in the village of Cellardyke in Scotland the day before, there wasn’t much to cheer a jaded novice birdwatcher.5 Over in east London we’d kept moving and the hours had flown by, so I resolved to circumnavigate the lake.
Walking round The Welsh Harp wasn’t easy. After twenty minutes my path came to a dead end and I had to decide whether to climb a fence into unmarked territory, cross a bridge into what was clearly private industrial property or turn back. Twenty minutes, I reasoned, is too long a time to walk in one direction to then just turn back at the first obstacle, so I clumsily hurdled the fence (no one was watching but I was embarrassed at how ineptly I got over it) and found myself in a boggy forest. With the lake to my right, I waded ankle-deep in mud, clambering over sloping trees. For the first hour, I thoroughly enjoyed my ramble. I remembered how we would explore for whole days as kids, not caring about dirt or the time. When I finally emerged from this municipal Narnia, I was even closer to Wembley, and again I felt a childlike excitement as I looked up at the steep walls of the stadium and could almost hear the rumbling of a match day within.
A couple of hours later, as I staggered along the final stretch back to my car, I passed a sign that told me I was now on part of the ‘Capital Ring’, a walking route which circles the whole of London. With the end now in sight, a mere three hours after setting off from my log, doing the ‘Capital Ring’ seemed like a very good idea. As soon as I got home I looked it up online and saw that I’d been on the section between Greenford, the most westerly point, and South Kenton. If I’d kept going I’d have walked through Highgate, Finsbury Park and Hackney, before crossing the river at Woolwich, turning back east again at Grove Park, stomping through Crystal Palace, Streatham Common and Wimbledon Park before crossing back north of the river at Richmond and heading round through Southall, back to where I started. It was only seventy-five miles long. How satisfying would it be to circumnavigate London on foot? Once I’ve done this birdwatching year, I thought, I’ll do that.
6 April
As well as binoculars and a coconut, Duncton had given me a book called The Birdwatcher’s Yearbook and Diary 2006 in a gesture of support. Not, as you can tell by the positioning of the apostrophe, a homemade album featuring the faces of all that year’s birdwatchers with wacky comments like ‘Most likely to mistake a buzzard for a bustard’, but an all-purpose log book for the everyday birder. According to the blurb on the back of the book, it’s an ‘indispensable companion’, ‘the essential work of reference for birdwatchers’ and is ‘now in its 26th great year.’ I couldn’t help thinking that the book was better than me. A good friend, crucial for birders and a year younger, it had everything! Including a huge section on all the nature reserves around the UK, which I could use to pick spots near my gigs. I used it to locate the nearest reserve to a forthcoming gig in Nottingham, settling upon Wollaton Park, located five miles west of Nottingham and home, apparently, to spotted flycatchers, the occasional smew6 and all three species of woodpecker: lesser spotted, great spotted and green.
The park is attached to Wollaton Hall, one of the finest Elizabethan houses in England. I’d arrived a good few hours before the gig so parked up and wandered off aimlessly into the woods. I’d love to have a garden with woods.
Instantly there was birdsong all around me. Whenever one sounded close I stopped, waited, then had a look through my binoculars to see … a great tit. Every time. There were hundreds of them, teasing me with their cheerful calls and flashing wings. I soon got frustrated and headed over to a lake (I’d also love to have a garden with a lake) only to find a load of mallards, some Canada geese and a goldeneye – not my first, but always nice to see a duck that is also a James Bond film.7
Where were these flycatchers and woodpeckers? Where was the occasional smew? How occasional was it? Just at Christmas? There were no helpful signs or hides; I really was just moseying around the grounds. I need focus, I thought, had a look at the lake, and decided I should probably walk round it.
Having successfully avoided interaction with a handful of youths at the far end of the water, I began to enjoy myself. Yet again I hadn’t seen any new birds, but I was out and about in Nottinghamshire, strolling round a country house instead of leaving late and getting stuck on the M1. Then, about four-fifths of the way round the lake, I heard a click in the trees beside me, definitely different to the ‘ping ping’ of the great tits and too high to be my own feet stepping on a twig. I looked up, raised my binoculars and immediately clapped eyes on a spotted woodpecker – my first for the year! I was inordinately excited. I had found one of the key birds for this site. It started drizzling as I watched the bird obligingly peck away at the tree then hop to a different part of the trunk, but I barely noticed. It was like the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral, only without an American woman. This was just me and my woodpecker.
Leafing through the guide, I was slightly taken aback to see that there were three types of spotted woodpecker: the great, the middle and the
lesser varieties. The middle spotted woodpecker, it said, is never found in the UK, so was this the lesser or the great? They both looked pretty similar except, unsurprisingly, there is less of the lesser than the great. But from where I was standing I couldn’t really say for sure if this one was twelve or twenty-two centimetres. Without a ruler, I just couldn’t tell for sure. Maybe nature reserves should hang rulers from the branches, I thought to myself.
I looked closer at the book and the bird, as if playing some sort of outdoors spot-the-difference competition. I noticed that my one didn’t have any red on its belly. Ha! I thought, just as the birders among you will have, It’s a lesser spotted woodpecker! For as well as the red crown that both birds share, the more common great spotted woodpecker has a bright red tinge to what the guide calls its ‘vent’. This one didn’t. I scribbled down these details in my now soggy notebook and raced back to the car. I’d got a very hard woodpecker – a lesser spotted woodpecker!
At least I had managed to convince myself that I’d seen a lesser spotted woodpecker. Later that week I told both Duncton and David the good news and on each occasion was greeted with guarded congratulations. ‘Well done,’ they each said. ‘You know they really are quite hard to find.’ Neither of them had seen a lesser spotted woodpecker so far that year. In fact Duncton wouldn’t see one at any stage of his Big Year. I began to doubt myself. Had it been smaller than a great spotted woodpecker? Maybe, but I couldn’t say for sure. Was there definitely no red on its belly? Well, it was raining and my binoculars aren’t great; again, I couldn’t say without a doubt. But at the time I was certain it was a lesser. I just didn’t know then quite how hard to find they are. Could I include it in my total? Well, I thought, I’ll stick it on my list but won’t tell the recorder.8 That way if I am wrong I’m only lying to myself. And Duncton. I could cope with that.