by Alex Horne
My humiliation wasn’t yet complete. I shuffled onto the nearest bench, and discovered the softest, warmest seat beneath what in most other hides would be my chilly posterior. ‘This is lovely,’ I said involuntarily, and a bit too loudly.
‘Thank you,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m Andrew. Are you Alex?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and immediately regretted it.
‘Yes, well I read your note on the website, I’m sorry you had such a difficult time here with your brother. The thing is we’ve had so many problems with vandalism that this hide is often locked. But just give me a call any time and you can come and pick up the key. Now then, about your challenge, how can we help you?’
I couldn’t believe I’d been so rash and haughty the first time round. This was the typical novice behaviour I’d been hoping to avoid. I’d become that person watching a football match and saying all the wrong things. But Andrew was so nice that I still felt completely welcome in the small wooden hut he spent his free time overseeing, and which I’d slagged off on the website he also maintained. I was an awful person.
I soon underlined my utter ignorance by failing to recognise some ruddy ducks as we looked out at the reservoir; ‘So those out there with the black and white heads, those are shelducks aren’t they?’ I said, expecting a nod of confirmation and approval.
‘No, those are ruddies,’ came the tolerant reply. I shrank a bit more into my cushioned bench. This was stuff Mat and Duncton had already tried to teach me, but which hadn’t sunk in. This was my Faking It failure.
After he’d patiently explained to me what every bird out on the water was, Andrew suggested a walk round the north side of the reservoir. By now the two other followers had arrived (another first time year lister and an Australian birdwatcher on his first trip to the UK) and the four of us made slow but cheerful progress round the water’s edge. Every few steps Andrew would stop and tell us why that rattling call on the left was a wren or why that shrill laugh above us was a green woodpecker. We all frantically scribbled down notes like students on their first day at university. As with Duncton and David before, I was impressed by his expertise, in awe of his nous and just a little bit worried about how much I still had to learn. Luckily, as we roamed through playing fields, hedgerows, pathways and marshland he managed to find us a great spotted woodpecker,20 common terns, two whitethroats and a mistle thrush, so while my confidence was shrinking, my list was swelling.
At the northern end of the reservoir we sat down in a sort of half-hide structure and looked out at a smaller pool. This particular shelter consisted of a long bench in front of a high narrow table surrounded on three sides by low wooden walls. There was no roof or door. Unfortunately this more open arrangement meant it had been mercilessly daubed by gleeful graffiti artists, who’d painted the words SEX HUT on the outside. Each letter was bright yellow, at least a foot high and positioned in such a way that from a distance an observer would read the words and see our four heads at about the same time. Oblivious to this regrettable subtitle, it was here that we spotted our best bird of the morning. Just as we thought we’d noted down everything on offer, a blue flash streaked across the water.
‘Kingfisher,’ said two voices at once. Andrew looked at me.
‘You saw it then?’ he asked.
‘That was brilliant!’ I grinned.
Back in Midhurst a couple of decades before, Mat and Duncton had spotted the same bird at the pond near our house. I’d missed it – it was just too quick – and the two of them went on about it for what felt like years afterwards. Every time I passed the spot from then on, I’d stop to see if I could find one too. I felt like I’d missed out on something special. But I never did see one by myself. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. ‘A blue flash,’ is what they kept saying. How can you look for a blue flash?
But now, at last, I’d got my kingfisher, and I could finally understand why Mat and Duncton had gone on about that bloody blue flashy bird for so long.
Pathetically weak with hunger, I left the other three to their own devices soon after midday, but only after one final burst of excitement. On the way back round to the Heron Hide Andrew stopped still for even longer than usual then became quite animated.
‘There it is,’ he cried, ‘the first cuckoo of the year!’
As he was looking down at the ground at the time, the three of us followed his gaze, expecting to see a baby cuckoo crawling through the grass. In fact, of course, he was listening out for its familiar eponymous call and before long we all heard it, loud and clear, and tore off through the woods in a valiant attempt to pin it down.
Unsurprisingly, we scared it off. But thirty minutes later, as I sank my teeth into a well-deserved sausage sandwich at the nearby Railway Café, I was already looking forward to returning to the reservoir, and ‘working it’ by myself. I was sure I now had at least some of the skills needed to find these birds on my own.
18 April
With increasing regularity, I was finding excuses not to spend my free time writing comedy but instead delving deeper into Duncton’s hobby. By now I’d decided to tell his story in one way or another at some point, and told myself that any time spent ‘researching’ birdwatching was therefore valuable work. The delivery of Bill Oddie’s book Gripping Yarns: Tales of Birds and Birding, meant this particular morning passed with me greedily gobbling up his stories, most of which were taken from a column he wrote for Birdwatch magazine. David had recommended I read it to see how Britain’s most famous birdwatching comedian (well, most famous birdwatcher, really) talks about his hobby. It was immediately obvious just how dedicated a birdman he is. Like Duncton, he’d grown up a birdwatcher. His life has been about birds. The radio and TV programmes he made were partly opportunities to go birding. It dawned on me once more just how deep the birdwatching well is; how much birdwatchers know and how much time they quietly spend for the good of their hobby. I now worried that any sort of comedy show, or indeed book, on the subject might do them and Duncton a disservice. I was also worried that I wouldn’t even scratch the surface of the world of the birdwatcher in one year.
Just as I was about to drive off to a gig up in Coventry, Duncton phoned in a particularly excitable state:
‘You know that golden oriole I was telling you about,’ he began. No ‘Hello,’ ‘Are you there?’ or ‘How are you?’ for me any more.
‘Yes Duncton,’ I replied, conscious that I was already running late. The day before, in the latest of what were fast becoming daily phone calls, he’d told me that a magnificent golden oriole had been spotted in Pulborough.
‘Well, Peter (his occasional birdwatching and former medical partner mentioned in January21) and I headed over to Coldwaltham Brooks this morning. It was a beautiful morning – how was it with you?’
‘Fine, Duncton. Carry on.’
‘Right. Well, we’d walked a few steps along the path when I saw it, perched at the top of a tree. Brilliant! A couple of minutes later it flew off. A couple of minutes after that Bernie and Dave came along and missed it altogether!’
‘Bernie and Dave?’
‘You know, Bernie and Dave – two of Sussex’s top birders! They did get it later that day but for a while there we were the only ones who’d seen it!’
I’d rarely heard him so worked up by anything other than Tottenham before. Of course I felt a little jealous that he’d got another rare bird, without, it appeared, even trying. But I liked being in on the joke and being able to share his Schadenfreude.
19 April
In case you hadn’t already noticed, the stand-up comedy circuit is really no such thing. The word ‘circuit’ comes from the Latin circuitus, meaning ‘a going around’, from where we also get the word ‘circumference’. I did a circuit round Brent Reservoir. David and I did a circuit of Walthamstow Reservoirs.
Travelling on the stand-up comedy circuit, however, involves jagged trips criss-crossing the country, back and forth. I would say it’s an entirely random route, but the gi
gs often seem to be placed in such an awkward fashion that it almost looks planned. It’s as if the comedy lords want to maximise the ‘a funny thing happened to me on the way to the theatre’ potential.
The way it works is that until a comedian reaches a certain critical mass, when his or her name alone can command an audience, you go wherever they will have you. If you’re lucky you can plan a few gigs in a row in the northeast, or a weekend of shows in the west, but it’s not usually possible to pick and choose where you play. Almost every town hosts a comedy night at least once a month nowadays, and you have to not mind travelling sideways if you want to climb the comedy ladder.
At the beginning of the month my agent phoned to let me know what gigs I had coming up. Revealing this particular week’s treats with his customary indifference, he said, ‘So, you’ve got Luton on Tuesday, Bahrain Wednesday and Gloucester on Thursday.’
I was scribbling down the details.
‘So, Luton, fine, that’s not too far. Erm, Bar Rain – is that in London?’ I asked, assuming it was some new trendy, weather-themed pub.
‘No, Bahrain, in the Middle East,’ he barked.
‘Jolly good,’ I said. ‘Then Gloucester Town Hall on the Thursday – that’s not too bad then.’
As mentioned earlier, you can do a comedy show in almost every country as well as every county. Normally you’d get to stay at least forty-eight hours in the place before heading on to the next location, but this time I was meant to fly into Bahrain on the morning of the gig, have an afternoon seeing the sights, then do the show and head straight back to the airport to catch a plane home that night.
‘Actually, that’s ridiculous,’ I said, in a rare show of defiance. ‘That’s so bad for the environment, I just can’t do it.’
Instead, I cancelled the Gloucester show and booked myself into the Bahraini hotel for an extra couple of nights with the aim of hiring a car and exploring. It might not have been any better for the environment (in fact, it was definitely worse for the environment as I was now flying and hiring a car) but on some strange level it felt slightly more ethical.
One of the great things about birdwatching, Duncton once told me, is that you can do it anywhere and everywhere. On every trip abroad you’ll see different things. No matter how long the history or how great the culture of the country you are visiting, there will be birds. For me this was particularly relevant, because despite the occasional accusation that I am ‘cultured’ and ‘intelligent’, I’m actually very bad at going to museums and art galleries. I prefer to wander about a bit and perhaps have a drink in a café. So I was looking forward to wandering about a bit in Bahrain with extra justification.
After almost a third of the year spent thinking about birds every day, it was they that first struck me when disembarking the plane at Bahrain International Airport. Not the dry heat or austere landscape, but the little brown jobs, buzzing around the tarmac. What are they? I thought, immediately panicking. Is that still a chaffinch? Do they have wrens over here? Why isn’t anyone manning the information desk?
Before leaving I’d managed to find the name and number of a British ex-pat birdwatcher, Howard, whom I hoped would be able to answer these questions, but as he wasn’t answering his phone when we reached the hotel, I headed out instead to the local souk with Barry, one of my fellow comedians. I can deal with markets on trips abroad. I like seeing what other people buy and sell, I enjoy the hustle and bustle, it’s often those sights and smells that stay with me long after I’ve gone home. But here in downtown Manama, I couldn’t quite throw myself into the experience. I didn’t feel like bartering with a bloke over a magnet. I wasn’t tempted by the misspelt T-shirts or trick packets of chewing gum. I just couldn’t stop thinking about birds.
Perhaps partly because the pavements were littered with scraps of takeaway food, there were birds everywhere. Hundreds of what I presumed were the same feral pigeons as in London hopped in and out of the traffic, miraculously cheating death every time; tiny dunnocks bounced up and down from the bare trees that lined the pavements; and two ominous magpie-type birds seemed to follow us wherever we went. Emerging from a twisted alleyway, they’d be there, on a roof, staring down at us. Doubling back on ourselves, returning to a stall so that Barry could buy a mosque-shaped alarm clock, we’d catch sight of them again, poking about in the overflowing bins.
I had brought with me A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Israel and the Middle East that I’d got for the Israel trip later in the year, but it was nowhere near as full or as detailed as Mat’s trusty Collins. What were these spy-like birds?
I tried calling Howard again. Still no luck. I went into the hotel bookshop22 and asked if they stocked any books on birds. The bookseller said no. I asked if he knew where I could watch birds.
‘Watch birds?’ he asked me right back.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I know where you can buy them from though. There’s a stall in the middle of the souk, if you go now they should still be open …’
I thanked him for his advice and tried reception instead. ‘Do you know if anyone offers birdwatching trips?’ I enquired.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Great!’ I shouted.
‘I know that no one offers birdwatching trips round here,’ she continued. ‘I think you should go to the zoo.’
I thanked her for her advice and went for a swim. While struggling with the backstroke I saw the two sneaky magpie-type birds watching me again. ‘Who are you?’ I mouthed. ‘Mag-spies’ would have to do for now.
The gig itself was unremarkable. About fifty people had turned up to the hotel’s penthouse bar, not really enough to justify the 3,000-mile, seven-hour flight, but they were nice enough. It was an average sort of a gig, but I did meet a man who called himself Krazy Ken (yes, with both those Ks) who suggested I drive as far south as possible if I wanted to see the best birds. That was all I needed to know.
After the show, the other comics went straight back to the airport as planned and I very nearly had a sensible early night. Unfortunately, Ken lived up to his name and insisted we go out for ‘a drink or two’.
‘I thought you couldn’t drink here,’ I protested.
‘You can’t,’ he winked, ‘but I do.’
But despite what turned out to be an expensive and quite shouty pub crawl, I was still the first guest at breakfast the next morning. I felt extremely proud of myself and ate pretty much everything on offer at the enormous buffet, including typical British fry-up fare, a lot of white cheese and a bowl of meat soup made from boiled sheep heads. I was even canny enough to stuff my pockets with bananas, bottles of water, cakes and doughnuts before staggering out. I was going birding!
Amazingly, the hotel’s car hire company were more than happy for me to borrow one of their vehicles, despite the fact that I’d forgotten to pack my driver’s licence.
‘We’ll take your passport and twenty pounds,’ they said.
‘And I’ll take your car,’ I agreed. It seemed like a fair swap.
So, at exactly 9 a.m., I edged out into Bahrain’s rush-hour traffic in a fully airconditioned Chrysler. It was enormous. It was left-hand drive. It was an automatic. I had never driven anything like it in my life, and I was hungover. Everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road, I had a rudimentary road map from reception; this was brilliant.
Doing my best to ignore all birds and concentrate on the road and the other cars for the first half-hour at least, I gradually got the hang of Bahraini driving. I used my horn a lot more than my indicators. Having mastered basic driving, I then started paying some attention to the road signs and somehow managed to find my way onto the southbound Hawar Highway. I was off. Outside its capital Manama, Bahrain’s road system is a simple one.
Within another thirty minutes, all traces of the city were lost in the dust behind me. I raced along, Arabic pop music bursting out of the stereo, the Persian Gulf to my left, the desert that takes up over ninety per cent of
the country to my right. I’d never been anywhere like this before. And to think, without birdwatching, I’d be home in London preparing for a trip down to the west country right now.
A flock of somethings landed on the beach beside me, so I pulled up on the sand, got out of the car and sat on the bonnet with my binoculars. By this point I’d virtually given up on my inferior guide book, so I sketched each of the species as carefully as possible in my notebook, taking care not to drip too much sweat onto its pages. The sun was already high and incredibly fierce, not great for my blistering hangover.
Jumping back in the car for air, I kept driving south. Krazy Ken had assured me I’d find flamingos somewhere down here. I didn’t. I found flaming nothing. Actually, what I did discover was a compound called Jaww Prison that loomed out of the desert, making me screech my car to a halt. This really was quite a jail. Have a look on Google Maps if you want to see just how remote it is. The highway petered out symbolically on the other side of the dispiriting buildings. This was the end of the road. I wondered if the inmates felt envy or were inspired by the sight of the birds outside their cells.
I had no option but to head north again so aimed for Askar, the only village nearby that was marked on my map. I’d only seen three or four vehicles since leaving Manama and this place was as eerily empty as the desert plains themselves. At one point I left the car by the side of the road to explore some mangroves, but after drawing shaky pictures of some seabirds I got so freaked out by the creaks and shadows of the trees that I ended up running back into my comforting Chrysler, locking the doors and peering at the birds through the window instead.
Meandering round the village I passed the odd immaculate mansion but mainly rubbly shacks, half-built concrete homes, and battered cars. The whole place looked like it was suffering from heatstroke. The odd person I passed peered at me quizzically but for the most part I glided around alone in what felt like a post-apocalyptic daydream.