by Alex Horne
At one end of the town I found an open sandy area with one rusty goalpost, a few boulders and an alarming amount of broken glass. In the distance I could just make out a small group of youths, huddled together under a makeshift shelter, half-heartedly prodding a fire. I assumed they were cooking. There really wasn’t any need for any more heat.
Just in front of them I noticed a different bird to anything else I’d seen that day. A bird of prey. A kestrel, I thought. No, hang on – I checked my book – it’s much more likely to be a lesser kestrel over here. No … wait … two, three, four, five lesser kestrels! All perched obligingly between me and the young chefs. Ah ha! I smiled. I’ve found you!
Just as I was congratulating myself, the nearest of the birds took off. I followed its flight through my binoculars and was admiring its broad, rufous back when it disappeared. One second it was there, the next it was gone. I waved my binoculars round wildly but it really was nowhere to be seen. Only when I lowered them was the grim truth revealed. The kestrel was now floundering around on the ground, just yards from where it took off. Looking closer, I saw that its legs were tangled up in some sort of twine which led all the way back to the perch. It was a prisoner on a leash. When it tried to fly off the string snapped it back like a kite.
A quick check showed that the other four were also tied up in the same manner. They all sat there glumly, apparently aware of the futility of flight. The lads nearby, I realised, were in charge. They were the captors.
I got back in my car and tried to think. What on earth should I do? The burgeoning birdwatcher inside me felt outraged. These birds should be free! How dare they tie up those magnificent birds of prey! It’s disgusting! It was like my ‘zoos are evil’ phase all over again.
The competitive side of me was similarly incensed. I’ve come all this way, only to see birds that don’t count on my list because some truant kids have tied them up! They’re not pets! They shouldn’t be captives!
But then the cowardly, perhaps reasonable, side of me stepped in. Well, there’s not much you can do. There are five of them and one of you. And anyway, who are you to say what these people can or can’t do? Your aunt keeps Japanese chickens, Duncton used to take you to falconry shows, is this any different?
As this debate raged on inside my still throbbing head, my attention was caught by another bird, much brighter, much closer and clearly much freer, drifting over a fence behind the car and alighting on a branch not far away. I had all the time in the world to appreciate its fine turquoise chest, brilliant yellow head and olive wings. This was the first burst of colour I’d seen in the whole of Bahrain.
I flicked through the guide and immediately found its match. This was a bee-eater, my most exotic bird so far and one which would definitely count for my list. I’d found it all by myself here, in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles off the beaten track.23
Once I’d jotted down its particulars and got my fill of its feathers, I got out of the car and wandered over to where the bee-eater had emerged. It was midday now and about 400° Celsius. The land around me looked ravaged to an almost biblical degree. Broken trees, barbed wire (did they have that in the Bible?), one rotting carcass of a cow and one skeleton of a cow licked clean by flies. But amongst this desolation I found not only two more vibrant bee-eaters but a fine crested lark. Another new Middle Eastern bird, this one distinguished by its punk-like haircut. Following its jumpy flight, my eyes then fell on yet another pair of magspies! As far as I was concerned, this was the same pair of magspies that had been stalking me in the city centre! They really were quite creepy. And just as I was about to beg them to leave me alone, I heard a strange wail from somewhere in the distance.
‘Helloooo! Helloooooo!’
The birds took off and I looked round. It was the lads with the fire and the kestrels, beckoning me over. Through my binoculars I could see that they were all grinning. Phew. But in a slightly manic way. I had three choices: stay with the evil magspy birds, get back in the Chrysler and spend another few hours by myself or go and see what the young bird jailors wanted.
I gritted my teeth, grabbed my microphone from the car and walked over. At least if they tied me up too I’d get it on tape.
It took what seemed like hours to cross the deadly football pitch and I very nearly turned back twice. It was only when I saw that they couldn’t have been more than twelve years old that I resolved to keep going. Maybe I’d even set the birds free …
They greeted me like I greet my brothers, with a slightly awkward wave, a big smile and a small ‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ I said, and glanced around. The oldest-looking boy was proudly clutching yet another kestrel. A couple of the others were tending to the fire. One stood up and offered me some food.
‘No thanks,’ I said, rubbing my stomach. ‘I’m full.’ I was actually pretty hungry by now, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t offering me barbecued kestrel.
After a stilted exchange in which it quickly became clear that neither of us could understand the other’s language, I pointed to the bird and did a flapping sort of motion. This got them all quite excited. One of them scrabbled around in a sack beside them and pulled out their homemade kestrel trap: a shoe-box sized cage, with a live mouse darting round inside just below some twisted wire meshing. Gesticulating carefully now, they showed me how the kestrel would swoop down at the mouse and become entangled in the web like a fly in a spiderweb. Their mimes were tremendous. In some parallel world the six of us could be having a competitive game of charades in a draughty living room.
I knew by now there was no way I was going to liberate the birds. I wasn’t brave enough, but also, perversely, it just didn’t seem right. From the boys’ point of view, this was a great diplomatic moment. They’d been fine ambassadors for their country. They had invited me over, offered me food and shared their ancient bird-trapping secrets. They had been utterly hospitable when they could quite easily have stabbed me and nicked the car.
They mimed brilliantly to suggest I took a photo. I showed them my binoculars in an attempt to demonstrate that I didn’t have a camera. They weren’t very impressed. Eventually it seemed like the right time to leave, and I strolled back to the car, passing the kestrels on the way, unable to look them in the eye.
Back in the now familiar surroundings of my Chrysler I headed west and managed to cross the whole of the narrow country in an hour or so. I tried not to think about the kestrels. On the other coast, facing the Gulf of Bahrain, I arrived quite by accident at a beach resort called Al Jazair where instead of birds, I found thousands of sunbathers, nearly all of whom were entirely covered up by long black or white robes. Apart from the dress code it was just like being at Blackpool, kids jumping in and out of the waves, mothers worrying, grannies scoffing ice cream. I ate what was left of my withered packed lunch and admired the view.
By the time I returned the car to the hotel that evening, I’d been driving for over eight hours. Most of the time it was just me, the Chrysler and my favourite Arabic radio station, cruising around, ignoring signs for Saudi Arabia, occasionally stopping to stare at and sketch a bird. Unlike the lesser kestrels, I felt incredibly liberated. I felt like I was in a film. Not a very exciting film, admittedly, some sort of arty affair about a man birdwatching on his own in Bahrain, but a film nevertheless. I wondered if this was how David felt when touring with his band.
Going through my list with David a few weeks later he allowed me sixteen new species for the trip including broad-billed sandpiper, Kentish plover, purple heron and an Indian house crow, and I was pleased with myself. When I showed him my drawings of those most mysterious birds that had followed me round the country he instantly knew what they were too; ‘Myna birds! Oh yes, you would have seen a lot of them,’ he said. Apparently they were too common to include in the official bird guide. It just goes to show that no matter how ordinary the bird, it can mean something to someone.
25 April
The week that followed dragged interm
inably. I was pleased, of course, when Liverpool beat Chelsea 2–1 in the semi-finals of the FA Cup to reach their thirteenth final, but apart from that one jubilant afternoon I was restless. Britain seemed sterile compared to the wild side of Arabia that I’d discovered.
On the way to a gig in Stratford-upon-Avon, however, I nipped into a village called Stokenchurch and was able to sate my new hunger for a while at least.
Just off Junction 5 of the M40, where I’d seen that red kite at the very start of the year, Stokenchurch looks down on the Buckinghamshire valley where the birds of prey were reintroduced back in 1989. Since then, they’ve thrived, gobbling up the carrion that litters the motorway and becoming a regular sight in the skies over the nearby towns. Back in medieval times, the UK’s cities were home to thousands of the birds. Chaucer mentions a red kite in The Knight’s Tale, and in Coriolanus Shakespeare describes London as ‘the city of kites and crows’. In fact, the birds acted as a free cleaning service for the capital, devouring any KFC-style scraps Shakespeare’s contemporaries dropped. (If I was London mayor I’d think about setting up a similar system – Ken Livingstone employed Harris hawks to disperse the pigeons from Trafalgar Square in 2000.) But from being a constant traffic-warden-style fixture on every street corner, stripping carcasses and nicking bread from children, their numbers gradually shrank with increased hunting and egg-collecting, until a hundred years ago only a dozen pairs were left in Britain.
From the lookout in Stokenchurch I saw at least twenty of the birds, wheeling over the motorway, searching for the latest poor rabbit to become road kill for lunch. There are at least eighty pairs in this area alone now, the M40 providing more than enough food for the growing community. As I trudged along the tops of the chalky Chilterns at about the same height some of these birds were flying, they looked to me like pterodactyls. Everyone says they only eat dead animals, but if I had a cat or a baby I’d be worried.
29 April
As the length of this chapter attests, April had been a big month for me. While out in Bahrain I’d hit triple figures for the year, almost fifty of which I’d seen in the last three weeks alone. Duncton, meanwhile, had only added another eighteen. I was drawing close. I’d also gained my own personal guide in the form of David and was improving my basic birdwatching skills every day. The previous afternoon I’d been walking round Queen’s Park with Rachel and was delighted to point out some ring-necked parakeets in the trees above us. No one else had seen them, but my instincts were honed. I heard their squawks, I nailed them. In the petting zoo I was genuinely disgusted to hear a man tell his grandson that a goose was a swan. I was definitely getting closer to becoming a birder.
Rachel, in turn, seemed impressed by the parakeets (if a little embarrassed by my mortification in the petting zoo). ‘Oh wow,’ she said, ‘they’re amazing.’ Written down, that doesn’t look like the most emotional of reactions, but to me it meant a lot. My hard work was paying off – if I could impress my wife (well, it was the pretty parrots rather than me really, but I found them), maybe one day I’d be able to impress my kids.
Getting up at 6.30 a.m. was no longer the struggle it once was. Andrew, The Welsh Harp volunteer, had told me that today was the day the Brent birders were to carry out their annual bird count (a whole day of birdwatching designed to monitor the fluctuating numbers of birds in the area) and I arrived at the carpark at 7.15 a.m. Of course, I wasn’t the first to get there. Andrew and several others had been stationed in the hide since the sun rose soon after 5 a.m. But I was there and I was going to do my bit.
Actually, I had another long drive later that day so could only stay for a few hours and didn’t see a single bird that the real birders hadn’t spotted before I’d even got out of bed. But it still felt good to be part of the team. There was a buzz around Heron Hide, and by the time I’d left, the names of sixty-seven species had been chalked up on the board. Sixty-seven species! In a tiny patch of land in the northwest corner of London!
I managed to see thirty-two species during my brief stint, including four new ones for my total; common swifts at last, house and sand martins and a pair of the stock doves that David was so aggrieved to have missed earlier in the month. Tellingly, though, the overall Welsh Harp total only rose to seventy-three species by the close of play. Not a single new bird was added after 5 p.m. In fact, Andrew and co only saw six new species in the final ten hours.
This made me think three things. First, those people who waited patiently for those last ten hours represented the hardcore of birdwatchers, the season-ticket holders, the fans that stand and cheer at the end of the 0–0 draws. Second, most birdwatching is actually like those last ten hours. You don’t do a big bird count every day. You don’t see exciting birds every minute. And third, the birdwatching year is a lot like this particular birdwatching day. Most of the birds are seen in the first few months. Duncton was already slowing down. Few new birds will arrive after April. So had I peaked too early? Would I be able to cope with the rest of the year? I was now just ten birds behind Duncton, but were there enough left out there for me to close that gap? Or would my year and my story simply tail off …
1 The London Birders forum was predictably excited by this TV coverage of one of their birds. ‘Can’t believe they interviewed Mad Franko!’ wrote one member. Watching the piece a couple of times I tried to work out which of the interviewees this madman could be. I concluded that it was probably a bloke with a moustache, a vaguely Russian hat and a glint in his eye.
2 Two ironically dry sounding bodies of Israeli water, famous for their birds.
3 We’re still in touch now so when I say ‘was’ I should really say ‘is’.
4 More manly occupations.
5 This bird became the key player in the whole bird flu saga. Drivetime on BBC Radio 5 Live reported: ‘It’s thought this bird was a mute swan, probably of local origin, which suggests that it caught the virus from another bird, bringing it into the area … Officials in London held a high-level meeting of COBRA, that’s the Government’s crisis management committee, today …’ That’s a relief, I thought, COBRA are on to it! COBRA! How could the virus not be scared off by COBRA!
6 A lovely phrase. ‘Smew’ always sounds to me more like some sort of bodily noise than a bird – as do ‘scaup’, ‘shrike’, ‘quail’ and ‘chough’.
7 The carrion crow is the only bird that could also be a smutty British film.
8 Every county has a recorder who keeps track of who has seen what where, which in turn helps to support species and site conservation. Like the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, this is a typical example of the birdwatching community striving to work together for the interests of the bird.
9 One further note on ‘swallow’, the bird and verb. One of the world’s leading palindromists, an enigmatic American called J A Lindon, wrote the following sentence, using words rather than letters as his symmetrical building blocks: ‘You can cage a swallow, can’t you, but you can’t swallow a cage, can you.’ Like nearly all palindromes, it doesn’t have a particularly profound meaning, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
10 www.birdguides.com
11 It’s not a matter of huge importance, but it has struck me that if Batman ever decided to acquire a mobile phone in addition to his flashing red telephone, the name might be a problem. With his Batphone and Batcave, ‘Batmobile’ would be the obvious title, but that’s already taken and parked in the Batgarage. He could go for ‘Bathandphone’ but that might be read as ‘Bath-and-phone’, a dangerous combination. It can’t be easy being a superhero.
12 While Shoot was first published in 1969 and Match in 1979, the first issue of FourFourTwo didn’t come out till 1994 – a magazine statistic for you there.
13 First published in 1981 and 1986 respectively. Another mag stat!
14 1994. That’ll do, I think.
15 In their weighty tome (one of the only weighty tomes I’ve ever read) Birds Britannica, Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey write that according to Scot
tish folklore these swans were ‘viewed historically as good omens. Even today their arrival in northern Scotland or the outer isles evokes a sense of reassurance in autumn, and of loss with their going in spring’ rarely has folklore been so accurate.
16 Can a passer-by stop? If he does he is no longer a passer-by. Potential passer-by? Failed passer-by? I guess it doesn’t really matter.
17 Yes, a tremendous word. It’s from my Collins Bird Guide and means ‘being active at twilight or before sunrise’. Lovely.
18 Other birds whose names you can use as taunts include ‘little bustard’, ‘Kentish dotterel’ and ‘twite’.
19 As everyone knows, they aren’t actual ears. Just feathery tufts on the top of their heads. Yet another bad bird name. What you might not know, however, is the expression ‘Like an owl in an ivy bush.’ It comes from Francis Grose’s A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published in 1785 and is ‘said of a person with a large frizzled wig, or a woman whose hair is dressed á-la-blouze. Think Elton John in his prime.
20 One of the few birds whose name you might shout anyway when seeing it: ‘Great! (I) spotted woodpecker!’ Other examples include ‘Ruddy ducks’ or ‘Moorhen’ if you’ve seen a lot of ducks or hens, ‘Little Bustard’ if you missed one and ‘Bittern’ if you got too close.
21 Sorry, brackets and footnotes here. I think it’s worth noting that Peter’s hearing and Duncton’s eyesight are both about the same: below average. Together, therefore, they are greater than the sum of their parts. Often Duncton alone will hear a bird which Peter alone will then see. Like doubles partners in tennis, one will set the other up for a smash. They are a formidable team. I think they should high-five more.
22 Do most hotels have bookshops? I’ve only had a limited experience of hotel life but this did strike me as odd.
23 Bee-eaters are very occasionally seen in Britain. In 1920 a pair nesting in Scotland was described as one of the most surprising and unlikely events in the ornithological history of the British Isles. Sadly the birds’ efforts came to grief when a cat ate the male and a gardener imprisoned the female in a greenhouse until it died.