by Alex Horne
CHAPTER 5
Oddie Language
‘… we had very good views of this scarce vagrant, which neither of us had seen before. There were many people present, and I suddenly heard someone answer their mobile phone with the words, “Oh, hi Lee.” He turned to look directly at me and then answered a very obvious question by saying: “Yes, he is.” That was the moment I realised with great discomfort that I was being watched.’
– Adrian M Riley
Alex:
112 species
Duncton:
122 species
3 May
ON THE FIRST day of May I had to go to John Lewis to buy some blinds. When you work from home there are thousands of potential distractions. Tinkering about with the room you’re meant to be writing in is just one of them. It’s sometimes too dark, I thought, but it’s sometimes too light. I need adjustable blinds! So off I went, confident that as soon as I’d got the light right I’d be able to write much better jokes.
Riding an escalator up to the home furnishings department on the second floor, I passed Liam Gallagher de-escalating back to ladies fashion below. Our eyes met. The Oasis singer seemed to be saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m just going through ladies fashion to get some stationery from the ground floor on my way out – isn’t it busy in here? – and yes, I often procrastinate when I’m meant to be writing too,’ or something like that. I smiled what I thought was my friendliest smile. He half-smiled, half-scowled back and was gone.
Sitting on the tube on the way back to Kensal Green, a bag of blinds between my legs, I thought over the encounter, and realised there were similarities between celeb-spotting and birdwatching. Of course, you had to be at the right place at the right time, but you also needed to know what you were looking for and where they were most likely to be. Finding Liam Gallagher in John Lewis was a lucky yet fairly ordinary celebrity sighting. It wouldn’t have warranted more than a sentence in Heat magazine’s ‘Spotted’ column. In birding terms it was like seeing a green woodpecker – a nice story to tell your friends but not that impressive.
In fact, while focusing on my Oasis founding member, I may have missed several other celebrities because I wasn’t paying attention or didn’t know what they looked like. I don’t think I’d recognise anyone from Coronation Street, for example. And if I was really taking the task seriously, I would have gone somewhere like The Ivy restaurant and put the hours in, waiting patiently all night long, listening out for the tell-tale twitter of a Keira Knightley or an Eva Longoria.
But then again, maybe Liam Gallagher wasn’t such a bad spot. After all I had instantly known who he was. From the briefest glance I had registered his greyish face, stern demeanour, wiry frame and tight clothes and thought, ‘That’s Liam Gallagher.’ Because he wasn’t exhibiting the older, calmer features and shorter hair of his brother, I had known right away that it wasn’t a Noel Gallagher. Furthermore, I knew that a Liam Gallagher could be seen in the area because I’d seen him walking down Regent Street at about the same time the year before. I knew the features and habits of a Liam Gallagher.
Bearing this in mind, I decided to combine what skills I possessed as a celeb-spotter with my more pressing birdwatching challenge and spend at least some of the next month celebritybirdwatchingwatching. I would try to find one of the nation’s famous birdwatchers and watch him watching birds, in a bid both to see how he indulged in the hobby, and maybe pick up an extra bird or two in doing so.
The phrase ‘one of the nation’s famous birdwatchers’ needs qualification. There are clearly fewer famous birdwatchers than, say, footballers, chefs, even (and I think this is bizarre) gardeners.1 But the nation does have some famous birdwatchers. Liam’s contemporary, Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of Pulp, has often spoken of his love of the hobby. Indie bands British Sea Power and Guillemots and American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens (who is brilliant) have all made similar claims. In fact, Britain’s most famous pop star, Sir Paul McCartney, has admitted his own fondness for birds and even constructed his own personal hide on his estate. When The Beatles got going in the late 1950s, birdwatching was also just becoming enormous, as demonstrated by a gloriously named birding programme called Look2 directed by the same Peter Scott who opened the Sevenoaks sanctuary with Prince Philip, Jeffery Harrison and Duncton. In 1958 as many people tuned in to watch a Look episode (in black and white) on Europe’s woodpeckers as did that year’s FA Cup Final. Soon afterwards Macca wrote to Scott, asking, ‘Can I have the drawings of them ducks if you’re not doing anything with them?’, signifying an interest in the subject, if not any specific knowledge or basic grammar.
Almost certainly not the Peter Scott TV programme, but probably something similar.
Meanwhile, across the sea in Ireland, Van Morrison was busy capturing the romance of the hobby in his song ‘Coney Island’ with the line, ‘spent all day bird-watchin’, and the craic was good!’ Birdwatching can be cool.
It can also be political. In 1910 the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Rt Hon. Edward Grey, went on a diplomatic birdwatching trip to Hampshire with the recently retired American President, Theodore Roosevelt. On a single morning in the village of Itchen Abbas near Selborne in Hampshire they saw over forty species and strengthened Anglo-American relations. More recently, Kenneth Clarke has been our most notable birding politician and while it’s unlikely I’ll catch him stomping about the British countryside with ex-President Bush, it’s an entertaining thought.
The village of Selborne lies sixteen miles northwest of Midhurst, and is often described as the birthplace of birdwatching. While Cley nurtured the hobby, it was here in Hampshire that what we now think of as birdwatching first began.
The man responsible for this naissance was Gilbert White, who became curate of Selborne in 1784. Much like being a comedian, the job allowed him enough free time to explore the area, and in 1789 he published The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, a compilation of letters he’d written to two prominent zoologists, Thomas Pennant and the Hon. Daines Barrington, about the birds he observed. For the first time, he’d made the distinction between species such as the chiffchaff and willow warbler by watching and recording rather than shooting and stuffing, a practice that would eventually become the norm some 200 years later.
More well-known than all of those listed above, though, are the birdwatching comedians. Perhaps the introverted nature of the comic, combined with the freedom of the occupation, make birding the perfect pastime, maybe it sounds suitably eccentric, but whatever the reason, Eric Morecombe, Vic Reeves and Rory McGrath have all expressed their love of birds. And standing at the top of this comical pile, enjoying the best view, there’s the current Bird Idol, the one and only, inimitable, slightly irritable, Bill Oddie; a man with an extraordinary and often underestimated career. Having gained fame as one of The Goodies in the 1970s, he’s since become even better known for his books and programmes on birdwatching. He received an OBE for his service to wildlife conservation in 2003, and chose to attend the ceremony in his birding camouflage shirt. Madonna lusted after him in her 1992 song ‘Erotica’,3 and most importantly, perhaps, he voiced the part of Crow with unique ornithological insight in the 1980s cartoon Bananaman, which, alongside David Jason’s DangerMouse, was one of my favourite characters on TV as a kid.
Bill Oddie is the curmudgeonly figurehead of British birdwatching. When he first presented Britain Goes Wild, a record 3.4 million viewers tuned in. In much the same way that Delia Smith made a nation rush out and buy goose fat, so Oddie caused sales of nest boxes and bird baths to rocket, simply by saying how good he thought they were on his TV programme. Duncton told me he’d once arrived at the bird reserve in Minsmere to find an excited huddle of birders at the entrance. ‘Much around?’ he asked as usual.
‘Nah, not really,’ came the reply. ‘We did have Bill Oddie earlier though.’
‘Ah!’ cried Duncton. ‘Whereabouts?’
I too was determined to find my Oddie. He wo
uld be my golden eagle or, even better, the golden condor in The Mysterious Cities of Gold.4 I wouldn’t go so far as to stalk him, but I’d certainly do the next best thing: follow him, paparazzo-style. I swatted up on his significant characteristics: beard (naturally), glasses, portly physique, gaudy shirt beneath the more typical khaki waistcoat. I discovered his common habitat: Hampstead Heath.5 And so, at 7.30 a.m. I was striding across the heath, keeping my eyes out not just for birds, but for Bill. Looking back now, the idea of searching for an older man on a heath made famous by a certain incident involving George Michael does seem like an obvious comedy set-up, but I was taking this very seriously. I was going to get my man.
As soon as a human loomed into view, I raised my binoculars: Male? Yes. Stocky? Yes. Beard? No! Damn …
After three hours, my arms were tired and my notebook full. I’d seen a total of twenty dog walkers walking forty-two dogs (including one of those professionals holding ten dogs at once like a Maypole), two businessmen hurrying in opposite directions, one photographer, three people doing t’ai chi, several panting joggers, one hilarious speed-walker and one other birdwatcher. Who wasn’t Oddie. I’d also seen a great spotted woodpecker, a sparrowhawk, three types of tits (coal, blue and great), carrion crows, parakeets and a greenfinch. I’d had a fine morning ducking in and out of the sunlit woods, following obscure paths no one but Oddie would take, tracking him like a tribal warrior. I may not have found him, but I was learning to think like him and was convinced I was becoming a better birder in doing so. Psychologically, this was, perhaps, the oddest point of the year.
7 May
Bill Oddie’s name came up several times during my second birdwatching date with David. ‘Well, Oddie’s a proper birdwatcher,’ he said. ‘He knows his stuff.’ When I tested out my theory that birdwatchers were like the paparazzi, David recoiled as if I’d said they were like trainspotters. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘the paparazzi are a whole lot more pointless.’
This was to be my biggest birdwatching day of the year so far. I’d slipped into bed at 1.30 a.m. the night before, following a Friday night gig in Reading, slipped out again at 5.30 a.m., whispering goodbye to the ever patient Rachel on the way (‘Just don’t make a habit of it,’ she said, sleepily), then picked up David from his home in east London and headed out to the Kent coast. Around the country birdwatchers were celebrating International Dawn Chorus Day6 and by 7.15 a.m. (still quite late in proper birdwatching terms) we’d had our breakfast at a service station and were watching whitethroats and blackcaps7 buzzing about above some hedges in a place called Cliffe in Kent. On a normal weekend I’d still have hours of sleep ahead of me at this point in the day. I like sleep. But racing out of London to chase birds was fun. Would I do this voluntarily without the incentive of a challenge? Maybe …
… or maybe not. After the initial coffee rush faded I began to feel tired and just a little bit faint, and the idea of bed then Soccer AM under a blanket was appealing. How is it that dads like David and Duncton have so much more stamina than me? Does having a child suddenly make getting up early and ‘doing stuff’ all day easy by comparison?
Although at times I felt like I was sleepwalking, I had David to keep me going, and keep going I did. It was well worth it. As well as the pleasant business of strolling through the countryside, chatting about Oddie and being out of London, the birds were impressive. During the first four-hour circuit we were mobbed by countless hungry swifts gorging on a mist of midges and almost knocked out by a low-flying hen harrier skimming along the marshy fields. We walked in single file along a river wall by the Thames, stopping to see garganeys and little stints on the bank below. I finally caught sight of my first cuckoos of the year and heard my first nightingale at ludicrously close range, although I couldn’t glimpse it through the thick gorse. (This was an odd stand-off. David and I stood and listened to the bush for thirty minutes, while the bird steadfastly refused to reveal itself. Instead it sat and hid and sang – strange behaviour surely?) Although David was telling me both where the birds were and what they were called, I found myself tuning into the hobby like never before. My instincts seemed to sharpen, ears and eyes working together – I felt alive. I felt like a cliché.
At lunch we refuelled with sausage rolls and acrid coffee at the Medway services on the M2 (not my favourite – probably not even in my top ten – very little atmosphere8) then headed down to another nature reserve called Elmley Marshes on the Isle of Sheppey in the middle of the River Swale. David was plotting our route, based on his own birding compass and regular texts from Birdline – a spoonbill had been seen in the area, so we homed in on our target. This was the last day of the Premiership season, so I was also receiving texts alerting me to goals scored. But after another disappointing domestic season for Liverpool, I was more excited when his phone buzzed than mine.
Like Anneka Rice on Treasure Hunt, but more subtly dressed, we followed Birdline’s clues and were rewarded with the fine sight of an osprey resting before his next fishing trip, and a Temminck’s stint sneaking furtively along the river. Rounding a corner to another stretch of water we came across a clutch of couples (one father and son, one husband and wife, one pair of friends) all of whom had their equipment pointing in the same direction. ‘It’s the spoonbill,’ whispered one before stepping aside to let me have a go on his telescope. Through the blurry circle I could see a large white bird, head twisted round, apparently fast asleep. Once again, I failed to be thrilled by what I was assured was a dramatic find, but I was pleased to get yet another new bird for my total.
As we strolled off once more, a cry went up behind us: ‘He’s waking up!’
We arrived back just in time to see the spoonbill stretch his wings, look lazily round and stagger off into the air. It was quite a sight. Its bill did look exactly like a spoon. I’m not sure if that was what the other birdwatchers were excited about, but I loved it. Imagine a massive bird with a massive spoon for a nose. That’s worth getting up at half-five for.
By the time my watch had struck 5.30 p.m. (it’s an idiosyncratic timepiece), we had to think about getting back to London. I had a gig in Greenwich that evening and had to start switching focus back to my ‘job’. So, after watching some brilliant yellow wagtails cavorting in the fields – my twenty-second new species of the day – we headed home in satisfied silence. I did check Radio 5 once to confirm Liverpool’s final position9 but I knew David wasn’t interested, and I was enjoying our mutually contented exhaustion after a whole day outside. Summer had just begun, and I sensed I’d caught the sun. I went on stage that night with tired legs and such a ruddy complexion that I felt I had to explain myself. For the first time, I told the audience I’d been birdwatching. I think some of them thought I was joking, although there was no punch line to the story. Either way, it felt good to tell them the truth.
12 May
Immediately after that high came the inevitable low. Birdwatching without David suddenly felt unsatisfying, frustrating, pointless. I was impatient. I couldn’t see the same sights on my own. Before a particularly testing gig in Bournemouth, in which the entire audience was made up of men in Hawaiian shirts (not one of whom was Oddie), I’d stopped and stomped around Stanpit Marsh near Christchurch for two hours. My Birdwatcher’s Yearbook said I should be able to find a bearded tit.10 I found a tree sparrow. And although this was a new bird, and although I was in a beautiful place, passing parents with children in boats and horses with foals galloping along the beach, beneath another warming sun, I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t find the birds I wanted.
Following a tip-off from the London Birders forum, I bought tickets for England’s Test Match against Sri Lanka at Lords, where a common crane had been spotted flying over the previous day. I had vaguely planned to go to the game at some point, so this wasn’t as extravagant a gesture as it might sound, but it was fun to go to a cricket match with an ulterior motive. Lots of people had binoculars, but few were aiming them high above the action.
In fact, few
were aiming them anywhere at all, for there was very little action. Rain fell consistently throughout the morning and everyone looked damp and bored. Was watching cricket any weirder than watching birds? To be honest, I didn’t have a great time doing either, seeing only four tight overs of cricket, a cormorant high above the sodden wicket and a balloon in the shape of a dolphin which I was sure wouldn’t count for my list. It wasn’t a captive, it wasn’t a pet, it wasn’t dead; but then it also wasn’t a bird. Like the child who had let the inflatable mammal slip, I was upset. Something was missing.
That evening I had a text from Mat out in Africa:
We had a birding competition today and saw or heard 74 species! Who scored England’s runs in the test and who won the UEFA cup?11
I texted him back wearily, glad he wouldn’t be able to sense the lack of enthusiasm in my reply.
13 May
Another text combining sport and birds from another member of my family epitomised another day of birding frustration.
At the beginning of the month, Duncton had casually slipped into the conversation – just as I am now – that he and Mum were off to Romania this week for a trip up the Danube. What I hadn’t comprehended was that this was a specifically birdwatching mission. The holiday was organised by a birdwatching company and featured trips to several nature reserves and famous birding hotspots, rather than anything cultural or traditionally touristy. As I have said, and indeed believed, Duncton rarely goes birdwatching outside Sussex. He occasionally strays into Kent and Norfolk, but I was under the impression he’d be stuck on the Sussex coast while I sashayed round the world for much of the year. This birdwatching trip to Romania represented a departure for Duncton. A birdwatching trip abroad, something he confessed he’d always wanted to do, was extraordinary behaviour. And once again I felt that I had kick-started his passion and in so doing severely limited my chances of winning the competition.