by Alex Horne
The second was the eider duck, who gave its name, of course, to the eiderdown, one of the most comforting words in the English language.5 The female eiders line their nests with their own soft feathers, but nowadays pillows and quilts are mostly filled with feathers from domestic geese, although ‘eiderdown harvesting’ (a lovely, gentle-sounding job) is still done today to eider ducklings, but in a way that doesn’t harm the birds. So that’s a relief.
Out on Lindisfarne, however, eider ducks aren’t called eider ducks. They’re cuddies, or cuddy ducks, in honour of the Northumbrian Saint Cuthbert, one of the world’s earliest wildlife conservationists, who lived on the Farne Islands in the seventh century AD.
He had quite a varied life, Saint Cuthbert. For many years he travelled round Britain, gaining a reputation for performing miracles on sick poor people. He founded an oratory at a brilliantly named town called Dull, in Perth and Kinross, a site that later became St Andrews University (I’m afraid I don’t know how that saint muscled his name onto the place). Soon after that, he retired and lived as a hermit in a cave.
Presumably realising, like Duncton, that now he had all this spare time, he could do more than sit in a cave (he couldn’t even watch snooker), he came out of retirement, moved to Lindisfarne, became a bishop and instituted what were probably the world’s first bird protection laws in a bid to safeguard the eider ducks and any other seabirds nesting with him on the islands.
11 August
Still thrilled to be off the festival leash, Tom and I spent that evening drinking the health of my two new birds in a fine Edinburgh establishment. Generally giddy, he told me how much he’d loved his day on Lindisfarne. Our faces were ruddy with sun, the birds and the drink.
Comedians spend very little time together. We share an occasional journey to a gig or a dressing room before a show, but mostly we work alone. Edinburgh is different. For one month of the year we socialise, gossip about our peers and agents, tell horror stories about gigs in Nottingham and sneakily test out jokes. Everyone comes to the festival: brave acts taking a risk on their beloved shows and people like me, who just can’t stay away – even though they’re meant to be taking the year off. So as Tom and I relived our day with St Cuthbert, other comics dropped into the pub and sat down for a quick drink and a chat. As well as the usual festival banter, Tom and I described our trip to the island. Every single person we spoke to responded with their own bird story.
‘Oh yeah, I saw a golden eagle once,’ said one act, famed for his tall stories both on and off stage, ‘it was on my shed. Massive great thing.’
‘My dad used to race pigeons,’ said a more introspective comic. ‘Every weekend he’d be out there with his birds. I think he spent more time with them than us!’
‘So tell me this. Is a bird an animal?’ asked another. He was quite drunk though.
By the end of the evening, my mind was made up. With the help of Tom, my friends and quite a few Tennants, I’d determined both my short- and long-term future. I’d be back at the festival next year. For, while I was enjoying the year’s freedom, what everyone really loves is the pressure, the problems and the publicity of their own show. If you’re not doing a show, you’re not really part of the festival. So I’d come back and do a show about Duncton. I’d tell our bird story.
And I wouldn’t waste the two weeks we’d planned to spend in Israel. I decided (with the help of a call to a sober Rachel) that we should visit Mat. We should spend time with my brother on his big year. We should go to South Africa. The rest of my family were heading out to see him the following year, we should grab this opportunity and pay him a visit right now. And we just might be able to see a couple of extra birds while we were there …
But in the meantime, I had my Oddie to find. And through an older member of the comedy guard who’d joined us for a drink, I’d managed to discover one of the birding obligations that had kept him away from the festival.
The next day I raced back from Edinburgh along the A74, M6 and M1, stopping only once at the Charnock Richard Services (a Welcome Break, of course) for a Coffee Primo and a panini (toasted sandwich not football sticker).
19 August
‘Are you going to the birdfair?’
Those were the words in the Edinburgh boozer that changed the course of my birding year.
Not ‘doing’ the festival for the first time in four years was like my retirement. Rachel and I could do whatever we wanted for a month. But when a fellow comedian told me about Rutland’s British Birdwatching Fair, ‘The World’s First and Largest Birdwatching Event’, I knew our time would no longer be quite so free. The middle weekend of the month would be spent in the smallest county in Britain.
Obviously, I didn’t want to make Rachel trudge round a bird-fest while I got excited by things like bird feeders and binoculars, so I phoned Duncton and invited him and Mum along. This would be a wonderful family outing. After spending the night in a nearby B&B we drove in stately convoy through the village of Whitwell to Oakham, where the event had been held for the last seventeen years. We passed an official council sign welcoming us to ‘Whitwell, twinned with Paris’.6 I couldn’t believe it. They got Paris! Whitwell, a tiny village (population: 550) in a tiny county (population: 38,300) had got the administrative, historical and cultural capital of France (population: 2,167,994). This was the geographical equivalent of the film Twins, with Whitwell played by Danny De Vito and Paris Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As soon as we got back home from the birdfair I tried to find out how this situation had come about. The answer was delightful. Apparently my request to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was not without precedent.
During the 1970s the regulars of the Noel Arms pub in Whitwell decided they ought to put their village on the map. As I demonstrated in Edinburgh, that’s the sort of decision people make in pubs. And like me, these drinkers were determined to follow through with their plan.
The very next day they wrote a letter to the then Mayor of Paris and future ex-French President and Zidane-fan, Monsieur Jacques Chirac, proposing the link between their town and his. The letter was almost identical to the one I’d sent to Paul Murphy. ‘We appreciate that you’re a busy man,’ they wrote, ‘and not always able to deal with every item of correspondence coming your way. So if we do not get an answer within fifteen days of posting this letter, we will take that to mean assent.’
Accordingly, when no reply came from Chirac’s office within the allotted time-frame (which was, coincidentally, exactly the same as Murphy’s), the village declared itself twinned with Paris and erected road signs to that effect. A few years later, Rutland County Council backed the initiative in a rare display of council humour and replaced these wooden signs with the official metal ones I had driven past. As far as I know, there are no such corresponding signs in Paris. Yet.
If you want to imagine the British Birdwatching Fair, think of the Glastonbury Festival, then age the revellers by about thirty years, keep the wellies, add a downpour of proper beards (no intricately whittled facial hair, please) and substitute drugs and alcopops for plastic glasses of real ale. Keep the festival spirit. In fact, double it. The 19,000 people that gathered for the bird-fair were united in their love of birds. Artists displayed works featuring birds, writers sold books about birds and distributors sold CDs and DVDs starring birds. Countless stalls sold bird food, with one in particular stocking some truly magnificent feeders, more impressive than anything I’d seen before. I asked the holder which one was his best.
‘Well, this one’s bulletproof,’ he proclaimed proudly, gesturing like an auctioneer at his yard-long prize item: ‘The Metal Conqueror’ (yours for just £44.95). I’m fairly sure he was implying that squirrels wouldn’t even get a sniff of your nuts if you bought this model, but I couldn’t help thinking that if there was a driveby shooting in your garden, the bulletproof perspex might in fact be dangerous for the birds, what with the ammo pinging off in every direction. I bought a brand new Collins Bird Guide
7 from the stall next door instead.
Rachel and Mum were bearing up well. In fact, I began to suspect they might actually be enjoying the peculiar experience. My suspicions were confirmed when Rachel rushed off to a shoe stall and returned with a pair of really quite feminine walking boots. ‘Perfect for South Africa,’ she beamed. I led her over to a couple of South African stalls where we chatted to some ecotourism guides about the sort of birds we might see and bought books that told us how. I was getting excited about our holiday. Rachel, I imagine, may have been starting to worry about hers.
I took another step closer to becoming a birder by buying my first pair of ‘proper’ binoculars. My salesman was quite clearly a fanatical birder himself, who told me he’d seen 5,000 species through his binoculars. This hooked me in completely. I had to buy something from this man. So after much experimentation and under the expert guidance of him and Duncton, I chose a beautifully sleek pair of lightweight Delta SL 8 x 42s. It was like buying my first cricket bat. I turned each potential purchase over in my hands, feeling the weight, admiring their newness. Then, when I picked up the Deltas, I knew immediately that I wanted them, and logic and reason went out the window. They felt right. Thankfully Duncton approved and I handed over my credit card.
As I left the stand, a photographer from the Rutland and Stamford Mercury approached. ‘Do you mind if I take a picture of you with your new binocs for the local paper?’ he asked. I didn’t. In fact I was only too pleased to pose with my new favourite thing.
There were elements of the Edinburgh festival here too, with talks, events and performances staged in packed tents. In one tent a birdwatcher was doing a show about comedy. I’ll be fine in Edinburgh next year, I thought.
At 3 p.m. on 19 August we lined up to watch ‘The Bird Brain of Britain 2006’. This was what the comedian in Edinburgh had told me about. And this was how it was described in the fair’s glossy brochure:
The most popular event at Birdfair by a curlew’s bill so make sure you arrive early to get your seats. Representatives from our associate sponsors will be answering questions on chosen and general bird subjects with Bill Oddie at the helm. An unmissable hour – who will walk away with the much coveted great crested grebe trophy this year?
Unmissable indeed. Never mind who won the trophy, it was the quizmaster who represented my moment of birdwatching glory. I raised my new binoculars twitchily at the edge of the marquee, aiming towards where I thought the helm of a tent might be. There, resplendent in the Hawaiian shirt I’d been picturing all year, but a tiny bit shorter than I’d expected, was the mighty, the elusive, the Oddie.
We weren’t as punctual as I had been for The Goodies, and so we had to stand at the back. It seemed that all 19,000 festivalgoers had come for Oddie too. In fact, he was so mobbed by fans afterwards that I wasn’t even able to give him my opening line. But I didn’t care. I watched, mesmerised, as he handled the crowd with consummate ease, being funny while discussing birds. That was enough for me.
The questions were tricky:
Bill: ‘Who first unsuccessfully introduced the little owl into Britain?’
Sponsor’s representative: ‘I think it was a nun.’ Bill: ‘A nun, why? What? No! (Much laughter in the marquee) I think we’ll call that a pass …’
Oddie managed to make it accessible and entertaining for everyone (including novices like me and Rachel and Mum) by adopting the stance of a cuddly Jeremy Paxman – but a Paxman whom you believed actually knew the answer:
Bill: ‘The man who in 1843 unsuccessfully introduced the little owl into Britain was Charles Waterton. And the mistake he made was … he only introduced one! (Even more laughter – gales even – in the marquee.) Fortunately (Oddie was now surfing the laughter) it was a long-lived and very virile bird. It lived for forty-six years (now Oddie was laughing too) until Lord Lilford brought in another one! Whom the first one bred with, or humped, and I think he probably died in the attempt, but nevertheless, that’s how little owls came to Britain!’ (Applause)
It seemed to be his perfect gig. He could entertain and talk about birds. And, unlike on Springwatch, he could even curse a little, which he did with relish and charm. I added ‘occasionally coarse’ to my description notes for ‘Bill Oddie’ (along with ‘shorter than you might think’8), and ticked him off. Got him at last!
Oh, there were birds at the birdfair too by the way. Behind the swathes of bearded birders and camps of canvas tents, the Rutland nature reserve stretched far off into the hazy distance. But, like most people, I barely turned my head in that direction. Like most people, I was far more interested in the people. That was where the fun lay for me. And while I stand by my statement that everyone was united by their love of birds, they were all still susceptible to the very human traits of jealousy and rivalry. As people passed on the paths, eyes would lower, first to the other’s binoculars, then to their waterproof jacket (necessary on the day we went) and then down to the walking boots. I’d never heard the term ‘binoc envy’ before Duncton muttered it to me as we queued for the reassuringly sweet-smelling loos. Apparently a jealous birder had been eyeing up my Deltas.
24 August
Infused with the festival spirit, Rachel and I spent most of the next week getting ready for our trip to South Africa, booking a place on a safari, plotting a route down the Garden Route and making sure we could meet up with Mat and Morri in Cape Town. After a short diplomatic conference, she also agreed I could book a professional birdwatcher for one day only so I messaged Mat and hired a guide.
Two bird events marked these intermediary days. First, the sighting of a wren in my garden. Along with the dunnock, the modest wren is perhaps one of the least flamboyant of the British birds, but I was pleased to see the tiny brown ball cock its tail in my garden and be able to tick another bird on my garden list. I might not reach Duncton’s total of fifty-nine, but I was well on my way to double figures.
Second, after two days of postings on Birdguides about a yellow-legged gull in Kensington Gardens, I hurried to the right spot in Hyde Park and found the bird on the exact post in the exact lake opposite the exact statue of Peter Pan indicated on the website: a normal sort of seagull, but with bright yellow legs.9 It was almost too easy. But I guess that’s what I’d paid my Birdguides joining fee for. And I liked to think the symbol of eternal youth had some sort of significance for my adventure, although I wasn’t quite sure what.
Finally, we attended the relocated wedding itself, not on the coast of Israel but in Barnet. If I’m honest, it was in a glorious location called Wrotham Park, three miles north of Barnet, a Neo-Palladian English country house that features in Peter’s Friends, Jeeves and Wooster and Gosford Park and which was the perfect setting for a brilliant day – but calling it ‘Barnet’ sounds funnier.
The service took place on the house’s immaculate lawns, affording us stunning views out across its 300 acres of parkland. As the couple exchanged rings and vows I noticed two large eagle-like birds circling above us. Unfortunately I’d been banned from bringing my binoculars (not good form at a wedding apparently) so I couldn’t find out what they were.
29 August
It takes quite a while to fly to South Africa, but we did get to watch Mission Impossible III and eat peanuts, so the experience was generally fine. After landing in Cape Town, we flew another six hundred miles north on one of those small flimsy frightening planes to Port Elizabeth, then picked up a more sturdy car and drove for another ninety minutes before triumphantly arriving at Lalibela Game Reserve on the Addo Elephant Park, where we’d planned to spend a few days before heading back down to Mat and Morri in the capital.
As in Bahrain, I had trouble concentrating on the road with foreign birds flashing all around me, but with Rachel at my side, emphasising just how keen she was to survive long enough to see a giraffe, we made it to the camp.
This was a reserve unlike any I’d visited before. Hides were unnecessary. Every building – the kitchens, the dining room, the lounge area
and our bedroom – was perched high in the trees, looking out over a seemingly endless jungle forest. But it was the sounds that were most impressive. I had no idea what I was listening to, but it was definitely more exotic than a wren or even a yellow-legged gull. I wasn’t even sure if the noises were being made by birds or some poor mammals being trodden on by elephants, but I wasn’t bothered. This was terrific. This was like a film. This was how I wanted to go birdwatching.
After dumping our bags on the floor of our room I stood on the balcony, looked out at the tree tops and immediately saw seven or eight new species. Brilliant. Unfortunately I didn’t have a clue what any of them were. I’d done my research at London Zoo in March and had the African guide books I’d bought at the fair, but they weren’t enough. I didn’t even have my primal training Duncton had instilled in me as a child. These birds really were all new to me and with no guidance, I couldn’t confidently identify them. Luckily, I would soon meet a man who could.
We went out for our first safari drive that evening. There were six of us altogether – Rachel and I, a middle-aged American couple who both wore Harley Davidson bracelets and a quiet retired couple from Dublin – and we all sat royally in a jeep driven by our smiling guide, an Arsenal fan called Ben.
‘Before we leave, are there any special interests?’ he asked us. This was my chance. I could come out as a birder …