by Alex Horne
So, this year, I had seen a lot of birds, but I hadn’t known anything about them. That was all thanks to the two Davids.
I may have been in the lead, but I still didn’t feel like a proper birder. My birding had been unnatural. Duncton was the real deal. He hadn’t needed an artificial race to get him into the hobby. He’d found his birds all by himself, all through his life. Grandpa had given him a helping hand, but only in support. Duncton didn’t pretend to be passionate about rocks. He was too busy being passionate about birds.
What was I passionate about?
23 October
What am I passionate about?
Summer seemed to have turned straight into winter. I’d somehow missed autumn. This was disappointing. I like autumn. I’m not passionate about it, but I like it.
People tend to watch comedy less often in the summer than in the winter, especially when there’s a World Cup on. It’s more fun to snuggle up and giggle (or scrum down and heckle) when it’s cold and dark outside. So as the year hurried along, I found myself doing a lot more gigs and a lot less birdwatching. Opportunities to spot new species were dwindling anyway, and I was fairly content to sit on my lead, despite the mild discomfort it was causing me.
Duncton, meanwhile, seemed typically unfazed by the dramatic change at the top of our tiny league table2 and was also birdwatching steadily rather than frenetically. Instead of following Birdguide’s advice and driving over to Essex to chase a recently arrived little auk or down to Devon to pick up the seabirds he still hadn’t found, he was infuriatingly happy to go about his normal birding business in the vague hope of picking up a couple of unusual birds without leaving his own patch. Intrigued by this optimism and not wanting to miss a grizzled birder’s trick, I agreed to join Duncton on one of his RSPB ‘starling shifts’ and witness his tactics first hand.
In addition to pointing out peregrine falcons to unsuspecting passers-by in Chichester, Duncton’s role as an RSPB volunteer occasionally takes him further east along the coast to Brighton, where each autumn one of Britain’s greatest natural phenomena goes pretty much unnoticed. Unfortunately, the day I chose to accompany him was a particularly wet one. Rain is good for watching birds (birds tend to shelter in trees or on the ground instead of flying far out of sight) but bad for birdwatching (birdwatchers tend to shelter in homes or in the pub instead of getting wet). Half an hour after I’d bought my £17.50 return ticket from Victoria and ten minutes after the train had chugged out of the station, Duncton phoned to say the RSPB were calling off the outing.
I was outraged. ‘They’re stopping it because of a bit of rain!’ I grumbled quietly into my phone, wanting to express my disgust while being mindful of my fellow passengers. ‘Pathetic!’
What could I do? I was on a direct service to the coast, so had no alternative but to end up in Brighton – save for jumping out of the window in a symbolic but painful gesture of frustration. Thankfully, Duncton is a noble sort and not at all pathetic, so he offered to come to Brighton and do the tour for me alone. I was to be his one member of the public.
While at school at Lancing College, my friends and I would escape by train from Shoreham to Brighton whenever possible, but I hadn’t been back for years. Now, waiting for Duncton at the station, I looked around and was struck by how small the place looked. Like my grandparents’ home in Kemsing, everything had shrunk. I couldn’t have grown all that much since leaving school, but perhaps my outlook had. This had been such a significant place, our gateway to freedom, the threshold of the real world. Like the bridge to my primary school in Midhurst, this was briefly such an important landmark. This was where we would meet before getting turned down in a pub, where we gathered before my first ever rock concert (well, Status Quo’s Christmas Extravaganza – our family went three years running), where Chip received the Hornes’ only criminal conviction to date by ‘forgetting’ to pay his train fare then ‘hurrying’ away from an inspector back when he was still, legally, Christopher. It all seemed such a long time ago. Once again I felt my perspective subtly shifting.
Duncton’s train soon pulled in and the jizz of his familiar bearded face shook me from my daydreams.3 ‘It’s brightening up,’ he lied cheerfully and we splashed down to the seafront under a single umbrella, him generously taking most of the rain just as I do when sheltering Rachel. It was tipping down and I could now, grudgingly, see the RSPB’s point. Nevertheless, we managed to find our way to the embarrassingly garish Palace Pier without drowning and Duncton found a suitable spot for us to stand and wait for the spectacle.
I didn’t really know what that spectacle was to be. I’d had a soft spot for starlings ever since they’d mobbed my fig tree back in May, and the superb and glossy varieties I’d seen at London Zoo and in Africa made me like them even more. But I wouldn’t have called them spectacular birds. A swift movement half a mile to our right was to change all that (and cause the humble starling to top my Favourite Bird Chart at the end of the year by quite some margin). For, swooping over the charred remains of Brighton’s pitiable West Pier was a flock of starlings so huge I couldn’t literally take it all in.4 I certainly couldn’t understand why no one else was standing open-mouthed, gawping at the sky above the sea. OK, the rain was bucketing down, but just yards from the shore, a cloud of birds, like that weird smoke creature in Lost, was doing loop-the-loops.
The wonder we were witnessing is called a murmuration and involves thousands and thousands of starlings coming in to roost for the evening. You might remember a Carling advert in which footage of such an event (actually shot by Oddie for Springwatch but not credited here because, I guess, he’s never really going to be cool) was played with some uplifting rock music before the rather confusing slogan ‘Belong’ was slapped on the screen. I don’t know if the advertisers were going for a rhyming association between Starling and Carling or just liked the pictures, but for some reason the sight was deemed impressive enough to sell beer.
Without taking our eyes off our birds, Duncton and I all but skipped along the shore towards the pier to get a closer look, eventually finding shelter a hundred feet or so away beneath the awning of an ice cream shop, closed in the rain, which we shared with a teenage couple as focused on snogging as we were on the murmuration. We stood there for about half an hour, rain dripping round us but not on us, as 5,000 starlings performed for our eyes only.
As the light faded, hundreds more starlings joined the group while others dropped away like ash on to the burned pier. They rose and fell as one, creating surreal shapes and patterns, swelling, shrinking, silently flowing. It was as impressive a surge of movement as the start of the London marathon but faster, more graceful, and they were in the air. Apart from the passionate pair beside us (‘I’m bored with them now,’ he muttered with uncharacteristic impatience), Duncton was mesmerised. ‘More than last week,’ he whispered quietly.
Then, at exactly 4.15 p.m., as abruptly as it had begun, the display came to an end. As if cued by their leader, the group fell as one from the sky onto every available surface of the structure. And then there was nothing. The fireworks had finished. They’d had enough, and so had we.
‘Fish and chips,’ said Duncton. It was more of a statement than a question.
‘Sounds good,’ I said.
Ten minutes later we were sitting, sodden, in an old-fashioned chippie, tucking into a couple of pieces of cod and a single portion of chips. (We really are getting old.) Duncton had mushy peas. That’s one taste I don’t think I’ll ever share.
Unlike a lot of proper birdwatchers, I love London’s immigrant parakeet population. I find their squawking exotic and their lurid greens exciting. I don’t mind all that much if they scare off a few sparrows, they’re Fun Birds! I particularly like the urban myth that when Jimi Hendrix died in London in 1970, his two pet parrots were released into the London sky and went on to propagate the current 10,000-strong population. It’s one hundred per cent untrue, but I think that rock’n’roll tale suits them.5
&n
bsp; Nearly everyone in America, on the other hand, has an active dislike of their most populous immigrants, the starlings. The anecdote surrounding their arrival is geekier, but in my eyes just as charming.
In the 1890s an eccentric gentleman called Eugene Schieffelin decided that it would be in the best interests of New York City if he was to introduce every bird that features in the works of Shakespeare to his home town. And so Schieffelin released sixty pairs of starlings into Central Park, thanks to a brief reference to the starling’s mimic-like qualities in Henry IV (Part I, Act 1, Scene 3): ‘Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but “Mortimer”.’
They liked New York. Today, the starling is America’s most populous and least popular bird, having noisily overthrown the likes of the beloved bluebird. I’m sure there’s a meaningful allegory about colonisation in there somewhere, but it’s definitely a true story and quite amusing in a Schadenfreude sort of way.
27 October
Duncton had done his bit to lift my wintry gloom. But it wasn’t till I looked out of my kitchen window and saw the familiar face of my fat robin that I really got going again. After a four-month summer break he’d come home. This was his home. I’d made him feel welcome. I’m sure it was the same bird; he looked at me, I looked at him, we had a moment. I resolved to get back into my birdwatching.
Unfortunately, I’d so far been on fewer birdwatching trips in October than I had during the World Cup. I hardly did any birdwatching during the World Cup, so that’s a really small amount of birdwatching in October. Maybe my lead was making me cocky; maybe I was bored of birdwatching. Either way, I wasn’t impressed with myself, and I hate not being impressed with myself. So I decided to try to impress myself.
For the past few weeks I’d been ignoring emails from Birdguides telling me about a long-billed dowitcher that had turned up in Kent. I’d never even heard of a dowitcher before (which made me think it must be pretty rare) but I liked its mischievous-sounding name. I’d also really appreciated that spoonbill (also in Kent) back in May, so perhaps I’d enjoy the look of this one too. I’m a bill man, I thought, and headed off five hours early to a gig in Shoreditch (Kent is more or less between northwest and east London).
Long-billed Dowitcher, Oare Marshes NR [A], 1st-winter still on east flood
read the Birdguides message, and when I arrived at the Swale estuary for the second time in the year, I saw that this mysterious bird had attracted a fair number of hopeful birders. Forty or fifty lined the track that separated the carpark and the water, mostly retired gentlemen in fine retired gentlemen’s attire, and all very cheerful.
‘There’s a jack snipe here too, apparently,’ one said to me as soon as I stood next to him.
‘Brilliant!’ I said, with genuine enthusiasm.
Ten minutes later neither was showing, so I headed off for a patrol round the water’s edge. I had less time on my hands than these older birdwatching colleagues (in the short term, anyway) so wanted to keep moving. The second I sat down in the first hide, the gentleman beside me (again, retired, apparently) asked me if I’d seen the dowitcher.
‘Have you seen the dowitcher?’ were his exact words.
‘No,’ I replied.
He grunted quietly. I had become used to this hide etiquette. In general, birdwatchers are a friendly bunch, emitting a cheerful ‘hello’ when they pass another human. But inside a hide the rules can be different. Birding conversations will often start and finish without a hello or a goodbye. These frivolous phrases are unnecessary when there’s serious birding to be done. If there’s a rare bird about, it’s business time. And businessmen don’t say hello or goodbye. They just get on with it.
Things were tense in the hide. My neighbour was part of a car load of birders who’d driven down from Northampton in the early hours of the morning to see the bird. They’d been here for a good ten hours and there was still no sign. I think I’d have been tense too. One of the group was clearly a non-birder – he didn’t have any binoculars and was reading a newspaper – but he looked the happiest by far. ‘I’m just pleased to have been invited!’ he told me, before asking for help with his crossword: ‘OK, four down, three words, four, six, and nine letters – invisible mythical bird!’
‘It’s only two words, you moron,’ came the not quite so playful reply. ‘Long-billed has a hyphen.’
I decided not to reveal that I was also a novice birdwatcher. Instead, I joined in their nervy vigil, doing my best to work out in my head what the numerous other birds on the marshes were while we waited for the dowitcher to show its long-billed face. No one was commenting on anything that wasn’t the dowitcher, so it was a good chance for me to practise my skills. I surprised myself with how many species I could recognise, almost instantly scribbling redshank, little egret, cormorant, green sandpiper, wood sandpiper, lapwing, avocet, godwit, little grebe and pochard down in my notebook. The man next to me asked me what I’d just seen. When I read him my list of admittedly common birds, he looked at me with an expression midway between disappointment and disgust.
Ten minutes later he became mildly animated when he saw a ruff. I hadn’t seen a ruff yet, and had to contain my almost all-consuming excitement.
‘Where?’ I asked at once.
‘Oh, it’s out there on the flood just by the teal,’ he replied begrudgingly. I couldn’t remember which ones were teals and was afraid to ask. My pride got the better of me. I’d just about been accepted as a birder.
I pretended I’d seen the ruff.
Half an hour later I left the Northampton men to it. I’d not seen the ruff, the jack snipe or the dowitcher and I wouldn’t for the rest of the afternoon.
Back home after the gig I had a look on Birdguides and saw that for the first time in three weeks the dowitcher hadn’t been spotted all day. Those men from Northampton couldn’t have been happy (although while I was with them, they did seem to revel in their grumpiness – a typical British male trait, I suppose).
I looked up the ruff too, to see what I’d missed. I wasn’t happy either. Ruffs are amazing-looking birds, with a ridiculous Elizabethan-style collar that gives them their name. The males in particular looked fantastically ridiculous, and I was gutted. I love ridiculous birds. I might even be more of a ridiculous man than a bill man. Next time, I told myself, just ask the other men. I was still far from impressed with myself.
31 October
The chance for redemption cropped up the following Tuesday in the unlikely guise of a gig at the University of East Anglia. Minsmere, one of Duncton’s favourite haunts (and where he once just missed that Oddie) lies just forty miles south of the students’ union. In fact Duncton himself had popped in the day before on his way home from Granny to see his first common scoters6 and ‘some cracking views of a kingfisher from the Bittern Hide’ (his words). So, hoping to find Duncton’s footprints as well as at least one or two new species, I aimed to get there at lunchtime
I missed. My life got in the way at home – a lightbulb needed changing, some dishes needed washing, quite a lot of jokes needed writing – so I didn’t even leave the house till after lunch. If only I could retire now too. Unfortunately, the clocks had changed that weekend so by the time I reached the Suffolk coast, it was 3.30 p.m. and daylight was already fading. Just before I got out of the car rain began to fall, and it didn’t stop falling till night had also fallen and I’d got back into my car.
But it wasn’t a completely wasted trip. Duncton’s trail may have been washed away and I only had an hour to wander round what was clearly a magnificent reserve, but considering the rain, that was just about enough. I didn’t ever find the ‘Bittern Hide’ he’d mentioned, let alone common scoters or kingfishers, but I did recognise curlews, avocets and, to my surprise, a marsh harrier. These birds of prey had only ever been pointed out to me by proper birdwatchers before. This time I noticed the large body, narrow wings, long tail and black wing tips and instantly thought marsh harrier! I was impressed with myself.
&
nbsp; Despite this achievement, I hadn’t seen a single new bird all month. I’d started the month in the lead for the first time, I’d ended it with zero points for the first time. Our monthly phone call would not have made exciting listening:
‘Well I didn’t see anything new this month,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ said Duncton. ‘Well I got those scoters and a red-breasted merganser at Farlington.’
I noted down his two new birds, relieved that he hadn’t taken much advantage of my laziness.
‘By the way,’ he then said, ‘Mum and I are thinking of going out to see Mat too.’
‘I know, Duncton, Mum told me. It’s mid-January you’re heading off, isn’t it?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. I’ve booked the tickets today. We’ll be landing on 30 December – so we’ll be there for New Year’s Eve which should be fun …’
You’ll be out there in time for our Big Year, you mean! I thought.
This was disastrous. All that stuff about Duncton birdwatching with honour went right out the window. Duncton wasn’t ‘plugging away at his local patch’ – he was hanging about, waiting for his own trip to Africa! He claimed they were leaving earlier to spend as much time as possible with the eldest son they hadn’t seen all year, but I knew it was really only so he could crush his middle son’s dreams! At least, that’s what I told myself when I started to plot my final two months.
I won’t let my dreams be crushed by Duncton. I’ll make them shatterproof. I may have failed to see anything new in Suffolk and Kent, but I had spotted the potential. There were loads of birds out there I still hadn’t found. I just needed to get one of my birding friends to help me. I got straight on the phone and dialled David’s number.
I’ll be so far ahead by 30 December I’ll already be in next year, I thought.7
1 This ‘birdwatcher’ could be Duncton, or it could be me – either meaning is fine, and I quite like the ambiguity.