by Alex Horne
These, to me, were highly satisfactory figures. I was sixteen ahead of Duncton, so whether I’d actually seen that lesser spotted woodpecker or not, I’d still won. I was also sixteen ahead of Duncton on our total world lists, meaning that we’d seen exactly the same number of birds overseas. His trips to Romania and Ghana had yielded the same number of birds as my trips to Bahrain, South Africa and the birdless Alps.2
I love statistics. Throughout the year I’d enjoyed the meticulous collating of facts and figures, and this statistic convinced me that this had been an absolutely fair contest. I immediately sent our scores to Surfbirds.com, a website that publishes league tables of the year’s top listers and where the 2006 Big Year results were soon published.
In the final reckoning a man called Ian Robinson sat at the top of the British list leader board with 349 species including, of course, the long-billed murrelet. Second was a man called Lee G R Evans with 340 species. ‘A comparatively disappointing year but clearly made up by new additions long-billed murrelet and Canada Warbler,’ he wrote.3
If you look up the list today you will still find, in ninety-sixth place, a man called Alex Horne with his 152 species, five places above a man called Duncton Horne. He came 101st, frustratingly close to the top 100 but still an enormous improvement on his real tennis ranking.4
‘If only I’d made more of an effort to see the seabirds,’ said Duncton wistfully when we met up to look over his 30,000 photos of Ghana (far more of which featured birds than my newly engaged brother and his fiancée), but I don’t think he was particularly referring to our challenge. Since his childhood trips to Fair Isle, Duncton has always tried to make at least one trip to Scotland every year to see the guillemots, the gannets and the kittiwakes. This year, what with his real tennis, his RSPB work and a son to teach, he’d missed them. He’d really missed them.
I asked him for his birding highlights of the year.
‘Just the birds that stir the soul basically,’ he said casually.
That sentence, uttered by Duncton without forethought, answered all my questions. That is why my dad watches birds, often for hours at a time.
‘As always it’s got to be the peregrine falcon,’ he went on. ‘My last afternoon taking part in the RSPB show at Chichester Cathedral – seeing all five birds fly at once, flying more or less in formation; that was amazing.’ Duncton had been watching these particular birds for five years now and had been an ardent peregrine supporter for two decades.
‘And, I reckon, well, the best bird really,’ Duncton continued, ‘was the golden oriole, which was a fantastic sighting, right at the top of a tree on a lovely sunny morning with blue sky. And the long-eared owl that I saw with you. That was memorable.’
Yes it was, I thought. That had been the moment I’d seen his soul stirred and realised, with some resignation, that mine wasn’t even shaken. That was when I saw Duncton as he must have looked as a kid, birdwatching because he loved it. That was memorable.
Simply spending time with Duncton was undoubtedly the best thing about my Big Year. Whether in a hide, on the phone or in the vague vicinity of some severals, those were the moments I’ll treasure most. At the risk of sounding cloyingly sentimental, I’m so glad I got to have my birdwatching trip with him. I did start to understand why he does what he does and I did get to know him better through birding.
I learned, for instance, that the reason he’s called Hugh, his middle name, rather than James (or Duncton) is that his own granny, Trader’s mum (my great-grandmother), had started calling him Jamie when he was a month or two old. His mum (my granny) didn’t like the name Jamie (as I mentioned several months ago, it’s not, in my opinion, a name for a dad), so she started calling him Hugh.
I’d never known that. I’d never asked. Or I’d never listened. But often when you’re birdwatching there’s little else to do.
‘Always happy to engage in conversation. Just to pass the time as much as anything.’
That’s what tall, wise Martin had taught me on Hampstead Heath back in April.
I still take some pride in the fact that Duncton saw his first ever long-eared owl thanks to our Big Year. Mat had been with him when he saw his first peregrine falcon, but two decades later, I’d helped him find this owl. In fact, I’d be tempted to say that our challenge breathed new life into his hobby.
Perhaps it’s a coincidence, perhaps it was always going to come alive again in his retirement, but the following year Duncton birdwatched with renewed vigour, taking part in weekly garden watches, an annual breeding bird survey, and contributing to an atlas of wintering and breeding birds by comprehensively studying a square mile of land. Before our Big Year, he’d barely made a list (excluding the Birds Seen on or over Silvertrees still bluetacked to the fridge), now he couldn’t stop. He’s also in the middle of a three-year farm survey for the RSPB for which he has to cover another square mile or ‘a substantial chunk of Hampshire’, in his words.
‘People like me are doing this all over the country,’ he told me. He’s right, and I think it’s great. But I’m not yet like him; I still couldn’t comprehensively study my garden, let alone a square mile, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to, yet. But I like to think (again, erroneously, probably), that our challenge had helped him. I’d made him keep a catalogue of his birds – that was one of my obsessions – and he is still doing it now, edging his way up the birdwatching tree in the process.
My mentor and friend David, meanwhile, has been climbing even closer to the top of that tree. He left his job at a film company in October 2007 and is currently studying for a Master’s in Taxonomy and Biodiversity at the Natural History Museum. He knows his birds and wants to do something positive with his gen, including offering to painstakingly check all the references to birds in this book. I’m indebted to him.
Mat and Morri got married on 18 April 2008. The wedding was fabulous, they’d chosen African music and decorations that meant so much to them and they both looked tremendously happy. (Mat had shaved.) At dinner, every table was named after an African bird and on the centre of each they’d placed a card with a picture of the bird beside which Mat had written a paragraph, like John Wakefield in The Strange World of Birds, ‘a tender celebration of all their freakiest features’. I stole (with their permission this time) many of these words when describing the birds I saw in Africa.
Two days after the wedding I received a text from Tim:
I can see a heron. Hope you’re having an equally profitable Sunday afternoon, Love Tim x
He’s still watching birds too. We really should find the time for another trip back to Norfolk soon – for a double-bubble breakfast special in Swaffham at the very least.
But what am I passionate about?
In the summer of 2007, Rachel and I moved out of London. It was time, we both thought, to at least think about the practicalities of starting a family, and since we were both born and raised in the country, it seemed natural to leave the city behind us. We wanted to nest where we could be comfortable, so moved to a peripolitan town called Chesham5 just outside the M25, at the bottom of a valley at the foot of the Chilterns and five miles from the home of Lee G R Evans.
It’s also not far from the M40 and at least once a week I get to see some massive great birds circling over our garden. ‘Forked tails,’ I want to say to someone, ‘red kite.’
I think I’m now ready to pass on that sort of gen myself.
Meanwhile, the broken piggy bank I gave Rachel, sits on a shelf in my new study, beside two rather grey fragments of Roman pottery. Having spent so long tracking down the troublesome pottery, I now get to see it every day. I had thought about taking the pieces over to Granny in Norfolk but that didn’t feel right. It seemed more appropriate for me to keep it – after all Grandpa had, really, given it to me. So I placed the pieces beside the wounded pig on the bookshelf above my desk: a reminder, a memento, a keepsake.
The rest of the museum is still safe in Silvertrees. Mum and Duncton say they a
ren’t going to throw any of it out, not even the sheep’s skull. After all, they might be grandparents themselves some day.
*
On our return to Chesham after spending Easter over with Rachel’s parents not birdwatching in Fermanagh, we found, to our surprise, that a funfair had been set up in the field opposite our house – Steven’s Funfair, to be precise. We had mixed feelings about this but did our best to look on the bright side. There was a funfair in the field opposite our house.
At the first possible opportunity we made our way over to the gaudy lights and risked our lives on some sort of jerky ride called, simply, ‘The Best Machine’. I liked it, Rachel didn’t so much. Neither of us thought it could justify such a brazen claim.
Still fairly wobbly, we then moved on to the more stable prospect of those games you’re always tempted to play but never win at a fair – coconut shies, hoops over bottles, that sort of thing. The tent we were drawn into was manned by a boy of about nine who brusquely explained that we had to throw four darts at a dartboard, all of which had to land on the board, but the total of which had to be below thirty in order to win a small prize (which included, spectacularly, a golfball taped to a can of lager) or below ten to win a ‘special prize’.
This, I thought and hopefully didn’t say, is man’s business. I swapped the darts for a dink (this, apparently was Steven’s Fair Slang for a pound coin) and flung them, one by one, straight into the number two. I was astonished. ‘That’s right!’ I cried. ‘Less than ten! I’ve won a “special prize!”’
‘You didn’t read the small print,’ the nine year old said, presumably for the millionth time. I now read the small print: ‘all darts must land in different numbers’ it said, in very small print. I shook my head and did some swift mental arithmetic. To score a total of ten or less you had to get one dart in one, one in two, one in three and one in four.
‘Right,’ I said, digging around in my pocket for another pound. ‘I’ll have another go!’
Rachel tried to pull me back, as if rescuing me from a fight outside a nightclub. ‘Don’t!’ she yelled, ‘it’s not worth it!’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ I yelled back. I think I might have winked but again, I hope I didn’t.
I handed the child two demis, he handed me the darts. This was tense. The whole fair, I felt, stopped for a second to watch the action. I raised my first arrow, aimed for the number one, and flung it straight and true. It missed the dartboard completely. The nine year old laughed, betraying some emotion for the first time.
‘You can take that one again!’ he said patronisingly. I was tempted to walk away. I knew that according to the rules, I had already failed. But he’d handed me a lifeline. What did I have to lose – except my already shaky dignity?
This time my first dart landed bang in the middle of the number one. The next two hit their targets too. Suddenly, only one dart stood between me and glory. I closed my eyes and imagined I was taking a penalty for England. I was a Liverpool player taking a penalty for England. I opened my eyes again (I’m not a complete idiot) and threw.
‘You did it!’ shrieked Rachel. ‘You won a “special prize”!’ The nine year old looked with disbelief at the dart, tucked right in the corner of the number four. I had indeed won a ‘special prize’. This was the most daddish of all my achievements to date. Still incredulous, the nine year old gestured to the cities of gold-esque area where the ‘special prizes’ lay.
‘You choose!’ I said gallantly to my wife. She ignored the enormous cuddly lions and tigers, she dismissed the slightly creepy man-sized dogs, and just as David had done in those fragrant Cape Town sewage works, she pointed straight to a four-foot tall pink fluffy flamingo. ‘That’s the one I want,’ she said.
Steven the flamingo now hangs in a fairly dignified manner from a hook in the kitchen, nervously waiting to be mauled by a toddler or two.
Occasionally true to my word, I told my first version of this story at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2007. There I witnessed firsthand the breadth of birdwatching’s appeal as, after every show, a large and varied group of birdwatchers gave themselves away by hanging around to check the full lists of birds seen by me and Duncton that I put up on the screen at the end. They’re on my website (www.alexhorne.com) too, if you’re interested.
Edinburgh Fringe 2007.
I never made it back out to Bass Rock during the festival but I am still watching birds, occasionally rather than regularly, often accidentally rather than deliberately. Whichever way I look at them, birds are definitely on my horizon. A year after Mat and Morri got engaged, the Horne family repeated my in-laws’ trip to the Alps, and on New Year’s Day 2008, our third wedding anniversary, I saw my first golden eagle. My soul was very nearly stirred. It was certainly nudged. Of course it was Duncton, really, who pointed out the undisputed king of birds to the rest of us (all of whom, including Chip, were impressed). Rachel squeezed my hand.
The trouble is, I’m still very much a novice. I’m still amazed that even after a whole year of birdwatching at least once a week every week, I’m still rubbish at it. I really am. When I was eighteen I spent four months in China and picked up a very small amount of the language. I think I still know more Mandarin today than I do birds.
But I do notice birds now. If I’m out walking in the Chilterns I’ll hear the sound of birdsong (over my own mutterings). I’ll stop to listen to it, I’ll enjoy it and just occasionally I’ll recognise it, or at least pretend to. I’m still a proud member of the RSPB and, thanks to a particularly persuasive salesperson, I did renew my subscription to one of the birdwatching magazines.
Elsewhere, Liverpool have twice come close to winning the Champions League again but I think I’m fairly safe in the knowledge that nothing will ever beat that night in Istanbul. I can relax on that front. And England kindly failed to qualify for Euro 2008, so I’ve been able to concentrate on The Good Life in the country without having to worry about whether this will be The Year, or collect stickers to mark the occasion. I’ve been able to settle down for a few months and write this book. It’s been fun. I haven’t driven miles and miles to gigs for a while. Instead I’ve relived my birdwatching adventures and chased up bird facts. I’ve loved trying to put my experiences into words. Rory McGrath wrote a great book about his birdwatching life which came out as I was writing mine. It was frustratingly good, funny and moving. He got into his birdwatching late, like Duncton’s friend Peter, and confesses that, ‘word-watching, as opposed to birdwatching … has been my constant, passive, background hobby’.6
As I wrote this book, I came to understand that words are what I’m mad about too. I’m passionate about lots of things, Rachel, my family, Liverpool even, but words are right up there. Next time, it’ll be them I’ll chase.
Out in Chesham I also realised that wasting words trying to entertain drunken stag nights wasn’t what I wanted to do. I did my last gig in that sort of comedy club on the day I sat down to write about Duncton. Smaller clubs, arts centres, theatres, they’re all places I love and where I’ll hopefully always tell my jokes and stories, but the others just aren’t for me – although I haven’t completely given up on hens just yet.
Not long after moving out of London, Rachel and I decided to speed up the process of enlarging our little family by buying two chickens.7 So although we haven’t quite got round to having kids yet I am now looking after two charming young ladies. They’re called Beyoncé and Shakira, they live in our garden and they each give us one egg a day in rent. They’re our first pets, and I’ve decided that they’re my responsibility. I really am very grown up now.
It’s not strictly birdwatching according to the first rule of our Big Year, but as I scratch around for words in my modest study, I do look down from my window at the two of them, scratching around for worms in the garden. I take some sort of encouragement from their gentle clucks. They’re another welcome distraction.
Duncton hasn’t met the chickens yet. Soon after they arrived, he and Mu
m went off to Sri Lanka for a honeymoon-like holiday. He saw eighty-five new species in three weeks, but managed to restrict his birdwatching to a sensible level that Mum could enjoy. They watched birds together.
It is, after all, a sociable hobby.
One of the birds he found was the Sri Lanka jungle fowl, a distant relative of our own domesticated chickens. As Shakira, Beyoncé, Rachel and I happily pottered about in Chesham, they were roaming wild in the heart of the island’s forests.
My dad is a birdwatcher.
1 This is the birding club that Evans set up and runs, named after the achievement of seeing 400 species in Britain. He himself is one of the few to have seen over 500 and he’s still the Year list Champion of Britain.
2 Although, in the remainder of Duncton’s trip to Ghana he did see another twenty species – but that was well into 2007 and so entirely irrelevant.
3 I won’t spoil the climax of Adrian Riley’s book for you, but during his Big Year in 2001 he did end up seeing more than both these men …
4 In case you’re as interested in statistics as me, the Surfbirds.com World list leader board was topped by a man called Jonathan Roussouw from South Africa who saw a remarkable 2,744 species in his twelve months. Andrew, my guide from The Welsh Harp, came in a very respectable twentieth with a total of 1,154 thanks to trips to Venezuela, Montana and Uganda. I always said he was a cracking birder.
5 Twinned with Friedrichsdorf in German, Houilles in France and Archena in Spain.
6 McGrath famously knows the scientific name of pretty much every bird on the planet, which makes him, in one way, extraordinary, and in another, quite a typical bloke.
7 Female chickens are only actually ‘hens’ when they have laid their first eggs. Before that, they’re ‘pullets’. Our pullets were sixteen weeks old when they arrived. To their and our surprise, they laid their first eggs six weeks later. So, the chickens, officially, came first.
Appendix