Bill Oddie Unplucked: Columns, Blogs and Musings (Bloomsbury Nature Writing)

by Bill Oddie

  The answer was inevitable: ‘We don’t know. Yet!’

  That evening I emailed my friend in New York. ‘Hi Harvey, remember you wanted to see Puffins for Christmas and you were going to come over to Britain? Well, if only we’d known: you only had to go to Newfoundland!’ He responded immediately: ‘Christmas in Newfoundland! You gotta be kidding me! No way!’

  ‘OK,’ I replied, ‘how about Portugal?’ I attached a link to ‘Winter Breaks in the Algarve’. The brochure had pictures of girls in bikinis, bottles of Mateus rosé, sardines on toast, and even a pair of White Storks, but no Puffins. Somebody should tell the tourist board. Harvey still hasn’t seen one.

  chapter eighteen

  Flying Tonight

  You know when tourists float across the African savanna looking down on the wildlife from the basket of a hot-air balloon? It has always bothered me. Not that I have had personal experience. The only balloon flight I have ever taken was over Loch Lomond in Scotland but, as it turned out, I was pretty bothered by that one too. It was both scary and farcical. The wind was very light. We took off vertically upwards, drifted slowly out over the water, and then began plummeting vertically downwards, seemingly destined to pitch in the drink. There were quips about being eaten by salmon and maybe even beavers (surely they have been reintroduced up there?). Such jests were lost on me. I can’t swim.

  Fortunately, our pilot (they do it by willpower!) managed to steer us back over land at the last minute, where we plonked unceremoniously down in a field so glutinously boggy that a local farmer had to be summoned to pull us out with his tractor. However, no sooner had he attached a rope from his vehicle to the basket than the balloon began to rise again, so abruptly that it lifted the tractor clean off the ground, with the farmer still sitting in the driving seat! It was a scene worthy of a Buster Keaton movie (or dare I say The Goodies?) but became less laughable when we realised that the dangling tractor, the farmer, the balloon, the basket and us were now being swept directly towards an electricity pylon and power lines. Happily, the breeze dropped just enough for the ever-increasing crowd from the village to stop laughing, slurp across the bog, grab hold of the tractor and pull us all back to safety.

  But what has this to do with wildlife, apart from the fact that we were filming for the Natural History Unit (so much for health and safety!)? The point is this: while we were noiselessly floating over the farm fields, the animals below seemed to barely notice us. However, when the balloon went for a ‘burn’, horses, cows and sheep scattered and panicked as if they feared imminent attack from a giant winged predator. A balloon burn emits a roar that a T. rex would be proud of. Of course, the wildlife of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara is well used to roaring sounds, so maybe the balloon burns don’t bother them, especially since hopefully Kenyan balloons are less prone to plummeting than our Scottish version and are therefore considered less of a threat. Nevertheless, I am still sufficiently bothered by the African balloon safari ride to have never taken one.

  I have, however, had a Kenyan aerial experience that was surely much more memorable. I was taking part in a 48-hour sponsored bird race. Our challenge was to record as many species as possible in two days. All modes of transport were allowed and, as darkness fell on the first evening, four of us crammed into a tiny four-seater aircraft (plus one more for the pilot) and took off for the coast where we would search for seabirds at dawn the next day.

  We were all pretty exhausted, and within 10 minutes most of us were asleep. Then suddenly we were startled from our slumbers by an almost deafening crack of thunder. Seconds later, the cabin and the sky around us were illuminated by sheet lightning, followed by another gargantuan explosion, and the sort of strobe lighting you are warned not to look at in nightclubs for fear it might trigger an epileptic fit. At the same time, the plane was rattling and rearing as if it were in the fist of King Kong. It was both terrifying and thrilling. People pay good money for this sort of ride at Disney World or Universal Studios. All it lacked was a computer-generated dragon to loom up in the windscreen.

  Suddenly, there it was. Not a dragon. A bird. A big bird. For a few seconds, it flailed its raggedy wings as it nearly crashed into the windscreen. Then it veered away in a final flash of lightning.

  ‘What was that?’ I yelled. One of our Kenyan team members replied confidently: ‘Crowned Eagle.’

  ‘Have we had Crowned?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It’s a new one!’

  A cheer went up. The plane went down. Then steadied, and headed into the storm, and on to the Kenyan coast.

  Balloons? They’re for kids!

  chapter nineteen

  The Call of Nature

  A bogey bird is a bird you haven’t seen but should have. A bogey bird may not be rare but it is elusive. For many years, my bogey bird was Capercaillie – the male is as big as a turkey, makes an unmistakable sound and its location is often well known or even signposted.

  Such was the case in the Spey Valley in Scotland when Stephen Moss and I were working on an early episode of Birding with Bill Oddie. We endured a six-hour, decidedly unmagical mystery tour of the forest trails hoping for at least a glimpse of a Capper, which was ‘definitely here somewhere’.

  We found a feather and a small pile of probable poo, which was later reidentified as ‘dog’ by a man from the RSPB, who declared himself ‘happy that we didn’t see any Cappers, because that meant they were safe in the forest!’. We found it hard to share his happiness. Fortunately, another man from the RSPB had told us that if we had trouble – if! – there were two or three Capper cocks seen regularly near the Osprey Visitor Centre at Loch Garten.

  ‘They are not actually visible from here,’ explained the warden, as we poked telescopes and telephoto lenses through the viewing slots. ‘But we have got a CCTV camera on the edge of the wood that’s giving us great pictures.’ To prove it, he switched on what I had assumed was a telly. Two male Cappers strutted across the screen and squared up to each other, like mythical creatures about to do battle. ‘Is this a video?’ I asked. ‘No, no it’s live. Now.’ he emphasised proudly. ‘They are only about 50 metres away, but they’re behind the trees. You won’t see them.’

  ‘But I already have!’ I countered. ‘OK, they are on a screen, but they are live! So does that count?’ I am sure the warden wanted me to ‘lay my bogey’, as it were, but rules is rules. ‘You can’t tick a bird on the telly. Unless you keep a telly list.’

  ‘Which many birders do,’ I reminded him. ‘Maybe I should start a CCTV list?’ But as if in protest, the screen went blank and the birds disappeared behind a snowstorm of interference. The picture returned, but they didn’t.

  More Capperless years went by, during which I clung to the consolation that one day we would return to Scotland and try again, but Stephen and I didn’t like repeating ourselves. What we did enjoy was going somewhere different, for example, Sweden. We weren’t even making a programme, but had been invited to witness and eulogise about the enormous spring gathering of cranes, of which the people are justly proud, and will be even prouder if the experience becomes a world-famous tourist attraction. It has all the ingredients: the birds look good and sound good, they are enormous, in huge numbers, spectacular as a flock and entertaining as family groups or in pairs, and they dance. Instant gratification guaranteed. Just what tourists need.

  Stephen and I, however, had negotiated something a little more challenging. ‘Have you had enough?’ asked our Swedish host. ‘We need to get you into the forest.’

  The light was verging on crepuscular as we veered off the road and clattered along an ever narrowing forest track. Then we stopped. ‘OK, you get out now. You get in the hide, quickly. I need to leave before the birds see us or they will not come. I shall be back in the morning. Maybe 10 o’clock. By then you will have seen the Capercaillies.’ As he revved into a three-point turn he muttered something inaudible. Was it ‘good luck’? Or ‘fat chance’? The car’s engine churred into the distance like a giant Nightja
r, leaving us engulfed in a forest that was getting blacker every minute. The thick carpet of pine needles suffocated every sound. It was as silent as a graveyard. We shuffled towards our coffin.

  The hide was neither cosy nor comfy. It was basically a large box with a narrow viewing slit at the front, and sackcloth curtains at the back, as the entrance and exit. We unrolled our sleeping bags, no doubt both deducing that a modicum of physical intimacy would be mathematically unavoidable. To minimise the risk, we constructed a low wall between the bags with our boots and rucksacks. Before long, darkness enveloped everything and eventually – after a few minutes of inevitable blokish banter – we both fell asleep.

  We were woken not by the imperceptible brightening of the sky, but by a soft ‘chucking’ sound, not unlike water being poured from a bottle. We knew what it was. Every birder knows, whether they have heard it or not. The ‘song’ of the Capercaillie is one of the most surprising and comical songs in the bird world. The bottle-pouring sound isn’t just repeated monotonously, it rises in speed and pitch and punctuates its climax with a resounding ‘pop’, similar to a champagne cork or a finger pulled out of a cheek. It would be silly enough if it were made by a small bird, but coming from an enormous plump Pickwickian creature it is as hilarious as it is unexpected.

  It is not difficult to impersonate, so I did. Another bird answered. It wasn’t far away. I contorted myself and ricked my neck peering out of the slot. My eyes climbed up a still unlit tree trunk. There – 9 or 10 metres up – hunched on a horizontal branch was my first unambiguous, in the flesh, not on a screen, male Capercaillie. At that moment, it was just a huge black ragged silhouette, but it wouldn’t be long before it flopped down to the forest floor and engaged in some ritual sparring and popping with any other males in the area. All we had to do was to stay in our hide, keep still and quiet, and wait.

  At which point, Stephen whispered in the sort of tone that normally indicates ensuing panic: ‘Bill, I need to go!’ He avoided my incredulous stare by crawling towards the exit. I verbally dragged him back. ‘You can’t!’

  ‘But I need to.’

  I was not sympathetic. ‘Look, we’ve been in here – what? – 10 hours! We’ve only seen a silhouette. If you go outside, it’ll be off! And it won’t come back.’ I could see that he was distressed. ‘Just pee in the corner. It’ll just soak in. I’ll move my boots.’ But he didn’t move.

  ‘That won’t work,’ he winced.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because…’ His hesitation spoke volumes. Talk about mixed emotions: annoyance, sympathy, confusion and a little bit of laughter!

  If Stephen ever runs out of ideas for writing books or producing programmes – which he won’t – there is a career for him as a commando. How he crawled through the sackcloth, did whatever was required, and crawled back again, I shall never know. I shall never know because I couldn’t look for fear of laughing out loud and disturbing the Capper, which was still hunched up on its lofty perch. I was willing it to go back to sleep until Stephen had crawled back by my side. ‘Please don’t go. Please wait till it’s light. Please find a rival and strut around going “pop”.’ It did. With two more. Which is why I now have to nominate another bogey bird.

  Sorry? What do you mean I can’t count it ’cos it was Swedish!

  chapter twenty

  Black and White

  A friend of mine works for the RSPB. One morning, he answered a call from a lady who asked him: ‘I wonder if you could help me. I have just seen a strange bird in my garden.’ If you are ever asked to identify a ‘strange bird’, there are two cardinal rules: first, assume it is a common species. Second, ask what it is doing. In this case, the lady offered that information anyway: ‘It is eating the seeds on my birdtable. It’s got a very pointy beak.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ responded my friend, as if he had already deduced or indeed anticipated what the bird was. ‘What colour was it?’ he asked. ‘Er, sort of pale,’ she replied. ‘Pale brown? Pale grey?’

  ‘Both really.’

  ‘Buff? Pale buff, OK? And any other colours?’

  ‘Yes, on its head, a bit of red, and I think a bit of black.’

  It was time for the third cardinal rule: whatever the bird is, sound excited and share the joy. ‘Oh, great,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a Goldfinch!’ Her response surprised and perturbed him. ‘It was definitely not a Goldfinch.’

  ‘Is it still there?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll have to go and look through the kitchen window.’

  There was a pause while she did. ‘Yes, still there,’ she announced. ‘Still on the birdtable. Well, not actually on it. Standing by it. Pecking at the seed.’

  Curioser and curioser! ‘So, it’s standing by the table and reaching up?’

  ‘No, down. It’s taller than the table.’

  ‘What?! Heron size?’

  ‘Maybe bigger. But sort of heron shape.’

  ‘But it’s definitely not a heron?’

  ‘Of course not. I told you, it has a buffy body and red and black on its head.’

  ‘And it’s bigger than a heron. Blimey! It can’t be!’

  At which moment my friend remembered another cardinal rule: never make assumptions. The bird was not a Goldfinch. It was a crane!

  The incident illustrates a couple of popular birdwatching adages: anything can turn up anywhere, and a rare bird is often a lost bird. One of the major factors is the weather, especially strong winds by which seabirds may be whisked inland and unceremoniously dumped somewhere bizarrely incongruous. For example, the Little Auk that made the front page of the Birmingham Mail by pitching into the ‘Bullring’ in the 1950s, when I was an embryo birder and the Bullring was a characterful open-air market, though still not typical Little Auk habitat. Little Auks belong in the far north of the Arctic, not in the English Midlands. They look like miniature penguins, but they can fly, and are prone to winter wandering round the North Sea, from which they may be plucked by easterly gales and end up ‘wrecked’, which is, by the way, the ornithological term for a bird being blown off-course, not for being sozzled on a Saturday night. Which takes me back to my friend at the RSPB. (No offence, you’ll soon see the relevance.)

  This time the distressed caller wasn’t so much interested in identification as in emergency first aid. ‘I have just found a bird lying on my patio. I think it may be injured. I’ve put it in a shoebox.’ My friend applied the relevant rule: don’t immediately say it is the RSPCA’s problem (even though it is!), show compassion and concern. ‘Oh dear, it’s still alive is it?’

  ‘It was when I last looked,’ she said with no great conviction.

  ‘That’s good. In fact, that’s excellent,’ he added sounding almost excessively effusive. ‘There have been a few Little Auk wrecks reported lately.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know any of the birds,’ interrupted the caller, ‘except Blue Tits.’

  ‘But this bird isn’t blue is it?’

  ‘No, it’s black and white.’

  ‘Good, good. And quite dumpy?’

  ‘Well, yes. But quite little.’

  ‘Exactly. Fantastic! I can drive over and pick it up, in about an hour.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so kind. Should I leave it in the shoebox?’

  ‘Well, what it really needs is to get back to water. Tell you what... Run a cold bath, and put it in there.’

  ‘Should I feed it?’

  ‘Er, if you’ve got any tins of anchovies or sardines?’

  ‘In tomato sauce?’

  ‘No. I’ll bring some fish. I’ll be as quick as I can. And thank you so much for calling!’

  Forty-five minutes later, they were climbing the stairs to the bathroom, discussing the patient’s condition. The lady was clearly upset. ‘It doesn’t seem as lively as it was,’ she whispered. My friend slipped into reassuring doctor mode, tinged with that tingle of anticipation every birdwatcher feels when they are on the brink of a close encounter with a rare bird. But as the bathroom door swung open
, anticipation turned to disappointment, which turned to horror.

  There, floating in the bath, was the bird. Black, white, soggy and obviously totally lifeless. She knew the answer, but she had to ask: ‘Is it all right?’

  ‘No. It is not what I hoped – I mean expected – it to be either. It is not actually a Little Auk. It is a Great Spotted Woodpecker!’

  ‘A woodpecker? Shouldn’t it be in a tree? Oh, poor little thing.’

  ‘Yes, but it obviously wasn’t well when you found it. I might have had to put it out of its misery anyway.’

  The lady was not consoled. ‘Maybe,’ she snapped, ‘but not by drowning it!’

  chapter twenty-one

  Between the Devil and the BBC

  In 2005 I was involved in a pair of programmes for BBC1 called The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs. As befits the grandiose title and the creatures themselves the production was on a pretty large scale. I was on the cover of the Radio Times, overacting between the jaws of a huge metallic model of a T. rex, every tooth as lethal as a javelin. Most of the show was filmed in an enormous studio that was also used to crash-test cars. We used it to crash-test dinosaurs, for example, one elaborate experiment involved propelling half a Triceratops on a motorised trolley straight into a brick wall until its skull shattered and its horns fell off, with a view to judging whether charging head to head with another dinosaur would have had the same effect. It would.

  My personal favourite sequence was when we tested the clobbering effectiveness of an Ankylosaurus’s segmented club-ended tail by releasing a carefully calculated swipe at a frozen turkey. If you are having trouble envisaging that, think of the tail as a golf club and the turkey as a ball. Or the dinosaur as the equivalent of a medieval knight whacking people’s heads off with his mace.

  My personal close encounter with a killer was slightly less spectacular since it was achieved by the device of blue – or in this case green – screen, and involved me having to pretend to be terrified by two brooms leant against a kitchen chair, which – by the wonder of computer trickery – would eventually be replaced by an undeniably scary T. rex. When I saw the effect I was impressed, though I could barely resist shouting out ‘It’s not a killer dinosaur, it’s a mop!’