by Bill Oddie
Volcanoes are best viewed from a distance. This is not just a matter of health and safety, it is only from far away that you can appreciate the classic volcano shape of a massive inverted ice-cream cone, usually with the summit shrouded in cloud, which is quite reassuring if you had been considering a long trek to the top, because by the time you got there chances are you wouldn’t have been able to see a flipping thing. I speak from experience.
If the volcano was active, you probably wouldn’t want – or indeed be allowed – to approach the crater (TV presenters and film crews excepted, of course) which is fine by me, since the cosmic firework display of molten lava, elastic rock and cascades of fiery sparks looks so much more fun when you are gaping at it from way below, rather than fleeing for your life.
Eventually, of course, most volcanoes run out of steam, smoke and fire, and become habitable by wildlife, especially birds, some of which evolve to become either a new species or at least a volcanic ‘race’. This often involves matching their plumage to the colour of their habitat in the interests of camouflage. Old, cold lava is, of course, black. This has led to some contradictions in our expectations of what colour some birds ‘should’ be. For example, the Seychelles has a ‘black parrot’ which, I’d say, contravenes the Trade Descriptions Act. The Galápagos have a Lava Heron and a Lava Gull, and a cormorant which is a common cormorant colour – black – but has also lost the power of flight. In case you are thinking that all this is the result of insular isolation, take a coach ride to the crater of the volcano just outside San José in Costa Rica and there you will find the Volcano Junco and the Sooty Robin, if you can spot them. Dark grey birds among dark grey rocks are not conspicuous.
Of course, evolution is a slow process. We can’t literally watch it happening. However, 30km off the south coast of Iceland there is a sort of small-scale preview. The island of Surtsey rose from the sea in November 1963. It is therefore approaching its 50th birthday. Indeed, a celebratory conference is going on in Reykjavík even as I write. After eons of volcanic pregnancy, the birth began with several days of underwater contractions, followed by a spectacular eruption of water and smoke, which eventually cleared to reveal a newborn island. This provided a unique opportunity to observe its development, especially the arrival of life.
The only human beings allowed on Surtsey are ‘licensed’ scientists, and the BBC. Well, my film crew and I were. For a couple of hours, about 10 years ago. We were dropped by helicopter and left to tiptoe on hallowed ground. It wasn’t spectacular. A few wisps drifted unthreateningly out of the crater, below which were slopes of slightly warm volcanic dust, as black and as powdery as pepper. At a glance they seemed lifeless, but then I realised they were speckled with tiny pinpricks of green. Seedlings. Not planted, but borne on the wind or on the feathers of birds. I sank to my knees to get a closer look, but it must’ve looked as if I was worshipping the advent of life itself.
My whimsy was interrupted by a bird zipping past me. A single Swallow, intent on becoming a pioneer perhaps? Or prospecting for a new nesting place, perhaps under the eaves of the scientists’ hut? But he mustn’t have liked it. Or maybe he couldn’t find an equally adventurous mate. A recent survey of Surtsey’s breeding birds records only 13 species. Swallow is not one of them. Most are seabirds.
The most numerous land bird – 12 pairs – is the Snow Bunting. There’s an isolated population, living somewhat incongruously in a land of lava. Surely rife for a spot of evolution? Imagine the news: ‘Surtsey’s Snow Buntings turn black!’ Darwin would love it.
chapter twenty-eight
Hearing Test
Some years ago, what I would have called an ‘elderly gentleman’– until I became one myself – hailed me on Hampstead Heath and asked: ‘Where have all the Treecreepers gone?’ Years of being asked this sort of thing have taught me that it is impolite to respond with: ‘There’s one just flown past you and landed on that tree trunk,’ because it could be interpreted as: ‘It’s not the Treecreepers that have gone, it’s your eyesight!’ Instead, with the blasé swagger of a relatively compos mentis 60 year old, I simply replied: ‘Well, actually, I saw a Treecreeper quite recently,’ resisting the urge to add, ‘in fact, I am still looking at it!’ I simply bade him an encouraging ‘good luck’ and pottered off chuckling to myself and muttering: ‘You should’ve gone to Specsavers!’
At which point, I heard the Treecreeper start to sing. But the gentleman didn’t. It was at that moment it dawned on me that I should’ve asked him: ‘How’s your ears?’ I thought of calling back to him, but I didn’t. I was sure he wouldn’t have heard me.
The truth is that what we call ‘birdwatching’ could just as appropriately be called ‘bird listening’. Take a walk in the woods, and you will certainly hear more than you will see. Added to which, it is almost always a call or song that first attracts your attention. Treecreeper is a perfect example. They do exactly what it says on the tin: they creep up trees. A bark-coloured bird on bark. Unless and until they move, they are nigh on invisible, no matter how good your eyes. However, they have a sharp-edged ‘peepy’ little call, and a wispy down-the-scale song, with a debonair little flourish at the end. It is unmistakable, if you can hear it. The problem is that the call and song are very high-pitched – almost up in the range that would annoy bats – and human hearing almost invariably deteriorates from the top. Some people can’t hear Goldcrests. Others can’t hear Grasshopper Warblers. I once did a sponsored birdwatch with a friend who was losing both his hearing and his mobility. We had to carry him to within a few metres of a reeling ‘gropper’ which the youngest ears had detected half a mile away. His cry of ‘I can hear it!’ seemed genuine, but surprised us, because by then we couldn’t! Never mind, it was for charity. The gentleman on the Heath I mentally christened ‘The man who can’t hear Treecreepers.’ ‘I wonder if he knows,’ I mused. ‘Shall I tell him? No. Let’s face it, it’ll come to us all.’
My personal moment of truth occurred about a year ago, in early spring, on top of Parliament Hill, which is generally recognised as one of the best places in London for ‘viz mig’ – visible migration. Some mornings, hundreds or even thousands of birds fly over. I – often accompanied by one or two other viz-mig aficionados – will stand on the hill for hours gazing at the skies and yelling out bird names. Members of the public probably think we belong to some weird esoteric cult, which in a way we do. Even our language is unintelligible to the uninitiated. ‘Ten chaffs going north, four goldies, reed bunt west’ (that’s Chaffinches, Goldfinches and Reed Bunting). At this time of year there will also be many a cry of ‘mipit!’
Meadow Pipits are small streaky brown birds that to me are the true harbingers of spring. More than Cuckoo, Swallow or the first warblers. Most British Meadow Pipits breed not so much in meadows as on moors. Tramp through the heather anywhere from Cornwall to Shetland and you will probably kick out a few ‘mipits’. However, a large percentage of the UK population winter in Spain and southern Europe. In early spring, they come flooding back. Some of them pass over Parliament Hill, flying fast and high.
Some of them are so high that they become ‘inviz mig’, but we know they’re there, because they call. It is not an impressive sound. More of a short squeak, rendered phonetically in the books as tsip, but the consolation is that they call a lot. In fact, I don’t think they are capable of flight without calling. A silent Meadow Pipit has surely lost its voice.
However, one morning in March 2011 my birdwatching chum Dave must have thought I had lost my voice. We were on the hill staring upwards. Every now and then, Dave called ‘mipit!’. I didn’t. I was silent, and – to me – so were the birds. I managed to spot a couple of dots at the sort of height and distance that everything looks much the same. ‘Those two, Dave?’
‘Mipits.’
‘Did they call?’
‘Yes. Several times. Couldn’t you hear them?’ I felt blighted, embarrassed and depressed. The answer was ‘no!’
I am 70. I s
till get out on the Heath, and I still enjoy ‘viz mig’. I can still pick up the flight calls of chaffs, goldies and reed bunts. But, just as my hearing is not what it was, neither am I. I am no longer ‘the man who can identify all the bird calls’, I have become ‘the man who can’t hear mipits!’
chapter twenty-nine
Going Overboard
Some years ago I was offered the job of presenting Breakaway for BBC Radio. I accepted, assuming that it would be tantamount to a world tour subsidised by your licence fees. As it turned out, I never got further than Tewkesbury. I reminded David, the producer, that he had promised me one proper ‘big trip’. Naturally, he honoured his promise. The trip was big in distance but not in length. Costa Rica for three days!
We flew to San José (presumably the same one that Dionne Warwick asked the way to). The first morning, we took a taxi up the local volcano. The higher we drove, the thicker the fog got, until we arrived at the edge of the crater which was totally invisible. ‘Good job it’s radio,’ I muttered, and duly recorded my reactions to an awesome landscape that I couldn’t actually see. We had our first sequence.
For the following day, David had planned an excursion that was guaranteed to be much noisier and have the sort of unpredictable excitement that comes over so well on radio. The taxi dropped us off on a bridge. We were instantly aware of the burbling and roaring of rushing water. Below us, a river – swollen by recent deluges – was in turmoil. It sounded great, but looked fearsome, especially as we were due to go white-water rafting. My feeble plea of: ‘Can’t I just act it?’ was rejected, and I was squeezed into a wetsuit, along with David and half a dozen others – we had a suit each of course. So did an attractive Amazonian blonde American girl who stood astride the prow of our inflatable rubber dinghy and took us through some synchronised paddle exercises. ‘When I say “right”, you guys stop paddling. When I say “left”, you guys…’
‘Stop paddling?’ I pre-empted.
‘You got it!’ she enthused. For 10 minutes we practised, until we were as slickly drilled as a varsity boat-race crew. Then we lowered the dinghy into the water.
There was instant mayhem, as the current swept us downriver, dipping, tipping, swirling and buffeting. Paddle drill went haywire. The Amazon barked: ‘Left, right, left, right!’ She might as well have yelled: ‘Everybody panic!’ David was attempting to shove a microphone in my direction, while protecting his precious tape recorder from the spray. He began to interview me. ‘Apparently it’s really good for wildlife along the river. Tell us what you can see.’ I was on the brink of blasphemy, when the Amazon called our attention.
‘Hold tight everybody (like we needed to be told)! Round this corner yesterday there was a big boulder which could… Oh my God! It’s gone!’ Judging from her tone, this was not good news. Instead of a mighty boulder, there was now a cavernous hole, down which the river was writhing like a maelstrom, as if Costa Rica itself was going down the plughole. The boat tipped sidewise. I fell out.
I remember being under water. I remember reaching upwards and a hand grabbing mine, and I remember being hauled back on board like a harpooned seal. I may have blacked out. I may have fainted. How long I was ‘gone’ I shall never know. The next thing I was aware of, I was kneeling at the prow proudly paddling along Red Indian style. The river was now placid, and there was indeed wildlife along the banks. But I was oblivious. My eyes were glazed. David asked me: ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he continued.
‘No.’
‘I am David, from the BBC.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you know where you are?’
‘Er, no.’
‘We are in Costa Rica. We’re doing a radio piece for Breakaway.’
‘Surely not!’ I responded. ‘We never go further than Tewkesbury.’
Half an hour later, we had moored by a charming riverside café. The dark skins and the colourful cloths and pottery were not typical of Tewkesbury. I told David that I was going to take a birding stroll round the garden, in the hope that whatever species I saw would help me reorientate. ‘Mm, House Sparrow – could be anywhere these days.’ Tennessee Warbler – North America? Montezuma Oropendola – only in South America. Chestnut-mandibled Toucans! I was in Costa Rica!
A few weeks later, I was back in London. David called me: ‘I am afraid the falling in the river thing did spoil some of the recordings. I wonder, could we sort of knock up an ending? I don’t like doing this but...’
‘I do!’ I responded.
So it was that we sat on a bench in the Rose Garden in Regent’s Park, with a washing up bowl and a flannel, with which I simulated the lapping waters of a Costa Rican beach. I was about to bid my listeners a fond farewell, when a couple of Black-headed Gulls began squabbling over a discarded sandwich and started screeching loudly. ‘We can’t have that!’ I pontificated. ‘Why not?’ asked David. ‘They don’t get Black-headed Gulls in Costa Rica. The BBC will get letters.’
I am sure they did.
chapter thirty
Beware of the Cat
(Dedicated to Dave)
No one has seen the Tiger, but we know he’s there. There were pug marks along the main track and claw marks on a tree trunk, which he has been using as a scratching post, just like a domestic cat. Only these marks are four metres high. More than twice my height. A Tiger could reach up and sink its claws into an elephant’s back. Even one as big as the alarmingly large-tusked bull that has just crashed out of the jungle 50m ahead, and now stands staring at us. Is he challenging us to approach or considering whether or not to charge? My Indian guide is clearly unnerved. In my experience, the local people are more wary of elephants than they are of Tigers. It is not surprising. Elephants don’t hide. They don’t skulk and there is usually more than one of them. A Tiger considers a human as food, but to an angry elephant we are enemies, or threats, especially if there are babies to be protected. It is, however, a small consolation that at least you see an elephant coming at you. You wouldn’t see a Tiger. Ever. But we knew he was there.
Next morning there was more evidence. One of the lodge workers had been cycling to work when he noticed a small patch of flattened grass not far from the road. Not wisely, but probably mindful of earning a small bonus, he dismounted and swished towards the patch, shouting and flailing as he went. Tigers only function in silence, so he probably felt safe as he peered forward and saw what every safari guide and tourist is hoping for. A kill. A recent kill. Still bony, still bloody. A small deer, half-eaten, but half not. The Tiger would be back. So would we.
If I am ever asked: ‘Where is the noisiest place I have ever filmed?’ I would say: ‘India, in town.’ The quietest? India, in the countryside. Or at least, that part of Corbett National Park that morning. No rattle of distant vehicles, no rumble of planes, not even the throb of invisible airliners. A single crow of a Jungle Fowl – the ancestor of every barnyard rooster – and a neurotic yelp from a real wild Peacock, both evoked the grounds of an English stately home. The nearby trees weren’t jungle, they were woods. The grassland reminded me of a deer park. Indeed, we had already seen deer, feeding nervously at the edge of the forest. They wouldn’t wander out into the grassland. But we would.
We needed to find yesterday’s kill. My elephant led the way, urged forward by the mahout who sat between its ears and steered by belting the animal over the head with an iron billhook. To me it looked horrendous, but to the elephant it was barely a tickle. I was perched on a wooden saddle, a foot or two lower than the highest claw scratches on that tree trunk. One cameraman stayed on the periphery, with his tripod as steady as a rock on the back of his open jeep. The second cameraman didn’t have a tripod. He was shooting handheld, which should capture the reality and tension of the action. He had three angles: he could grab pictures of the animal (whatever it was), or shoot from my point of view (p.o.v.) so the camera saw what I saw, or he could shoot me and my reactions: antic
ipation, excitement or terror.
Slowly and inexorably we moved into the long grass, known as ‘elephant grass’, because that’s how tall it grows. Once you are surrounded by it, it is scary. Whatever is in there you wouldn’t see, unless it jumped up and waved at you. Or something worse. Against a background of silence, the only sound was the laboriously rhythmic swishing and the muffled ‘flumps’ of the elephant’s footsteps. Now and then the mahout would apply the billhook, we would stop, and he would scan around us. Sometimes he would mutter something, presumably in Hindi. I didn’t understand him, and he didn’t understand me, except he recognised the word ‘Tiger’, which he would then repeat, with a point of a finger or a small flourish of his hand. I took this gesture to mean: ‘There could be a Tiger crouching in the grass only a couple of metres away from us, and we won’t see it because it is so brilliantly camouflaged. If it leaps up, it will have no trouble grabbing you and pulling you off the elephant. So let’s just hope it came back last night and finished off the deer, in which case it won’t be hungry any more, and is probably fast asleep somewhere in the forest.’ Which was just what I was thinking! Amazing what you can convey in sign language.
For more than an hour I remained suspended between fear, anticipation and ultimately disappointment. We found the kill, and tried to convince ourselves that there were signs of recent gnawing – surely that bone was bigger yesterday? – but we couldn’t be sure. We listened for the alarm bark of Spotted Deer, which is a sure sign that a Tiger is not far away. But everything was quiet. ‘Almost too quiet’, as they say in the movies. Another sign that the Tiger was still in the area? Maybe. Maybe not.
As the sun got hotter and the grass began to melt and shimmer with heat-haze, it was no longer Tiger time. The mahout’s billhook engaged second gear and the elephant almost jogged over to the jeep, where the director was looking at the static cameraman’s footage on a small screen. A wide shot of a benign landscape, bathed in gentle mist, and Bill going for a pleasant ride on an elephant. At that distance I certainly didn’t look scared.