by Bill Oddie
‘What’s it done now?’ I enquired with appropriate neighbourly concern.
‘The damn thing’s stolen my slippers!’
‘He came in the house?’
‘No. Yesterday evening, I left my slippers out on the patio, and he’s had ’em!’
I had to chuckle. So did his wife. Eventually, so did he. ‘Ah well,’ he sighed philosophically, ‘I’ll just have to take it out on the leaf blower.’
‘You do, and I’m going to get next door’s shot gun!’
My threat was obliterated by the cacophony of the infernal machine. It also covered the startled squawking of half a dozen panicking parakeets that had been dangling on my peanuts.
As they swooped over my neighbour, he looked up, and I swear I read his lips: ‘Mm. They are rather pretty. But what a horrible row!’
I should say so. He sounded worse than a dentist’s drill.
chapter three
Young People Today
Earlier this year the National Trust published a booklet called Natural Childhood, motivated by the assumption that most children these days don’t have one! Indeed, the syndrome is so dire that it has been designated an adolescent illness: Nature Deficit Disorder, which – translated from the American – means ‘not enough nature’.
The national newspapers were intrigued, especially by a list entitled: ‘50 things to do before you are 11¾’, which could, I suspect, be retitled ‘50 things National Trust members used to do when they were kids’. No offence, but I can’t imagine that many primary schoolchildren are National Trust members, or that they’d appreciate oblique Adrian Mole references. The list is clearly a nostalgia-fest, compiled by ‘oldies’, which could have been headed: ‘What we used to do when we played out.’ A phrase now long obsolete.
So what is on this pre-teen bucket list? Some suggestions are obvious enough. Climb a tree. Make a mud pie. Bury someone in the sand. That one worries me a bit, especially in the absence of Dig them up again or Turn yourself in at the police station. Nevertheless, as I perused further, I often nodded my approval, but I also noted the absence of any of the things that had connected me to nature when I was a little lad. Perhaps the National Trust decided not to condone them because they were illegal! Such as…
Scrumping apples. A euphemism indeed. Stealing apples more like. During 2011’s riots people weren’t saying: ‘Hey, let’s go and scrump some 42-inch TV sets!’ Scrumping was fruit theft, but it lured the immature me into orchards and gardens, neither of which were familiar features of industrial Lancashire where I lived.
Bird egg collecting. Now illegal, and always reprehensible, but every schoolboy did it, and whenever I am asked how I got into birds and birding, songs, calls and habitats, I can only truthfully answer: ‘By going egg collecting’.
Trespassing. When I were a lad, trespassing was unavoidable, simply because anywhere that was good for nature was also private. Notices told us that ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’. Or to ‘Keep Out’. Of course, we didn’t, though getting in often involved danger or pain. Reservoirs were usually ringed by iron railings with spikes on top. Climbing them risked being skewered like a kebab. Sewage farms were fortified by high walls with broken glass on top. Farmland was more protected than a prison camp. The amount of barbed wire we had to climb over or under would have challenged Steve McQueen on his motorbike. Nor did we always make a Great Escape, and many’s the time I felt the cuff of a farmer’s horny hand, but it was a small price to pay to snaffle an egg from a Lapwing, Skylark or Yellowhammer, while honing nest-finding skills that Sherlock Holmes would have been proud of. So, I can’t deny it, the thing that connected me to nature was crime!
But lurking behind my facetiousness, perhaps there is some deeper truth. A large part of ‘playing out’ was the thrill of dares and danger. The excited nervousness of possibly getting caught, or even prosecuted, whatever that was!
The fact is, we wanted to be naughty. All kids did, and all kids still do.
It is a fact that the National Trust booklet acknowledges. It could be subtitled ‘How to let kids take acceptable risks’. However, will those risks be acceptable to health and safety? Or to paranoid parents? Or can they compete with the ‘virtual’ risks you can take in the latest version of Tomb Raider or whatever?
Changing the habits of children won’t be easy, but there is an even tougher task. It is not just children who are suffering from Nature Deficit Disorder. We all are. So is the whole world.
WILD WORLD
chapter four
New-fangled Birding
‘When I were a lad, we didn’t have binoculars. We had to make do with two toilet rolls and an elastic band.’
‘And if you wanted a telescope, you carved one out of a marrow.’
‘And there were no bird books. None at all. I tell a lie, there was one. Only it didn’t have any birds in it. It didn’t have anything in it. No pictures. No words. No point! We never saw anything. Nothing at all. But that didn’t stop us going birdwatching. Every weekend, we’d ring our friends and tell them where we’d seen nothing, so they could come and see nothing with us. Things have changed since then.’
They certainly have. What’s more, I am old enough to have witnessed – and benefited – from the many advances in birding equipment and techniques. I have seen telescopes turn from burnished brass into grey rubbery plastic stuff and shrink from the size of a blunderbuss to a small vacuum flask, thus evolving into ‘spotting scopes’. Binoculars have basically retained their shape, and presumably always will – unless we evolve a third eye – but they are lighter, optically impeccable and bank-breakingly expensive. Bird books are arguably out of control, and indeed there may well now be more books than birds. In fact a cull may be necessary to make way for the proliferating DVDs, websites, apps and so on. The advances in communications have been entirely beneficial. Time was when birdwatchers rang each other and relied on ‘the grapevine’ for news. This became focused by Birdline’s Rare Bird Alert, which could be consulted on a new-fangled ‘mobile’, which begat the ‘pager’, and has now evolved into the ‘smartphone’. Don’t you just hate that word ‘smart’? It sounds so smug. Or is it me being intimidated by technology?
The truth is that, having been out of the loop (and into the ‘loopy’?) for a year or two, I have only recently re-emerged into the current birding scene. I chose to dive in at the deep end by going on a trip to Guatemala, where the birds were almost totally unfamiliar, and the forests dauntingly dense. My first day out, I floundered.
‘What’s that?’
‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘It’s flown.’
‘It’s back.’
‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘Gone again’.
‘Lost it. Aaagh!’
I have rarely felt so inadequate. Nor so envious of my companions, who were mostly calmly and confidently calling out the sort of names you only get in South America: ‘Scaly-throated Leaftosser.’ (honestly!)
‘Blue-crowned Chlorophonia.’ (is that a bird or a disease?)
‘Northern Bentbill!’
‘Oh, come on! It can’t be.’ It is. Just flown out of the palm tree. And … ‘What’s that?’ This time there was no ‘call’. I realised that I was about to get my first demonstration of birding in the digital age. This is how it works.
The first requirement is physical. You need to be strong enough to carry binoculars, a telescope on a sturdy tripod, hooked over one shoulder, and a huge backpack, containing all manner of digital gear – soon to be revealed – and a laser pen. Yes, one of those things some twerp tried to blind Ronaldo with, or dazzle Andy Murray. I had regarded it as a weapon, until I went birding in Guatemala.
More than once I watched the routine spring into action. It went like this.
1: someone spots a little brown bird. But 2: no one knows what it is. While 3: I can’t even see it. So 4: somebody points the laser pen, and a red or green dot flits up and down
a huge tree until it hovers and stops. Pen man announces 5: ‘The bird is 6 inches above the light.’ Which, 6, it is. But what is it? Then 7: strong man steps forward, with digital camera fitted with a lens as big as a bazooka. The bird is tiny and nearly half a mile away, and yet the camera clicks and whirrs. Next 8: we all peer at the screen. A brown speck is just about visible, until 9: the digital zoom is activated, and the image magnifies so rapidly it is as if the bird is charging straight at us. Magnified to ultra-close-up, we can now see every stripe, streak and feather margin. The cameraman is even able to calculate the length of the wing! Until 10, an identification is mooted: ‘Probably Yellow-bellied Flycatcher’. By now, at least three smartphone screens are touch-scrolling through Flycatchers of Central America, while a nearby iPod broadcasts a wispy snatch of virtual birdsong, at which the non-virtual bird flies closer and joins in, and ‘probably’ becomes ‘definitely’.
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. Tick.
So, is it progress? Or is it ‘cheating’? Or do you miss the days of toilet rolls and marrow? I do.
chapter five
Climb Every Mountain
Any birdwatcher who keeps a world list is bound to have visited a few volcanoes. In order to see a Volcano Junco, you must go to Costa Rica and ascend to the edge of the crater of the Poás Volcano. It’s not too arduous if you do it in a charabanc. The junco isn’t spectacular: it looks rather like a smoked sparrow and is lava-coloured. So are a lot of lava-loving birds. On the volcanic Galapagos, the Lava Heron is black. So is the Lava Gull. (A seagull that isn’t white! Doesn’t seem right does it?)
Of course, these species are examples of a well-known natural law: that creatures are often the same colour as their surroundings. Mind you, by that token, rainforest birds should all be green, and wet. Some of them are. However, others are dazzlingly and almost luminously multicoloured, even some of those that live on volcanoes. But then not all volcanoes are covered in lava.
About a year ago, I joined a small party of British, American and Dutch journalists who had been invited to sample some of the birds of Guatemala. We were guests of Guatemala Nature Tours. We started with a couple of days of sociability and some gentle lowland birding, including a cruise across one of the calmest and bluest lakes I have ever seen, made all the more stunning by the reflections and backdrop of not just one but several volcanoes. Every now and then we were distracted by a distant rumbling. Thunder? Quarry blasting? It was coming from high in the mountains. Our binoculars revealed plumes of smoke and at least two of us swore we saw the earth move.
We were, however, assured that an eruption was not imminent. This was comforting news, since we had been told that our post-breakfast walk was going to be ‘up the volcano trail’. It was at this point that I beckoned to our tour leader. I explained that I had spent a fair chunk of the past year in and out of hospital, and that the only walking I had done for several months was a casual stroll on Parliament Hill, which is quite steep but hardly competes with a volcano. Another member of our group sensed my trepidation and expressed concern about his ‘dodgy knees’, while a third asked that his advancing years be taken into account, at which I muttered that my years were further advanced than his. The tour lady assured us that we would all be fine. ‘It is a good trail. Up through the forest. We will have a little rest at the lookout, then carry on to the crater if you want. Or we can just keep birding.’
‘How long will it take us?’ I asked. She hesitated. Was it because she didn’t know or because she didn’t want to tell us? ‘About three hours I think.’
‘There and back?’
‘Three hours each way.’
‘So six hours!’
‘Maybe. Yes.’
It took us 12! Six up. Six down. Twelve hours! Well that’s how long I took. The youngest and fittest took maybe about eight. Dodgy-knee man took nearer 10, while Mr Advancing Years apparently gave up at the lookout.
Oh yes, while we are at the lookout, what did we look out at? Trees. Miles and miles of trees. The same trees that grew alongside and over the trail so that the sun rarely broke through. The same trees whose tangled roots snaked upwards through and across the path and grabbed our ankles and tripped us up. The trees that hemmed us in on all sides and made sure the view from the lookout was the only one we got. That’s the thing about volcanoes, once you are on ’em, you can’t see ’em. Snow-capped peaks can only be viewed from a distance.
We trudged upwards and then downwards. I fell further and further behind the main party. A guide was assigned to stay with me, to catch me if I collapsed and, if necessary, to carry me. It wasn’t necessary – quite – but, at least a dozen times coming down, my legs turned to jelly and gave way, so that I slid on my back for several yards, always yelling: ‘It’s OK! It’s OK!’ to reassure my sherpa that I hadn’t had a heart attack.
Then it began to get dark. Any recognisable friendly voices had long since faded way ahead and below us. I had visions of my so-called friends piling into our minibus and driving off to quaff cold beers at a local bar. Meanwhile, somewhere on the mountain, there was me and my guide. Babes in the wood. We were enveloped in total blackness, apart from the feeble beam of a small torch, which cast shadows and made the forest even spookier. As I stopped for yet another rest, my wheezing and heavy breathing added to the soundtrack until it subsided into silence. If it had been a movie, there would have been a pause, then an ominous distant rumble, exploding into a mighty crash. And a panicked voice announcing: ‘The volcano! It’s erupting!’ But it wasn’t.
There was, however, a more incongruous sound approaching: Michael Jackson singing ‘Thriller’! Then, a manly duo joined in the chorus in what I suspect were meant to be zombie voices. Not me and my guide. Two armed policemen who had been sent to make sure we came to no harm. I was relieved. Both by their presence and by the fact that it had only just struck me that – like most Central American countries – Guatemala has not long been free of bandits and guerrillas. Unfortunately, despite warnings, European birders are notorious for wandering off into the woods in pursuit of some local speciality.
Talking of which, you may be wondering what birds we saw up the volcano. In all honesty, not a lot. There were several species of wintering North American warblers, and the occasional glimpse of a woodcreeper, but frankly we’d had better views in the lowlands where the canopy wasn’t quite as dense. There was, however, one specific reason we needed to get up to high altitude. To search for a quintessential ticking target, the Highland Guan, which sounds like a Scottish folk dance, but looks rather like a tree-dwelling turkey. It has red feet and a red wattle, but is otherwise, well, lava-coloured. It is also big. Worth a 12-hour hike?
I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see it. None of us did.
PS. It needn’t happen to you!
Guatemala is a fascinating country, with stunning scenery and terrific wildlife. Just make sure you check the itinerary, and don’t try and do too much. Mind you, if your main concern is the length of your checklist, choose a specialist travel company, and go for it.
chapter six
Birds Online
In the olden days, nearly every year I would spend a week or so during the migration season on the tiny Shetland island of Out Skerries. There were no trees, no hedges and no electricity, which meant of course that there were no telegraph poles and no wires. Skerries was therefore in effect a perchless zone. Small birds had to make do with drystone walls and a few crofters’ roofs. Then came a historic day. The generator chugged into silence, an underwater cable brought energy from the mainland, and up went the poles and the power lines. Most of the islanders were pleased, a few protested, but I was delighted. I was also excited, as I anticipated which species would be the first bird on the wire.
I predicted Wheatear, expected Meadow Pipit, but was thrilled when it was a Cuckoo, a bird we frequently hear but rarely see, unless it is perched out in the open – for instance, on telegraph wires. I am sure most birdwatchers have wondered: ‘What would we
do without wires?’ More to the point: ‘What would the birds do?’
Most ‘accidental’ man-made perches have their natural equivalent. A TV aerial is an iron treetop. A chimney stack is a brick tree stump. Both are ideal song perches. Likewise, drystone walls are rocky hedges, and dangling ropes could be lianas. But where in nature will you find a long length of highly strung horizontal cable, thin enough for a bird to grip, and with an unimpeded view, affording safety from predators and a lookout for prey, not to mention a symmetrical gathering point for the flock whose members like to line up together? Is there any image more iconic of migration than newly arrived or ready-to-depart Swallows dotted along the wires, like musical notes on the stave, or clothes-pegs on a washing line?
Poles and power lines are also much favoured by the ‘perch and pounce’ predators, principally birds of prey, such as shrikes and kestrels, with talons small enough to grip, and tails long enough to balance. Peregrines and buzzards pose on posts, often so still that they seem to be growing out of the top, or maybe carved like a totem, until they suddenly launch themselves either skywards, or downwards onto a rambling rodent. The most regal raptors claim the most majestic thrones. There is an area in Israel where a veritable forest of giant pylons undeniably constitutes one of the grossest blots on the landscape you will ever see, but it is arguably also the best place in the country for seeing a selection of large falcons and even larger eagles.
Poles and pylons also provide nest sites for a few species: Ospreys, storks, weavers and woodpeckers (as long as the pole is wooden, not steel!). Monk Parakeets build a ramshackle colonial nest the size of a small car and are capable of plunging a whole neighbourhood into blackout.