Bill Oddie Unplucked

by Bill Oddie

  We were now burdened with a double whammy. The planes were still ‘cancelled’, and even worse we knew there were new birds out there – maybe even once-in-a-lifetime endemics – but we couldn’t get at them. So near and yet so far. I decided to console myself with an unescorted visit to the loo. Within seconds, I came rushing out and beckoned my two comrades to follow me back into the cubicle. Perhaps, surprisingly, they willingly did so. What any onlookers thought I can’t imagine. Well, I can, but I’d rather not. We closed the door and clicked on ‘engaged’. Tim, the tallest by far, squeezed between us and examined the window. Yes, a window. Quite a small window, and quite high up. It had frosted glass but it had been left slightly open for ventilation. Tim pushed it fully open, thus creating a luxury birdwatching hide, complete with uninterrupted view and built-in conveniences.

  The only design fault was that the window was so high that only very tall people like Tim could look through it. Small people like me could stand on tiptoe and still barely reach the sill. All I could see was a sliver of blue sky. I could, however, hear Tim’s commentary. ‘Pigeons. Er, White-collared Pigeon. Endemic, I think. And Brown-rumped Seedeaters. Oh, wait, yes, definitely Wattled Ibises. That is an endemic! Can you two see all right?’

  Imagine the scene. A toilet cubicle made for one but accommodating three. Three blokes crammed in like contortionists and lumbered with large backpacks, tripods, telescopes and cameras. There is a very tall man who is able to peer through the little window, a middle-sized one who can just see out if he stands on tiptoe, and a little one – me – with no choice but to clamber up to stand on the rim of the lidless toilet bowl, steadying myself by grabbing the cistern and risking pulling it off the wall and, on several occasions, when I lost balance, grasping at the chain, which saved me from slipping down the pan, but of course kept flushing. The scene reminded me of student days and ‘How many people can you get into a mini?’ or the Marx Brothers’ routine with more and more people cramming into a cupboard. We were in there for maybe an hour. By the time we emerged, the ‘cancelleds’ had been replaced by boarding times and gate numbers, while the story about the military taking the planes had been dismissed as ‘Chinese whispers’. Better still, I had added a dozen species to my international airport list.

  That was 20 odd years ago. Nowadays, Ethiopia is a prime destination for birdwatchers. No doubt there are many books and websites advising ‘where to watch birds in Ethiopia’. I do hope they include the gentlemen’s toilet at Addis Ababa airport.

  chapter nine

  A Whale of a Time

  I have now been on three whale-watching trips in – or should that be from? – Iceland. The first one was quite a few years ago, out of Húsavík in the north. We saw a couple of porpoises and a distant dolphin, but no whales whatsoever. This struck me as worryingly ironic. First, because the intention was to expand whale-watching as a tourist attraction. Second, because it was rumoured that the Icelandic whaling industry – dormant during a moratorium – had announced that it intended to resume its activities. It was a contradiction that to me seemed almost laughable, with only the small consolation that both whale-watching and whaling are a bit of an anti-climax if there are no whales!

  In subsequent years, I have been on enough ‘pelagics’ in various parts of the world to realise that the fact that whales are not visible doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Any cetacean seeker will tell you there will be bad trips and there will be average ones, and now and again there will be a real mind-blower.

  The second Icelandic trip, in August 2012, was not mind-blowing, but it was fascinating meeting and marvelling at the work of IFAW scientists monitoring the impact of the satisfyingly escalating whale-watching business, and meeting a splendidly cosmopolitan team of young volunteers who were intercepting tourists and appealing to them to ‘Greet us. Don’t eat us’ – a plea on behalf of the whales, not the volunteers. A charmingly petite Polish girl had even disguised herself in a less than life-size whale costume, which was extremely hot, heavy and had no proper eyeholes. She could all too easily have toppled off the quayside and into the water, especially if ‘helped’ by anyone protesting about protesters, as it were. ‘Try anything’ tourists intent on sampling local specialities like whale steak can get belligerent if their dining plans – or even their morality – is challenged. IFAW’s lobbying is peaceful, but the response may not be. Fortunately, on this trip I saw only civilised dialogue and this time I did see whales. Several Minkes, mainly some distance away and somewhat prone to diving and then surfacing somewhere you are not looking. The IFAW boat crew seemed reasonably happy with the survey so far, but they were extremely unhappy at another recent rumour that whaling was due to recommence.

  And so to mid-March 2013. The weather was pretty awful. A raw easterly wind, a temperature below freezing and frequent blizzards of snow, hail or freezing rain. But that was in England! Iceland was much more clement. In Reykjavík, there was evidence that there had been a snowfall not long ago, with shovelled white piles at the roadside, and white caps on the distant hills, but the temperature was several degrees warmer than in London, the skies bluer, and sometimes even sunny, and, best of all, the sea was as flat and calm as the colloquial looking-glass. Off we sailed in search of Orcas.

  I have been fortunate to previously have had two pretty memorable Orca experiences. One was in Canada, on Vancouver Island, where the local marine expert has rigged up a network of underwater microphones (hydrophones) out in the bay and quite some distance apart. I sat with him on a couch in his front room as if we were listening to music on his speakers. What we heard was the music of the whales somewhere out in the bay, but ‘coming our way!’ Of course, not even ‘Free Willy’ could have leapt through the bay window, but we were able to anticipate the Orcas’ route, race to the jetty, leap into a speedboat and land – or rather be thrown out – on what we had been told was a small island, but turned out to be little more than a rock! The cameraman and I were almost swept into the water by the swell as a small pod of Orcas hurtled past us like glossy torpedoes, while the sound recordist was lost in his earphones, beaming with delight as he captured enough whale songs to release an album. Cetaceans really ought to get royalties from New Age relaxation records.

  My next Orca experience showed the rather more ruthless side of Killer Whales and also why they deserve that name. We were filming on the Valdes Peninsula in Patagonia, Argentina. Most of the resident wildlife is not difficult to film. Penguins either snooze by their burrows or waddle off to the beach no faster than Charlie Chaplin. Elephant seals behave every bit as badly as they look as though they should. They either lie there farting very loudly, or every now and then a couple of massively misshapen bulls will try to bite each other’s heads off. ‘Normal’ seals were much more pleasing to look at, and to smell. Generally, though, they were not much more active, largely lounging on the sand, occasionally nuzzling their cuddly little offspring, or even nudging them to go for a paddle in the shallows. Not always a wise idea.

  The action that I and the film crew witnessed was unplanned and unexpected. We were literally packing the gear into our van, when someone – I think it was me – spotted a distant fin slicing through the water, parallel to the coast. I held my breath long enough to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Then yelled ‘Orcas! Coming this way!’ The cameraman and sound recordist unpacked and set up their gear quicker than the gunners at the Edinburgh Tattoo. There were four or five fins proceeding with menace, in what was surely a hunting party. The animal that was about to be hunted seemed totally oblivious. Some of the larger seals were lolloping up the shingle to safety. But one didn’t. A little one, a youngster, snuggled in the tideline foam, as cosy as in a duvet. The camera lens swung left. One of the larger whales had split from the group and was surging forward as if he had slipped into a higher gear. As he headed for the shore, he sank under the water. I whispered to the camera: ‘I know what might happen, and I sort of want to see it, but then again, I don’t. Maybe it�
�ll escape.’ At which moment, the cameraman panned onto the baby seal at the tideline. There were three seconds of nothing. Then the Orca leapt into the picture, grabbed the seal and started to shake it violently. Spray spurted everywhere. Soon there would be blood. Killer Whale indeed.

  We expected the whale to slide back with its prey, as sleek and slick as it had come. But it didn’t. Then we realised that it couldn’t. It was probably an inexperienced male. Young and foolish, it had grounded itself on the sandbank and now it was panicking. It had no choice but to grant me my wish. With one last flourish it slung the seal pup back on the beach, and with a final flail and an ungainly lurch, it returned to the sea, and sank out of sight before the rest of the pod could start teasing it. Sometimes you get what you wish for!

  All whales are special. Each species is different. Some barely or rarely break the surface. Others wave to you with their gigantic tails or leap into the air causing a cascade and a mighty splash. Some are still hunted. None should be.

  Happily, Orcas are more suited to catching food than becoming it, though they have their problems, not least from ever-increasing noise pollution in the world’s oceans. Drop a hydrophone into the water and listen on earphones. The first time I did that – in the Moray Firth in Scotland – I was half-deafened by a noise that sounded like Status Quo tuning up, or a race day at Brands Hatch. It was actually the engine of a single ship over half a mile away. Imagine the confusion and chaos this must cause to the subtle and complex communications of Orcas and other cetaceans.

  And so to my most recent experience of Orcas, only (as I write) a couple of weeks ago. This time our boat sailed from somewhere I can neither remember, spell nor pronounce, but it wasn’t a long way from Reykjavík. I have learnt to ration my optimism when setting out whale-watching, but folks around me showed no such restraint. In fact, I have never known such confidence. I was assured that ‘the sea will not be rough’ – and it wasn’t. I was told ‘we will see Orcas’ – and we did! Just don’t ask me where!

  I do know that for the past two years huge shoals of herring have appeared so close to land that at one period thousands of them beached on the shore, at first providing great scavenging for gulls and White-tailed Eagles, then feed for domestic animals, and finally disintegrating into a pretty disgusting eye-and-nose-sore! Orcas would of course demand fresher fish. And for two years they have been getting them as the shoals of healthy herring have increased. And so too have the number of Orcas.

  Whale-watching has never been easier. We simply sailed into the shelter of the bay, cut the engine and dropped a hydrophone to provide the live soundtrack of clicks, cries, howls, barks and no doubt all sorts of sounds that are beyond our frequencies. Are they just echolocation and contact calls? Or is it a language? Is it gossip? It was tempting to believe the latter. After all, there were quite a lot of them. Counting wasn’t easy as they rose and dived, whacked fish with their tails, grabbed them in their teeth and finally swallowed them before popping up again, waving their dorsal fins. When several do that at the same time it looks like the bay has been invaded by a regatta of black sails. How many did we see? I’d say at least 30.

  By the end of March, the Orcas will have refuelled with herring and there will come a day when the whale-watching boat will be disappointed. We don’t know where the Orcas go. Surely not to Vancouver? Patagonia maybe? Or do they swim south-east, to South Africa, Sri Lanka or Malaysia? Orcas have an almost worldwide distribution. Just like us. We can’t even be certain that they will return to Iceland later in the year. We hope they will. We hope that people will be able to enjoy them. And we hope that whaling will soon become a thing of the past.

  chapter ten

  Galapagoing

  I first saw the Galápagos in black and white. When I was a lad, it seems that hardly a week went by without a new Darwin drama/documentary on telly, usually called something like ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’, or the ‘Origin of Species’, or maybe just ‘Darwin’. They weren’t what we now know as natural history programmes. They featured actors playing historical characters, wearing period costume and jotting in their journals while tiptoeing through the iguanas. Sort of Life on Earth meets Downton Abbey.

  Thinking back, it is pretty amazing that these shows were filmed on the actual location. It wasn’t the Scillies pretending to be the Galápagos. Nor was it possible to hire the wildlife from Animal Actors. A few sealions could have been procured from an aquarium, but I know of no pet shop in the world where you can buy a full set of Darwin’s finches. These riveting programmes really were created out in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles west of Ecuador and – especially with the advent of colour television – we could all see that the Galápagos archipelago was a truly extraordinary place. Not only were many of the species endemic and extremely rare, but they lived in a bizarre volcanic landscape. The Galápagos seemed to me to combine qualities that were intrinsic to maximum wildlife enjoyment: a context of characterful or impressive scenery, an abundance of creatures and a scarcity – or complete absence – of human beings.

  The only people we saw on these TV ‘reconstructions’ were the actors portraying Mr Darwin, a few of his companions, and perhaps a misguided mariner who caught and cooked a Giant Tortoise for supper, and thus provoked a lecture from Mr D on the sacrosanct uniqueness of the island creatures. This scene would be followed by Darwin wandering pensively alone until his attention is drawn to a small flock of what look like female House Sparrows. He notes and sketches their variable beak sizes and emits a quizzical ‘hmmmm’. An historic revelation is nigh! At which point, the soundtrack soars, the credits roll and we have to wait till next week’s episode. For many years this was my vision of the Galápagos: a remote haven where wildlife could bask, swim, fly and multiply, and where a man could be alone.

  That vision was still in my head, when in 1986 I accepted an invitation from a travel company to join a party of a dozen journalists on a small boat taking a short cruise round the Galápagos. Such a thing is known as ‘a press trip’. Not to be confused with a press-gang, though in this case there were similarities. I had envisaged flying on a petite ‘Island Hopper’ plane, like the ones that have ferried me round Shetland or The Seychelles. Instead, we were herded onto a Boeing 727. Three hours later we were herded off at Baltra airstrip, not certain if we were guests or prisoners. We were lined up by a rather stern young woman in a bright yellow jacket and matching skirt who informed – or warned – us that once we had cleared passport control, we would be shouted at by men with megaphones. We must listen for our name and follow our man.

  There were several men, but no megaphones. Instead, they all shouted names in the general direction of the tourists who had arrived on the 727. They were typical tourists. No recognisable scientists, no TV presenters – not even David Attenborough before he was a ‘Sir’ – and no actor in a frock coat giving us his Darwin. I was disappointed. I also had a feeling of foreboding. Over the following three and a half days, the disappointment increased and the feeling was fulfilled.

  It started well enough. Within not much more than an hour, we were being encouraged to hop carefully from a gangplank onto the slippery rocks of a seabird island. It was not dissimilar from landing on Inner Farne, except that instead of Grey Seals bobbing around our boat, there were sealions. Black-headed Gulls were replaced by Lava Gulls (very rare) and Swallow-tailed Gulls (very beautiful), while lowering above us were massive frigatebirds, hooked beaks and jet black, like a cross between a vulture and a pterodactyl. Most of us stopped to gaze upwards and around, but our reverie was shattered by a voice that sounded like a female sergeant major. ‘Attention! Keep up please. Keep up!’ The lady in yellow who had met as at the airport was not only the tour company ‘rep’, she was also the tour guide. She shouted out a few names: ‘Blue-footed Booby, Marine Iguana’. I ungraciously whispered to one of the journalists: ‘A yellow twin set? Is she an air hostess or a chalet girl from Hi-de-Hi!?’ ‘She’s certainly not a wildlife expert,’ muttered ano
ther journalist, who had failed to extract any information from her that was any different from what was in the official guidebook. I sighed, found myself a comfy rock and crouched down to enjoy the company of a pair of Blue-footed Boobies, in the hope of photographing their high-stepping mating dance – surely the inspiration for John Cleese’s silly walk – but no sooner had I adjusted my f-stop than I was summoned by ‘teacher’. ‘Hurry up, please! Get a move on!’

  This I was not happy about. I was even less thrilled when the next day we sailed six hours to the Darwin Centre, where we barely had time to make Lonesome George feel less lonesome (sadly, of course, he is now an ex-Giant Tortoise) before we set sail for another four-hour journey to a beach where the number of iguanas was almost matched by the number of tourists, each group being herded and chivvied by lemon-suited guides. It wasn’t crowded, but it certainly wasn’t secluded.

  Frankly, I was beginning to feel hassled. So were most of my fellow journalists. Murmurings of discontent evolved into words of protest when the next day’s schedule was announced. ‘We will sail north to the island of the Waved Albatross.’