by Bill Oddie
But you can’t edit a live programme. I recall several times on Springwatch when there was adverse audience reaction. The pair of House Sparrows that was guilty of exhibitionist coupling; the Blue Tit that brandished the corpse of its dead chick, before ejecting it from the nestbox; and the famished adolescent Barn Owl who staved off starvation only by gobbling up his baby brother. Yes, there were some complaints, but it was nobody’s ‘fault’. The show was live. We didn’t know what was coming. But if we had known, would they have been shown? I suspect they would. But there was one that definitely wasn’t.
It was on Wild in Your Garden, live, from Bristol. There were cameramen everywhere, secreted behind bins and fences, and in sheds and hides. One of them was Dave (not his real name). It was only when I saw him in the supper queue that I remembered he’d been staked out near a birdtable all day. Obviously, the control room had completely forgotten he was there! ‘It’s a pity,’ he grumbled, ‘because I got some great Sparrowhawk action.’ He invited me to watch a playback. It started with the hawk perched on a fence. Then it took off. Dave followed its every twist and swoop until it grabbed a Starling in midair. It then flapped off to a fence post and – holding the Starling down with one foot – and gripping its frantically flailing wings with the other, it proceeded to rip at the Starling’s chest with a bill like a meat hook, and began eating it alive!
What did that lady say? ‘It might be natural, but I don’t want to see it.’ Nobody did.
INFINITE VARIETY
chapter fifteen
Out for the Count
‘The hobby that dare not speak its name.’
Well, that’s how it used to be. By the time I was seven, I knew I was a birdwatcher. I didn’t admit it till I was 10. The response of my peers was puzzlement, derision and mockery. ‘Birdwatching? How soppy! Why can’t you go scrumping apples and pulling girls’ pigtails like us normal schoolboys?’ Adults were just as indifferent, but men could rarely resist coming out with that most tedious of ‘bird jokes’: ‘Oh yes. I’m a bit of a birdwatcher too! Two-legged kind, eh? Eh?’ I endured that several hundred times, before I finally discovered the deserved riposte, which is: ‘All birds have two legs. Unless they’ve been in an accident and lost one, in which case it’s very distasteful to laugh at crippled creatures.’
The ‘I’m a bit of a birdwatcher too’ quip is still going pathetically strong, but the joyous truth these days is that many people are. ‘What, the feathered kind?’ Yes. Indeed, things have changed so much since I were a lad that, instead of being an esoteric minority activity, birdwatching is arguably the fastest-growing leisure pursuit in the world. Well, that’s what I read in the business section of an American Airlines in-flight magazine about five years ago. It has probably been overtaken since by ballroom dancing and tweeting, but nevertheless it is undeniable that birdwatchers are no longer alone. We are out – outdoors that is – and proud. No longer are little lads and lasses teased about their hobby. Parents encourage them. A lot of them join in.
However, birdwatchers are not all unified as one harmonious band, but that is no bad thing. One of the delights and allures of birds is that they can be enjoyed in so many ways. Some people draw and paint them. Others photograph and film them. Some record their songs. Others ‘twitch’. By the way – press and media please note – ‘twitcher’ is not simply a synonym for ‘birdwatcher’. In the same way that a sprinter is an athlete, but an athlete is not necessarily a sprinter, a twitcher is a birdwatcher, but a birdwatcher is not necessarily a twitcher. Twitching is the often rather frantic pursuit of rare birds. We’ve all been on an occasional twitch, but a serious, knowledgeable birdwatcher who is not obsessed with his or her ‘list’ would prefer to be called ‘a birder’. I am a birder.
I am not a ‘bird spotter’, an expression that belongs in pre-War Boy Scout manuals and I-Spy books. Nor would I claim to be an ‘ornithologist’, a title which implies scientific knowledge, a capacity for protracted study, an understanding of graphs, figures and statistics, and possibly a doctorate. Finally, at the opposite – but not bottom – end of the birdwatcher’s league are people who put out bird food in their gardens, may not even be able to identify all the species, but simply enjoy having them there. Let’s just call them bird lovers. Actually, we are all bird lovers aren’t we? Birdwatchers, twitchers, ornithologists, birders, even bird spotters (if they are not extinct), we need you all.
At various times of the year, the RSPB, the BTO, the Wildlife Trusts and others organise surveys and events which you can take part in whatever you call yourself! Visit the websites for full details, including help with identification.
Facts, figures and fun.
This piece helped to publicise the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch.
chapter sixteen
Blowing in the Wind
‘Twitchers flock to see rare bird!’ So says the headline above a photo of a couple of hundred bearded blokes with binoculars. But what actually constitutes rarity? Well, in this context we are not talking ‘endangered’ (apart from being trampled by twitchers) nor does it refer to a scarce breeding species. The rare bird that hits the headlines and attracts the crowds is usually on its own, and probably confused. A rare bird is a lost bird. Alternative names confirm just that: an ‘accidental’, a ‘vagrant’, a ‘drift migrant’. That one sounds almost romantic, but it isn’t. A bird’s migratory journey is a risky enough business, without wandering off-course and ending up where it didn’t mean to go. Not surprisingly, it mainly happens to long-distance migrants. The ones that boggle us by the distances they fly and the routes they take, across oceans, deserts, mountains, forests and cities. Why do they get lost? Sometimes it is a malfunction of their navigation system. A dodgy satnav. Mainly, it is the effect of extreme weather. Sometimes extremely good weather.
In spring, a migrant flying north may get literally carried away by the ease and joy of soaring in clear blue skies on a warm southerly breeze and unwittingly overshoot its intended destination. A warbler that meant to nest in France may end up in Shetland. It won’t find a mate. It won’t find its way back either. It is lost, it is rare, it may well get twitched.
In autumn, it is most likely to be strong winds that are the problem. Migrants get blown off-course. Powerful air streams from the east, from Europe and beyond may transport birds from as far away as central Russia or Siberia. Birdwatchers call these birds ‘sibes’.
But most of our wind comes from the west, sometimes originating in America and crossing the Atlantic, heading for the UK. On 6 September, I was heading for the Isles of Scilly, off Cornwall. At the same time, racing north-east off the coast of North Carolina, was Hurricane Irene, or was it Kate? Or Katia? I don’t remember her name, but she was a fast lady. In not much over a day she swept across ‘the pond’, expending so much energy that she was demoted to a ‘tropical storm’, and then veered north to give the Hebrides and western Scotland a good lashing and a gigantic cold shower.
In Scilly, we only felt Katia’s tail-end, but that was frisky enough to make my walking against the wind far more authentic than anything Marcel Marceau ever achieved. I headed for calm in the lee of a hill, suspecting that any sensible birds would do the same. I felt barely a breeze as I leant on a five-bar gate and scanned the field in front of me. It was a grassy field. Not long grass, but not very short either. Bisecting it was what looked like a wide bare earth path, which I later discovered was the aftermath of recent pipe burying. The scar was sandy, with a few pebbles and a shallow puddle. ‘Wheatear habitat,’ I predicted as I scanned. But there were no wheatears. ‘OK, then, wagtails.’ Sure enough, a White Wagtail trotted out and duly wagged its tail. ‘And, what is that?’ A little bundle of pearly-edged feathers. Asleep? Exhausted, more like. A Buff-breasted Sandpiper. Just flown in – or blown in – from America. Or rather from Arctic Canada. That is where Buff-breasts breed. Most of them migrate south to Argentina down the Great Plains flyway, but most years a few reach Britain and Ireland, and Scilly
.
As this fragile little traveller sighted the islands it must have sought out somewhere it felt comfortable, somewhere that reminded it of home, a tiny patch of surrogate tundra, a scratchy path scoured by the local pipe-layer, and a puddle just like the ones left by melting snow. OK, not exactly the Yukon, nevertheless comfortingly familiar. If only it had carried on for another mile or two to the island of St Mary’s and checked out the airport, it would have found lashings of close-mown grass and another seven Buff-breasted Sandpipers! Next day, it joined them. Eight Buff-breasts together! That’s not a vagrant, it’s a flock!
Which makes me wonder, do they really all get blown over, and then find each other by luck? Or do they mean to come the transatlantic route, having prearranged a rendezvous? Great Plains? Boring! See you in Scilly.
chapter seventeen
Puffin Billy
Back in the 1990s, an American friend and his wife came over from New York to spend Christmas in Britain. In early December, he rang me and announced: ‘We have decided to give ourselves an early Christmas present. We want to see a Puffin. So, your present to us is to tell us where to go, as it were (some Americans do do irony). Can you do that?’ ‘No,’ I replied firmly. He was understandably taken aback. Was divulging the whereabouts of Puffins a threat to national security perhaps? He confessed he’d been doing some research. ‘What about Lundy island? Lundi means Puffin doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but you won’t see any there.’
‘Shetland?’
‘No.’
‘The Fern Islands?’
‘Farne Islands. Best place in Britain to get really close to seabirds.’
‘So can’t we go there?’
‘You can, but you won’t see any Puffins. Not at Christmas. But if you can stick around till Easter…’ At which point, he figured it out. ‘Ah, so Puffins breed in Britain, but they don’t winter there.’
‘You got it.’
‘So where do they winter?’
‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. Presumably out in the ocean. Probably in the Atlantic.’
‘Only probably?’
‘We are not even sure about that. The truth is we simply have no idea where Puffins – and other seabirds – go in winter. Not that we haven’t been trying to find out.’
Flashback to 1957. It is nearly Easter, and the seabirds are returning to the Farne Islands. Guillemots are gathering, lining up on the ledges like fluffy toys on rocky shelves. Razorbills cluster in crannies where they think they can’t be seen. There are Puffins everywhere. Flying on wings so rapid that they blur, and zipping past me like miniature missiles, before crash-landing with less control than a manic schoolboy tumbling into the long jump pit. Like, for example, myself, in my mid-teens, ‘intermediate’ school athletics champion and temporary member of a Puffin-ringing expedition from Monks’ House Bird Observatory on the Northumberland coast. In charge was a man with a figure like Mr Pickwick and a chuckle like Tommy Cooper, one of the greatest and most charming naturalists, artists and mentors a budding birder could wish to have. Dr Eric Ennion. They don’t make ’em like that any more.
Dr E. led us nimbly over the spongy turf of Inner Farne, through what one might have assumed was an extensive rabbit warren, but was actually the Puffins’ Underground City, with each subterranean apartment as snug and safe as a fall–out shelter, unless the booted foot – of say, a schoolboy like me – accidentally crashed through its grassy roof. What cruel irony if a bird that had survived six or seven months being buffeted on stormy oceans had found his way back to the very same burrow he had occupied last summer, and was now sitting there waiting for his faithful lady love to join him, paternal instincts trembling and hormones rising, when suddenly ‘splat’ – he is flattened by a boot from above, as unceremoniously as by Monty Python’s giant foot.
Fortunately, the first hole was unoccupied, but my forfeit was that Dr Ennion appointed me as principal Puffin catcher. I was issued with a large pair of thick leather motorcycling gauntlets, which suggested that Puffins might not be as sweet and docile as they looked. Especially if they were relishing the arrival of a sexy female Puffin, but instead were molested by the leather-clad fingers of a nervous schoolboy. Believe me, it is terrifying sticking your hand into a pitch dark tunnel, not knowing whether or not there is something alive in there. It is scary if there is nothing, and even scarier if there is. You will soon know if the burrow is occupied, because the Puffin will try to pull you down there with it!
You now have two choices: you can let go, and apologise to both the Puffin and to your now derisive fellow Puffineers, or you can grab the bird with one hand and try to wrestle it to the surface, where you can use your other hand to grab its beak, which could surely snip off a finger as neatly as a pair of secateurs severing a twig. Thus deprived of its most lethal weapon, the bird appears to accept its fate and seems calm, content and even curious as you flick the gauntlet from your free hand so you can rummage in your shoulder bag for your notebook, ringing pliers and, of course, rings. You even risk relaxing your grip on the rainbow-coloured finger lopper. Such a pretty beak! And so ingeniously capable of holding more than a dozen slippery sandeels. Surely this Puffin will not peck me. Indeed it won’t. But it will lacerate your wrists and forearms with its needle-sharp little claws.
It was easy to tell which of us had been on Puffin Posse duty. We looked like a bunch of extras from True Blood. Nevertheless, we bore our scars with pride. After all, we were contributing to science. Each bird was fitted with a lightweight metal ring inscribed with a number and the request ‘Inform British Museum’. This was not so that the curators could come and recover their lost exhibit; it was an instruction to whoever found what was left of it. Most so-called ‘recoveries’ came from decidedly ex-Puffins: mainly tideline corpses, murdered by a Great Skua or a Great Black-backed Gull, choked by an oil spill, poisoned by pollution, strangled by a fishing net, or even – just a few – finally succumbing to old age.
Puffins can live for 35 years or more. That was something we had learnt from ringing, which also taught us that Puffins are faithful both to nest site – the very same burrow if it is available – and also to their mate. We have also compiled all kinds of data about what is often nominated as Britain’s favourite bird, and which is undeniably fascinating and photogenic, and seems as relentlessly addicted to funny walks and pratfalls as Charlie Chaplin. But Puffins also have a dark side. Literally. They spend an awful lot of time underground, but – thanks to such up-to-date technology as endoscope cameras and minuscule microphones –we know a lot about their private life. However, until recently, there was still one thing we didn’t know – where do they go in winter?
Fast-forward to 2013. I am on the Island of Skomer, off Pembrokeshire, South Wales. It is Easter, early spring. It’s Puffin Time. Again I am in the presence of authority, but it is not a warden and his team of leaden-footed schoolboys, this time it is a revered scientist and his young French female assistant, whose footwork is as delicate as a ballerina’s. A change for the better. There is another change, today’s Puffins do not suffer the indignity of being dragged out of their burrows by hand. Instead, they are yanked out by foot, with a sort of miniature walking stick. Or they catch themselves in a small almost invisible ‘mist net’, from which they are disentangled by the scientist, or his lovely assistant, so deftly and rapidly that they barely have time to wonder what’s happening.
Then comes the biggest change of all. The temporarily captive bird is not merely fitted with a ring on its leg. In addition, attached to the ring is what looks like a miniature radio. I assumed that this was some kind of tiny transmitter which would send signals back from wherever the Puffin ventured, but I was told that it was more like a midget computer. ‘A sort of Puffin satnav?’ I suggested.
‘No,’ said the scientist. ‘A satnav tells you how to get somewhere.’
‘Allegedly,’ I interjected.
‘While this device tells you where you have been’, continued th
e scientist.
‘Or rather where the Puffin’s been,’ I commented, sensing an impending historic revelation. ‘So, does this mean we now know where Puffins go in winter?’ In my head, I heard accelerating chimes building the tension. ‘So what’s the answer? Is it a yes or a no?’
‘Well, Bill, it is… a… yes!’ Blimey, cue audience applause! But hang on, this is a scientist talking. Scientists never completely commit. I bet there’ll be an ‘on the other hand’, or a ‘mind you’, or – at the very least – a ‘but’. Indeed there was a ‘but’, but it was a pretty incredible ‘but’.
‘We now know some of the places they go in winter, but they don’t all go to the same place. For example, we have data that proves that some Skomer Puffins winter mainly off Portugal, while others winter off Newfoundland.’
‘Birds from the same colony winter in different places?’
‘Exactly. In fact, we had two birds in adjacent burrows. One went to Portugal, while next door went to Newfoundland.’
Now, I was full of questions.
‘Do they go to the same place every year? Do male and female go to the same place? Will they meet up with Farne Island Puffins? And come to think of it… why? Why?!’
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!’