by Simon Barnes
Well, Bob is a man around whom legends accumulate. I used him as the basis for a character in a novel, but I toned him down shamefully. I was striving to write something believable. Bob brushes his hair every month whether it needs it or not, his shirt and trouser-crotch are always a crochet pattern made by the tumbling coals of his roll-ups, and he frequently wears two pairs of glasses at once, at least one of which has been fixed by Sellotape.
I had a few days at the end of a cricket trip, and I went to visit him in Livingstone, by the Victoria Falls. I had in mind a couple of days of gentle birdwatching: scour the gorges for falcons, try and find a taita, and amble along the fringes of the Upper Zambezi looking for finfoot.
I have known Bob 15 years, and should have known better. He met me at the airport with his expedition Land Rover all ready loaded up, eight jerrycans padlocked to the roof-rack. Pausing only to fill them up with diesel and to stop at the supermarket for a bottle of J&B, we hammered off along one of the tributaries of the Zambezi, picking up a track more or less where the map gives up.
After an awful lot of miles we made a camp by the Zambezi, and made a start on the whisky. Next day, miles further on, we stopped at a rather fine open plain and recorded what he could find. Including the silent cloud cisticola – a bird we picked up, believe it or not, by song. (Incidentally, there is a bird called the invisible rail, which I have never seen, but at least I have heard the silent cloud cisticola.) Cisticolas are yet more little brown jobs: there are more than 70 of them, and they all look the same. But they sound quite different. Bob is an expert on cisticolas: “Now if this was a cloud cisticola,” he said.
“As opposed to a silent cloud?”
“Precisely. The nearest known population of cloud cisticola is about 300 miles away. So that would be really rather exciting.”
Bob played me a recording of both species, and we drove on. And on. MMBA, the old Africa hands say, Miles and Miles of Bloody Africa. Brian Jackman, a wildlife writer, puts it rather better: “You can’t believe that the country would ever end, or that you would ever want it to.”
And another plain. Stop the vehicle. Get out. Listen. Look.
And then, clear as dawn, a cloud cisticola. A mystery: high in the cloud, as good as his name, circling around the plain, proclaiming his name and his ownership and his love for his mate. Exciting? It was joy of a very high and rarefied kind. It took a mere three hours or so of trampling about the plain from one side to the other before we got a proper look at the damn bird, recorded all the plumage details, colour of its toenails etc, for this was another spot of science intruding into my life as a bad birdwatcher. God, scientists tell us, dwells in the details; and we recorded minute details of time and place and plumage and voice: one bird, his mate, and their nearest friends that anybody knows about 300 miles away.
Bob and I had pushed back the frontiers of ignorance: pushed them back by the length of a micron or so. Humankind knows a tiny, tiny bit more about the planet it lives on than it did before, and it was all thanks to me. Or rather to Bob, but I was there to play Tonto. I deserve some of the credit. I had paid for the diesel and the whisky, had I not? That was, in a weird way, deeply pleasing. That night I cooked up a hearty beany broth with plenty of chillies, and we drank a fair amount more of the J&B. Sounds of the night all around us. Exciting indeed.
A reasonably extreme way to appreciate bird sound, it is true. But let’s have another example. Another whisky, too. Why not? My father and I were drinking it, and it was Glenmorangie, never a mistake. And we were talking about birds and about birds he had seen in Cornwall – peregrine falcons, back in numbers we had never known before: thrilling birds, a thrilling thing to know.
And he remarked: “You know, if we don’t do that Cornish walk soon, it’s going to be hard to manage it with a Zimmer. And harder still for you to push me in a wheelchair.”
“It has to be in May,” I said.
And it was. May, best for birdsong. We walked from Newquay to Rinsey over the course of a week, stopping in pubs and B&Bs, lunching off a pasty and a pint, dining off pub food and more pints. Ales are very important on such a trip. We walked the majestic cliffs, fulmars to our right – that is to say, the seaward side – fulmars are related to albatrosses and fly with something of an albatross’s nonchalance; and skylarks on our left. And peregrine and raven and tern and egret and, yes, that was the trip when we met the medievalist and the Cettis, and it was a week filled with birds and birdsong, pasties and ale. And talk.
We had a side bet, just for mustard. A bottle of Glenmorangie to the person who spotted the first seal. This led to a lot of looking at rocks. Was that a head rising above the waters, or was it the heaving sea falling back around an unmoving rock? Always it was the latter. It was on the last day that I won. I stayed looking just a mite too long at one of those heaving rocks.
“No bloody seals there, boy,” my father said, with the unshakable confidence that has shaped his life.
I looked in unspeakable delight at the rock’s whiskers, its fine bright eye. “Pick up your bloody bins.”
He did so. “You bastard!”
Well, he should know.
18. Let them be left
All you need is love.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Don’t you hate it when you’re watching a nice wildlife documentary, and you have been enjoying a pleasant visit to Eden, when suddenly, just as you get to the last bit and you’re feeling quite good, the music goes all menacing, and the commentator says: “But this wildlife paradise is under threat. Even here, wildlife must pay the price for human progress. Human greed, human carelessness and human indifference are making mincemeat of these lovely furry animals. For Christ’s sake, the whole bloody planet’s gone wrong, and it’s all your bloody fault, you smug bastard sitting there on your nice bloody sofa with your nice bloody drink within six inches of your guilty, bloodstained bloody hand.”
Well, I’m not going to end the book this way. I am going to make the assumption that you already know as much about the ecological holocaust as you want to – though do bear in mind, please, that the reality is ten times worse than you thought.
But there is a worse crime than crass destruction, and it is crass despair. It is giving up. For there is an answer to despair, and it is out there hanging upside down on your bird-feeder. Where there is life there is hope, and vice versa.
Liking birds is not just a nice thing to do. To look at a bird and feel good about it is a violent revolutionary act. To put out peanuts is an act of insurrection. It is an act that demands a revolution in political thought, for it is quite obvious that conservation is far, far too low on the political agenda.
It took Margaret Thatcher herself to point this out. She said gloatingly at the time of the Falklands War: “It’s exciting to have a real crisis on your hands, when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum things like the environment.”
Yes, we’re destroying the planet, how frightfully dreary, how terribly vieux jeu. Far more exciting to have a little spat with gunboats, one famously described by Jorge Luis Borges as “two bald men fighting over a comb”. The environment ought to be right at the top of the political agenda, because 100 per cent of us live in it. It is, I think, important for the future of the human race to have an environment. This is not a matter to leave to our grandchildren; we must take it on now, if our grandchildren are to have anywhere to live, and anywhere worth living in. If we want to become ancestors (the goal of life, as any blue tit will tell you) then we should leave a viable world for our descendants, for our genes. But that’s democracy for you: what everybody really wants is not something that ever gets much of a look-in. Politicians think that five years is a dizzy plunge into the future; and what profit do they get from planning for the 22nd century?
However, I will give you three reasons for looking after the planet:
1. Because it’s our duty. Humans are unique animals, in that we have control over the future
of the planet. We owe it to the other species to look after them and their planet we share.
2. Because it’s in our own best interests. Soiling your nest is never a good long-term policy. If we carry on poisoning the planet, we will carry on poisoning ourselves and our descendants.
3. Because we really, really want to. We have an affinity for species other than our own (biophilia) and we would be miserable on a planet without such things.
There is a trinity of reasons for conservation, then: duty, self-interest, and love. The greatest of these is the last: “The love that moves the sun and other stars”, last line of The Divine Comedy, and it is something that you can renew with every glance from the window. Thus you start by looking at blue tits and you end up with a religion, a moral crusade and a political commitment.
So what to do about it? What can you do to make the world a better place? Looking at birds is the first step, and a highly potent one it is, too. The next move is to join the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. This organisation not only runs nice bird reserves (in itself a powerful political statement) but also lobbies the government. It has an important part in the environment debate: sober, responsible, insistent, impeccably researched, unstridently expressed, highly respected – and at heart utterly radical. For it is nothing less than radical to believe that the environment is a matter of the foremost importance.
If you are already a member of the RSPB, then join a second organisation: your county wildlife trust, the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). The choice is large and all organisations have their different virtues. If you seek active involvement, then that is easy enough to do. I have put some useful contacts at the back of the book.
I believe we should all make a double commitment: to belong to one more thing (duty), and to do one more thing on a regular basis – to enjoy birds (love). The self-interest we can take as read.
Oh Lord, I can hear the beginnings of doubt in your mind. But listen: public opinion does actually make a difference. It was public pressure that brought about the end of CFC-emitting aerosols; it was public pressure across Europe that ended the dumping of radioactive waste at sea; it was public pressure that outlawed commercial whaling across the world; it was public pressure that led to the worldwide restrictions on trade in wildlife; it was public pressure that stopped genetically modified crops from taking over the landscape.
Another thing the doom’n’gloomers never point out is that there are good news stories as well as bad. Here are ten species, seven mammals and three birds that – against all the odds – are not going to go extinct this week.
1. Giant panda
Still endangered, still on the brink, but still hanging on, in the most crowded country on earth. Destruction of their forest habitat has been stopped. There is genuine will from the Chinese government for the panda to survive. Not dead yet.
2. Marsh harrier
Extinct as a breeding bird in this country, because marshes were drained. Like all birds of prey, they were routinely shot, and DDT in the food chain affected the top predators most. Now DDT is illegal in this country, so is persecution, marsh harriers are thriving and I have seen one from my house.
3. Southern right whale
With the end of commercial whaling and the break-up of the Soviet Empire (biggest whalers), the whales are coming back. It has been estimated that the southern right whale is increasing at nine per cent a year.
4. Eurasian otter
Hunted, shot, living in rivers so poisoned that the fish were all dying; the otter was on the way out. Now, with cleaner rivers and less persecution plus active conservation, they are coming back. Every year more British river-miles have otters.
5. Whooping crane
This is a migratory bird of extraordinary beauty, commuting between Canada and the United States, and in 1941 they were down to 15 or 16. Habitat destruction, especially of the places where they stop to refuel on migration, was the main reason. Now there are 140 wild birds and three flocks in captivity.
6. Mauritius kestrel
Island species are both unique and uniquely vulnerable: a small disaster can wipe out an entire species. Habitat destruction was again the problem, but in 1973 a conservation programme began. The population was down to six; now there are around 300 and growing.
7. Juan Fernandez fur seal
A population of millions was reduced to extinction, or so it was thought, killed for meat and for their skins. Nothing was done at all to save them, but a global distaste for wearing sealskin and for slaughtering seal pups was enough. They are now back to 12,000 or so.
8. Arabian Oryx
This lovely animal – as near to a unicorn as you will ever see – really did go extinct in the wild, mainly through hunting. But an international effort saw a captive herd raised in Phoenix Zoo, and a re-release programme backed by the Sultan of Oman. They’re back and booming.
9. White rhinoceros
The white rhino was brought to the brink by hunting and by the Chinese medicine trade. Now there are about 7,000, the bulk of the population in South Africa, where they are heavily guarded.
10. Siberian tiger
This is the biggest sub-species of tiger. It was thought that they were down to 200, but a recount brought them up to 500. The reason they are difficult to count is the reason they survive in decent numbers: the place where they live is still seriously wild.
So no, conservation is emphatically not moving deck-chairs on the Titanic. It works, both with and without human help. Sometimes human neglect is good enough. Time for some more from Gerard Manley Hopkins:
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet!
So I am planning a trip to my favourite place of weeds and wilderness, of wildness and wet, which is the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. I have been going there on and off for 15 years, and I have seen wonders beyond counting. But this trip will be different. I will be going with Joe. He’ll be ten when we go. It seems that I have made the boy interested in natural history; though it is mammals rather than birds that make the earth move for him. “What are our chances of seeing a genet?”
“Ninety-five per cent.”
“Hippo?”
“Ninety-nine.”
“Because nothing’s a hundred per cent.”
“Right.”
“What kind of mongoose was it that went to sleep in your shirt?”
“Banded.”
“But he didn’t like the bacon?”
“Only the scrambled egg.”
I am looking forward to this trip more than Joe, if such a thing is possible. I took my father to Luangwa also. He came for a fortnight; I was in the middle of a two-month sabbatical. It was shortly after my mother died; deeply healing, it was, to be surrounded by such abundance of life, by such weeds, such wilderness.
At times, I would slip out of camp and sit in the ebony glade, back to a tree, still, silent. After ten minutes this gets boring; after 20 minutes you never want to move. And I became invisible. I became another part of the forest. I had long-tailed glossy starlings going through the leaf-litter within pecking distance of my Timberlands; once a warthog and hoglets just beyond touching distance; once a male bushbuck I could have stroked had I wished. Well, I did wish, but I had the good manners to refrain.
Every morning, I would wake at 5.30 and put off getting up until I had identified ten birds on call. It was a process that seldom took more than 30 seconds, damn it. On my last morning, I got up in the dark. In a couple of hours before breakfast, I drank in the whole riverine panoply of Luangwa’s birds. I was with Bob Stjernstedt, the cisticola man, of course. We played I Spy With My Little Ear: 30 species of bird identified on call alone. Plus six mammals identified the same way: lion, hyena, hippo, baboon, impala – these incomparably graceful and delicate gazelles bark like dogs – and, best of all, a leopard, making its woodsaw r
oar in the glade behind camp. It was a last Luangwa symphony.
High-pitched sound is one of the first things you lose with age. An old birdwatcher famously remarked: “These days I can’t hear either goldcrests or women.”
And there were my father and I on another long walk. He had been suffering from sciatica, so Suffolk was a better bet than Cornwall. The hill-climbing in Suffolk is the best in the country for someone who is shaking off sciatica. We went in May, naturally. And there we were standing under a tree in which a goldcrest was singing his minute heart out. Smallest birds in Britain, with a pretty squeakingly high little song, a lovely little jumble of golden notes. “No,” my father said. “Can’t get it.”
“Tough. We’re going to stay here until you do.”
So we stayed, still and quiet, and the goldcrest, emboldened, continued his concert, filling the Suffolk sandling air with his thin and lovely little song. And then I got a smile. A nod. Got it. Bloody got it. And I showed it, I, who had been taught, had bloody well taught it back.
We walked on, a slight bounce in our stride, onwards to the next point, one that certainly involved ales. I wonder if he’ll ever hear goldcrest again.
Contacts
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
The Lodge
Sandy
Bedfordshire
SG19 2DL
01767 680551
www.rspb.org.uk
WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund)
Panda House
Weyside Park
Godalming
Surrey