Canada geese in flight. Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash
Humans have always been fascinated by birds, in the main, wanting to emulate their enviable ability to fly and to see the world from a bird’s eye view. But it is the absolute freedom of birds that most inspires me. I am fascinated by how they behave, whether they’re flying, feeding, singing, nest-building or staking out their territory. Seemingly oblivious to people, they just get on with doing what they do. How distressing, then, is the sight of birds in cages. For of all the ways they spend their time, flying seems the most fundamental to a bird’s existence. To take it away from them is criminal. As a teenager I worked in a pet shop in Belfast’s markets area. Among many other animals, it traded in caged birds. I didn’t really think much about it at the time, aside from idly wondering why the tiny zebra finches hopped endlessly from one perch to another in wooden, wire-fronted boxes no bigger than a foot square. If I saw them now, I would want to open the cages immediately and release them.
I grew up watching birds. My mother used to hang bacon fat and coconut shells on the washing line outside our dining room window so that, during family meals, we could watch the antics of bluetits and great tits stopping by for a takeaway. Chaffinches and robins hopped around in the borders, sparrows chitter-chattered along the gutters and legions of starlings wheeled around above the garden before descending as one on the lawn to bustle around foraging for worms and insects. Trying to get to sleep on light summer evenings was made easier by the beautiful, melodic song of a blackbird from the apple tree outside my bedroom window.
The humble house sparrow. Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
I only wish there were as many birds in our gardens these days. New data, from a team made up from the RSPB, Birdlife International and the Czech Society for Ornithology, suggests 600 million breeding birds have been lost in the EU and the UK since 1980. These are shocking statistics and certain species such as the humble house sparrow that used to gather in gregarious gangs everywhere, is in massive decline having lost 50% of its population. I rarely see sparrows now in the south east of England, and am always delighted when I do so. The highlight of a recent coffee stop, when we sat in the sun at one of those slatted picnic-table-and-bench combos in a mundane, service-station car park, was watching a gaggle of sparrows coming and going from a raggedy privet hedge to the ground next to our table to pick up crumbs. Their constant cheeping and chirping made us laugh, and the words of the Joni Mitchell song came to me “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.
When a bird such as the sparrow has seemed so ubiquitous, it’s impossible to imagine that they could soon be a rarity. Starlings are in a similar predicament. Their numbers have fallen markedly and they are now on the red list of high conservation concern. When I was growing up, there used to be so many of them, swaggering around and bullying the smaller birds in our garden, that my mother would send us out to shoo them away. Now I am delighted when I hear their raucous racket of whistles, squeaks and trills in a tree top as a group of them settle down for the evening.
They seem so dull and ordinary looking and yet, when the light catches their feathers, they are iridescent purple and green. Behaviour-wise, they are fascinating. Related to the mynah, they are equally proficient at mimicking the songs or sounds of other birds and even animals such as frogs and cats; they can imitate human speech as parrots do and copy mechanical sounds such as the ring of a telephone. A murmuration of starlings, when they swoop and wheel as one, twisting and turning into a myriad patterns in the sky before pouring into a roost, is one of the most stunning natural sights you’ll ever see in Britain. I have watched them on the Somerset Levels, near my former home in rural Hampshire and on the south coast as they swooped in to roost in their thousands under Brighton Pier.
The underated starling. Photo by Gerhard Crous on Unsplash
I rarely go for a walk without binoculars. “Oh, so you’re a twitcher!” people say. No, I’m a birder: there’s an important distinction. A twitcher is someone who goes to great lengths to view bird species, often travelling miles if they learn of an unusual arrival in a particular location. Rather like train spotters or stamp collectors, they want to add any unusual bird to their list of sightings. Birdwatchers are much less obsessive and are simply happy to spot birds when they’re out and about either on their local patch or further afield.
One of my favourite places for an outing is a nature reserve next to the river, a short drive from my home. This is where I began to learn more about birds when I first started walking my dogs there, around 30 years ago. In spring, the birdsong is amazing: I found I could recognise the robins, blackbirds, bluetits, the blackbird and the song thrush as I was familiar with these from childhood, but alongside them were so many other songs that were a complete mystery to me. When any bird started calling, I got into the habit of following the sound to a particular tree or bush and standing, craning my neck to discover what was making it. With the naked eye I could see the movement as birds hopped around in the branches but it was hopeless trying to define any detail. I realised that the only way to begin to identify them was to acquire a pair of binoculars: and thus, it began.
Thereafter, while the dogs rummaged around in the undergrowth, I would look skywards, my bins ready to hone in when I heard song or saw movement. Some birds, I discovered, are easy to spot and identify: the kestrel for example, one of the smallest raptors, is easily distinguished by its habit of hovering whilst checking out the ground beneath it for any signs of prey. The heron, so distinctive with its long legs, grey plumage and jaunty feathers on the crown of its head, is seen mostly on the river’s edge, standing stock still waiting patiently for a fish to swim by, but it will also stalk through long grass in search of small mammals and insects. I have seen one dart its head with lightning speed and catch a mouse. The corvids – crows, magpies, jackdaws, rooks and jays are all easy to spot because of their size and distinctive differences in appearance. So too, the wood-peckers with their undulating flight, drrrrrrrumming on trees and, in the case of the green woodpecker, its jerky hopping around on the ground in search of ants.
Much more difficult are the tiny birds, many of them spring migrants, as they spend most of their time hidden in thickets of branches or flit so quickly away, it’s hard to get a proper look at them. In time, with patience and practice, I gradually began to identify the scratchy warbling coming from the highest point of a shrub as that of the white throat. I realised the fluting and varied song I could hear coming from a copse was the black cap – easy to identify because of the dark head marking that gives it its name. And surely that repetitive call “Chiff-Chaff, Chiff-Chaff” must be, well, a chiffchaff. On looking it up in one of my bird books (no handy Youtube videos then) I discovered how tricky it is to tell the chiffchaff apart from its cousin the willow warbler. In case you’re interested, the colour of their legs is the key!
The noisy nuthatch. Photo by Jack Bulmer on Unsplash
These days, when I’m in familiar territory, where I know most of the species that are resident or seasonal visitors, even when I cannot spot exactly where a bird is, I can identify it by its song or call. When I hear something I don’t recognise, I am intrigued: the binoculars come out and I try to track it down. A week or two ago, I was walking my cocker spaniel, Finlay, in the park when I saw a man and a woman standing, staring up into the branches of a large oak, the unmistakable sign of someone interested in birds. There was a loud, insistent “Chit, Chit, Chit” call coming from somewhere high up in the still-bare branches. I joined them, listening. “Is it a nuthatch?” I said. “That’s what we think” the woman replied, “but we can’t see it”. Just then, we all saw movement – and there they were, a pair of the small, pretty blue-grey and chestnut birds, descending, characteristically, head-first down the wide trunk. We were all delighted to have shared this experience and chatted for a few moments more before each going on our way, feeling we’d had a good start to the day.
Do you like birds as much as I do? I’d love you to tell me your bird watching stories. Leave your comments here and I’ll respond.
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Really enjoy reading your Home Truths and I always learn something new!
What are your feelings about the green parakeets all around us ?