The Bearded Tit Part 21

Yes, this was best hushed up, I thought. It's been quite a few years since we lost our hide-virginity, and I realize now that such is the nature of 'twitchers' that if you did say, 'Oh look, a spider on my binoculars,' they'd probably say: 'That's most likely a diadematus.'

'Could be a dolomedes.'

'No, not big enough; they wouldn't come in here anyway.'

'No, I think we're talking thomisus.'

And so on.

The hide experience is strange. It has the silence of a public library, but one where everyone is reading the same book. Occasionally some good-natured fellow would lean over and point out a word that you may not have read or noticed. Birding in a hide is an odd mix of compet.i.tion and co-operation. You want to be the first to see something, or the first to identify something, but you also want to help or instruct those not as knowledgeable or experienced as you.

Yes, there's an element of showing off, but it benefits both parties. I often wondered at what level of expertise you have to be to engage a fellow twitcher. If, for example, a blackbird, flew past and you said, 'Wow, what's that? A medium-sized bird. All black with a yellow bill!' would they say with contempt or amus.e.m.e.nt, 'That's a blackbird!', with perhaps 'you cretin' in brackets.

Or would they, with eager patience, say, 'Well, you've described a blackbird but, obviously, you know what one of those looks like, so I wonder what it could be. A ring ouzel? Did it have a pale bib? Er...was it a blue rock thrush; that would be a great spot for round here!'

I have never had the guts to try this one, but over the years I have fantasized about playing those sorts of games in a hide full of twitchers. Saying things like, 'Do ostriches dive into water and grab eels?'

'No, course they don't.'

'Well, it wasn't an ostrich I just saw then!'

The very fact that I think about arsing around like this reveals something about my levels of commitment to the hobby. Maybe I just do not want to immerse myself totally in birding. Perhaps I need to retain an ironic distance. But I have to admit that that first afternoon in the hide at t.i.tchwell was a special event.

There were a few old friends from the days of JJ and the Emmanuel College ponding committee. The tufted duck, the wigeon, the teal, the shelduck and, of course, mallards. There were a few speciality acts too. The shoveler. What a great name. What a great bird. Boldly marked with a bottle-green head, white breast, black back and an orange-brown belly and flanks. But what is special is its bill, which is huge and wide and, you know what, like a shovel. It sweeps this broadly from side to side through water and wet mud to find food.

'Look, that's a shoveler!' Tori's excitement drew indulgent glances from the twitching brotherhood.

'That's the female next to it,' someone pointed out. This was helpful as the two s.e.xes, like many ducks, were completely different but for one feature.

'The bill is the giveaway,' the twitcher went on. 'In both s.e.xes, it's spatulate.'

Excellent. 'In both s.e.xes, it's spatulate.' Another first for the day. The word spatulate spatulate. (From the Latin for 'a little shovel'.)

DANNY TWITCHES AT WORK.

'No, I can't...Possibly later...No, I'm still in Norwich...The Eastern Evening Press, their whole system's gone down. I could be here for hours...'

Danny was in the middle of a spiky conversation with his team manager.

'I'll call you back. This could be an all-day job.'

He switched off his mobile. I put the two pints on the table. 'b.l.o.o.d.y work ha.s.sling me!' We were in the back garden of a pub in Cambridge. He lit up a cigarette.

'How many have you had today, Danny?'

'This is my second...'

'Good.'

'...packet.'

'I read somewhere that smoking's bad for you.'

'I don't pay any attention to all that scaremongering; they'll be saying drinking's bad for you soon.'

There was little hope.

'And what about those awful things you're stuffing down you?'

I stopped mid-crunch and thought about the Thai prawn-flavoured mini-poppadums that filled my mouth. I was sure they would not give me lung cancer, but Danny's comment made me reflect as an unworldly, spicy, salty slime trickled down my throat.

'Mmm. You're probably right. I'll chuck the rest.'

He grabbed the open bag. 'No, don't. I'll take them home for the cat.'

A sparrow hopped by our feet. 'Er...don't tell me. Sparrow!' spluttered Danny excitedly.

'Very good.'

Building on the excitement of his first blue t.i.t, he was eager to learn, and had begun to notice that birds were all around him, every day, even when he was at 'work' like today.

'House sparrow,' I explained to him, desperately trying not to sound condescending. 'That's the only one we see regularly. But there's a few others around. There's the tree sparrow.'

'Hangs around trees?'

'Er, sort of. And the Spanish sparrow.'

'Hangs around Spain?'

'Indeed; and the rock sparrow.'

'Likes rock music.'

'Excellent. And this is the house sparrow.'

'Likes house music.'

'Close enough!'

'Pretty thing though, isn't it?'

Danny, who's only known the existence of birds for two weeks, says that the sparrow is a 'pretty thing'. Now, that is really something! The sparrow, especially the house sparrow, is usually considered the dull bird's dull bird. An annoyingly abundant streaky-brown thing. I'd even heard myself say on numerous occasions, 'Oh. It's only a sparrow.'

But listen to Danny; he was blind, but now he sees! He thinks it's pretty. Look closely. It is. Quite a mixture of black, dark brown, reddish-brown, light brown, grey and black. It is sociable and noisy, and do you know something? It sounds like a bird. No, what I mean is that it sounds like you'd expect a bird to sound.

Its song is almost the prototype 'chirrup chirrup'. It always sounds slightly out of tune, though, as if it's struggling to be musical. They're not difficult to see because they're not that shy and they always hang around human habitation. And, of course, they are very common.

But are they?

Their numbers are declining with worrying speed.

'Hey, Danny, look hard and close at this pretty brown bird, because time is running out.'

'OK, I won't smoke any more today!'

'I meant the house sparrow's time is running out.'

'Oh look, there's another one.' He was pointing at a similar-looking bird. 'But that's got slightly different markings. Female?'

I was impressed. He'd looked long enough to notice that the second bkd was different, and he'd taken on board the idea that the female is often distinct from the male; usually less well marked. He'd also noticed that the new bird was, to all intents and purposes, sufficiently sparrow-like to be a sparrow.

But it wasn't.

'Not bad. Actually that bird is what used to be commonly called a hedge sparrow. Most people call it a dunnock.'

Judging by Danny's reply I must have been sounding a bit pompous and twitchery. 'Really? I don't call it a dunnock; I'm going to call it Fred the Bird,' said Danny.

Now, dismiss the dunnock as a duller, greyer version of the sparrow, if you dare. This is an intriguing bird. The dunnock, Prunella modularis Prunella modularis, has a saucy, Sunday tabloid secret. Its mating habits are more than a tad spicy.

It's into the menage a trois. Well, the lady of the house is; or should that be the lady of the hedge? Its mating sessions often include one female and two males or one male and two females. In fact, so promiscuous is the female that quite often, while husband is away, Mrs Dunnock (whom we have to call Pru, surely) will mate with another male dunnock (whom we'll call, say, Roger). As if that's not 'when-suburban-housewives-get-hot' enough in itself, when the male returns he demands to know what Pru's been up to in his absence. Has she had a man in to repair her nest? Or slip her an earthworm? Why is she looking so red-faced and guilty?

Well, what the male does is even less subtle than the interrogation of a suspicious husband. With his fine spike of a beak, he pecks her repeatedly in the v.a.g.i.n.a in case there's some 'foreign' seed therein. This will be discharged by the invasion and the husband immediately mates with her again to ensure that his descendants will truly be his.

Ah, what a romantic tale.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, mate,' said Danny. 'That's a bit full on! I wonder if they know Diana, that cheating cow! She-'

Danny's acidic reminiscence was interrupted by a searing, high-pitched, screaming whistle overhead. Looking up Danny exclaimed confidently, 'Ah easy one; swallow!'

Another scream overhead. And another. And still more.

'One swallow doesn't make a b.l.o.w.j.o.b, as my gran didn't use to say! Ha!'

'They're swifts,' I corrected him.

'You're not even looking at them, mate!'

No, I wasn't looking at them, and a vivid memory returned to me.

Long ago, just before the days of JJ, when I was still blind to the world of nature, I was coming out of a lecture hall with my friend Dave.

Dave had a reputation at college for being 'a bit of a loner'. He was not a Sveirdo', and not 'a bit of a loner' in the way they report serial killers on the news. Just someone who kept himself to himself, who enjoyed his own company. And, yes, he was a birdwatcher.

We were on our way to the next lecture in a different building, and I noticed some birds swooping and diving acrobatically at great speed. Even to a non-birder like me, the arc of the wings and the forked tail suggested these could only be swallows. I looked up and said, 'Ah, the swallows are here!'

'They're swifts,' said Dave instantly, head-down, not looking up from his purposeful walk.

'You're not even looking at them!' I said.

'Don't have to. Listen to that screaming whistle. Unmistakable.'

Weirdo, I thought.

And twenty-five years later, there I am sitting with my mate Danny saying, 'Don't have to. Listen to that screaming whistle. Unmistakable.'

We sat and watched the swifts in silence. You can do that with swifts. To the first-time birdwatcher, swifts are easy money. They put on a show. And what a show!

'They're amazing, mate,' said Danny, who was captivated enough to pause between drags of his cigarette. 'I might even dig out my camera gear. I bet that lot are a challenge to photograph!' He sipped his beer. 'Hey, this is actually a bit of fun.'

'It certainly is.'

'What a shame I'm in Norwich, fixing a computer.'

TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER.

Tori has a good ear. Two good ears, in fact. She has two good eyes, as well, and lips and legs and, indeed, a whole host of body parts that are worth some consideration, but in a book about birds, we shall concentrate on her ears, which, as I say, are very good. Not only placed on either side of her head, like the best of good ears, but also highly effective in identifying the slightest differences in sounds, variations of pitch and tone and quality. In short, very sharp at naming the bird, based only on its sound.

This is more difficult for me. I'm not at all tone deaf. I can sing well enough to have earned roughly 7 a day one week busking on the London Underground, till I was moved on by the authorities. I can tell the difference between musical notes, but not with any scientific precision. A great deal of music, therefore, sounds exactly the same to me, but then I do listen to a lot of country and western. The trouble with birdsong, I suppose, is that I have too long a.s.sociated it with the disruption of sleep after a particularly large night.

Slowly but surely Tori has educated me in this field, which is surprisingly rewarding, not least because a lot of birds can be heard very easily, but seen with great difficulty.

A fine example of this is the Cetti's warbler. It is one of Britain's only two resident warblers, the other being the Dartford warbler. That's got to be British, hasn't it: the Dartford warbler. A lovely, bird too. Dark for a warbler, with a rich reddish-brown breast and a striking red eye-ring. A marked long slender tail, prominent in its short, bouncy flights from bush to bush. The Dartford warbler: take a picture of it with you to have in your car when you're stuck in diabolical traffic crossing the Thames in East London.

Our other local, very British warbler was named, needless to say, after Francisco Cetti, an Italian Jesuit monk born in Germany in 1726. You will probably never see this bird, no matter how close you're standing to it, but you will get no marks for hearing it. It is a small, nondescript bird, brown on top and pale underneath. It sings from deep cover in bushes, ditches, reeds or hedgerows, and it goes like this: doot, doot, doodoodoodoodoodoodoo doo doo.

Or if you prefer: chwee...chwee,...chewechewecheweche-wechewechewe.

You get the idea? Two sharp, single, abrupt notes followed by a splurging trill. Tori compares it to the opening phrase of Elgar's 'Pomp and Circ.u.mstance' march N1 in D major; you know, the one that goes 'bom...bom...bombombombombombom'.

She started me off with the easy ones. Not just simple simple songs, but the ones you hear all the time because they're either the first in the year, the loudest or the most far-reaching. songs, but the ones you hear all the time because they're either the first in the year, the loudest or the most far-reaching.

Cuckoo? I think you've all got that one. Next!

A great t.i.t? Two notes. The first higher than the other. Is the professor of music around? No? Oh well-the interval, I reckon, is about a fourth. You know the melody of the first line of 'Street Fighting Man' by the Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones? Well, they were a huge rock and roll band...oh this is silly!

Just imagine an insistent schoolboy, desperate to answer the question, frantically waving his raised arm and screaming, 'Teacher, teacher, teacher!' That's it. Great t.i.t.

The chiffchaff is another song that's difficult to miss. This tiny bird often delivers its two-note song from high up in the treetops. It carries for miles and seems to cut through all other birdsong, apart from the great t.i.t. It's similar to 'teacher, teacher, teacher' but the other way round. The second note is higher and the song comes out for longer periods than the great t.i.t. It sort of goes: 'doot-dit doot-dit doot-dit doot-dit doot-dit doot-dit', with the 'dit' being higher than the 'doot'. It occasionally slips in a crafty extra 'doot', giving us 'doot doot-dit doot-dit doot doot-dit.' You get the idea. Its name imitates its sound, though I think 'chaff-chiff' would be a more accurate name. For me, it has the quality of a knife being sharpened on a steel, but I could be alone in this.

OK, a quick pub-quiz moment: which common British bird is sometimes called the yaffle? Yes, that's right, the green woodp.e.c.k.e.r. 'Yaffle' is a supposed imitation of its loud, laugh-like song. Other names for it include eccle, hewhole, highhoe, yaffingale, yappingale or yackel. That should give you a broad feel for what we're talking about. It sounds like laugh of a fictional baddie. It's the cackle that will follow a line like: 'You shall never escape from here and the treasure will be all mine!' Starting high and shrill, then descending in pitch and energy. (And definitely not 'dood a lee dee doo, dood a lee dee doo', the call of the Disney bird Woody Woodp.e.c.k.e.r.) The skylark is easy, too. I once fell asleep on a summer meadow listening to a skylark. At least, I think it was me. It was long enough ago to be someone else. But this bird demands special mention. The skylark perhaps offers the best clue to man's affinity with birds. Think of all the art, literature and music inspired by it. I would defy anyone who has heard a skylark to improve on George Meredith's poem which begins: He rises and begins to round He rises and begins to round He drops the silver chain of sound He drops the silver chain of sound Of many links without a break Of many links without a break In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake All intervolved and spreading wide All intervolved and spreading wide Like water-dimples down a tide Like water-dimples down a tide Where ripple ripple overcurls Where ripple ripple overcurls And eddy into eddy whirls And eddy into eddy whirls.

William Blake calls it the 'mighty angel'. Sh.e.l.ley famously calls it 'blithe spirit'. Wordsworth tops them both with 'ethereal minstrel', and Chaucer gives us 'bisy larke, messager of the day'. All inspired and inspiring, and most of them spelled correctly.

Tori has taught me song thrush too. A masterful singer. Loud, bright, short fruity phrases, all different but each sung at least three or four times so you do not miss how good they are. Robert Browning, who was yearning to be in 'England, now that April's there', spoke of the wise thrush that: ...sings each song twice over ...sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture The first fine careless rapture.