A Sky Full of Birds

by Matt Merritt

  But, and I don’t want you to think that I’m overly cynical here, when all’s said and done this bird is not so very different from the tufted ducks I can see scattered across the rest of the reservoir, diving and preening. It’s even gravitating towards them, no doubt with a view to striking up a transatlantic romance.

  So I lift my head from the scope a moment and think about scanning the nearby wood for jays or even lesser spotted woodpeckers, when my eye is caught by the flick of a tail and a flash of white on the top corner of the pumping-house, as something flies in from behind me then disappears behind the parapet. A pied wagtail, perhaps – this corner of the reservoir is a favourite spot for these bold, inquisitive birds, which in summer will occasionally even approach and pick the dead insects off your car bonnet and windscreen.

  Then it comes fully into view, shuffling to a halt along the little stone ledge, and I can see it’s no wagtail. Grey back, black wings, buffy breast and white underparts, a black eye stripe and, as it turns, a startlingly white rump that identifies it as a wheatear.

  The white parts, in fact, are all the more noticeable because, on the whole, this looks like a bird that’s been through the wars. It looks wet, just the right side of bedraggled even, and it’s got none of the rounded shape you’d usually expect of the species, or of any of the chat family. This bird is positively skinny. I can see its chest expanding and contracting fast, like a panting dog, and it darts its head rapidly this way and that, taking in its new surroundings.

  In an instant, the lesser scaup’s wanderings from New World to Old recede into the background, and another even more remarkable circumnavigation takes its place in my mind’s eye, as it occurs to me that this bird – no bigger than a robin – has literally just touched down after the long flight from somewhere south of the Sahara. No wonder it’s not looking its best.

  That’s not the end of it, either. This isn’t its final destination. If it’s going to find a mate and raise a family, it’s going to have to carry on, at the very least making the short hop to the Peak District, but maybe beyond that, over mountain and sea to Scotland or Iceland or even, incredibly, Canada.

  And we think flying a couple of hours to Spain for a summer break is a long haul …

  Given what a key role migration plays in the lives of British birds (or perhaps that should be ‘British’ birds), it’s surprising how sketchily this activity is understood, even by those of us happy to be described as birdwatchers.

  On the other hand, we’re all familiar enough with the concept that we can use an expression such as ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ without any fear of being misunderstood; the implication being that swallows are visitors to these shores whose arrival heralds summer, and whose departure is inevitably associated with the smoky, shortening days of late September.

  True enough. Or just about. The first swallows usually make their appearance along the south coast in late March, before the main arrival in the first half of April, so they’re more properly a herald of spring. The swift, which often arrives as late as mid-May, and can be gone again by late July, is a far more convincing symbol of the British summer and its infuriating briefness.

  But there’s far more to migration than that. Britain’s just as notable for the birds that visit it in winter, when the country’s damp yet mild climate makes it a positively balmy getaway for those species nesting north of the Arctic Circle. The Gulf Stream ensures we’re much warmer – and therefore ice- and snow-free – than most places on a similarly northerly latitude and, for the most part, birds don’t travel any further south than they need to.

  Then there are what’s known as passage migrants, those birds that stop off in these islands only briefly, on their way to and from breeding and wintering sites. Our location, just off the north-west corner of the main European landmass, is at something of a crossroads of winds and ocean currents, meaning that in avian terms Britain can resemble a huge hub airport, especially during the peak migration periods in April and October, with constant arrivals and departures as species land to refuel on their way elsewhere.

  There are partial migrants, those species in which only some individuals move, or in which all the individuals move but only when faced with extreme weather or food shortages. These can include seemingly familiar species such as the blackbird, with studies showing that many blackbirds in eastern Britain move down to the south-west of the country during cold weather, to be replaced by incomers from Europe and Scandinavia. Weather is relative, after all. What a Norfolk blackbird thinks of as impossibly cold, a Norwegian blackbird might consider merely a bit parky. The same principle, it seems, is behind the increasing frequency with which blackcaps are seen in our gardens in winter. Our own blackcaps, in fact, are still heading south to the Med for some winter sun, but somewhat counter-intuitively they’re being replaced by visually indistinguishable German birds, happy to swap the snowbound forests of Bavaria and Thuringia for the suburban estates of East Anglia and our mild, maritime climate.

  And finally there are the other summer visitors, the birds that don’t ever achieve the same sort of headlines as swallows, nightingales, swifts or cuckoos, but which nonetheless year after year make long flights from south of the Mediterranean or in many cases south of the Sahara. Warblers such as the garden warbler or whitethroat. Songbirds such as the redstart or pied flycatcher. Seabirds such as the Arctic tern. Even birds of prey, such as the hobby.

  Just to confuse things further, species often fit into more than one of these categories. Black-tailed godwits, for example, breed in small numbers, but these islands are also host to a substantial wintering population from Iceland and the far north, as well as passage birds moving between those northern sites and wintering areas in Portugal and Spain. Bird-ringing – in which birds are trapped and have a numbered metal ring fitted round their legs before being released – has shown that those spending time here are willing to move from one side of the country to the other on a daily basis, as weather and food availability demand.

  Migration, then, is more than merely an activity carried out by birds a couple of times a year. It defines, for many of them, what they are: creatures of seemingly perpetual motion, bound forever to an invisible network of flyways criss-crossing the globe, in thrall to the seasons and the vagaries of the weather. It’s both their curse and their blessing, and it’s without doubt what makes them so fascinating to us, hopelessly bound as we are by the ties of family, work, place and culture.

  Wheatears, like the one I saw at Swithland Reservoir, are among the pioneers of the yearly spring migration, outriders of a vast bird movement that aims to take advantage of the short but exceptionally fecund summer in the northern hemisphere. The first bird can appear as early as the opening week of March, and certainly by mid-month scattered reports start coming in from everywhere, along with sightings of sand martins and little ringed plovers, two more species that have taken to heart the old adage about early birds catching the worm.

  With wheatears, their northward movement continues well into May, because in addition to the birds that breed on our own upland pastures and rocky slopes, we host those who are bound for Scandinavia, Greenland and eastern Canada. Our breeders have varying needs, too – a bird breeding in the Peak District will probably arrive well ahead of one that nests in the Cairngorm glens. That extended migration period, however, means that wheatears tend to be seen in dribs and drabs.

  Not so some of our other summer visitors. It’s now the third week in April, and we’re just about reaching the peak of the migration period. If I were at home, I’d probably be racing around my inland patch trying to see small numbers of redstarts, yellow wagtails and ring ouzels as they pass through, ticking off a few of the commoner warblers as I do so.

  I’m not, though. You’d think a lifelong fixation with birds and birdwatching – and all the ribbing regarding nerdy, anorak-wearing stereotypes that this inspires – would be enough for any man, but somewhere along the line I’ve found myself joinin
g the ranks of another group of people who, in modern Britain, inspire amusement and consternation in equal measure at the mere mention of their name. It started in my teens, with odd bits of doggerel in imitation of my favourite bands, and before I knew it I was on to the hard stuff, scribbling sonnets in my lunch hour. I’m a poet, not to mention a sucker for punishment.

  If you can ride the jibes, there are plenty of consolations to pursuing the path of poetry. Not the financial kind, obviously, but then that spares poets like me all that agonised soul-searching over whether something as vulgar as money hopelessly compromises their art. No, I’m thinking more of the pleasure of creating something from scratch, the satisfaction of occasionally meeting someone who likes your work, the feeling of being part of a like-minded community of writers, and the buzz of occasionally getting up on stage and reading your verse to total strangers.

  That part, for me, has another built-in bonus. My intermittent jaunts around the country on the poetry ‘circuit’ can usually be combined with some excellent birding, especially as several of the best poetry festival venues are at locations such as Aldeburgh or St Andrews, ornithological hotspots both.

  On this occasion, I’ve just read at Lewes, near Brighton, and with the weather set fair, I decide not to head straight back via the nightmare of the M25 and M1, but instead to work my way west along the south coast, then turn up past Winchester and Newbury and Oxford. My expectations aren’t particularly high – being out and about on a warm, sunny day will be reward enough, and if a few migrants cross my path at the same time, so much the better.

  Having pottered around Newhaven, I make my way to Bosham on Chichester Harbour, mainly with the intention of seeing the small but distinctive church that appears in the Bayeux Tapestry. While there I watch as a solitary little tern, an early arrival well ahead of his fellows, hovers and plunge-dives into the sparkling water, only after ten attempts finally coming up with a tiny strand of silver in its beak.

  This sight, for a sea-starved Midlander like me, would normally feel like hitting pay dirt, but I’m hungry for more. Although the sky has clouded over and there’s a stiff southerly breeze blowing, I’ve got time to drive out towards Selsey Bill, stopping at Pagham Harbour on the way. This area – the harbour itself, as well as Sidlesham Ferry and Church Norton – have always been popular with birdwatchers, so it’s time to find out what all the fuss is about. Again, in my mind, I’m setting the bar low. A scattering of waders – any waders – would leave a smile on my face all the way home, and as I climb out of the car I wonder if I dare hope for something in the way of songbirds. A redstart, perhaps?

  I’ve walked perhaps twenty yards from the lane towards the main lagoon when a movement in the scrubby hedge catches my eye. I raise my binoculars, focus, and the view is filled with the gorgeously contrasting tones of a male redstart, the rusty-red breast and the ash-grey back and head, both set off by the black throat and white forehead. And of course there’s the red tail, the steort that, in Anglo-Saxon times, gave the bird its name. Like the wheatear (to which it’s closely related), this is a species that winters south of the Sahara, before returning to our deciduous woodlands to breed; and, taking in its beautiful, bright colours, it doesn’t take too much of a stretch to imagine yourself watching a bird such as this on the edge of an African savannah. That’s not to say that British birds can’t be colourful, gaudy, even; but redstarts are birds that almost demand to be spot-lit by dazzling midday sun falling through the leaves of acacia trees, rather than fluffing themselves up against the sea-fret that’s just blown them across the Channel.

  So, a very good start. In fact, so serendipitous does the encounter seem – think of a bird, see it seconds later – that I briefly wonder whether I could run through the field guide in my mind and subsequently tick off a whole series of bogey birds.

  Turns out I’m rather missing the point. However special a redstart is, or the yellow wagtail that scurries from cowpat to cowpat just ahead of me, as isolated examples of the migratory impulse they don’t bring home the message of quite how extraordinary, and how enormous, that twice-yearly transference of biomass from one hemisphere to another is.

  An appreciation of this comes with the sight that meets my gaze as I skirt the lagoon itself, where the path passes between the water and a little caravan park. The seaward side of the lagoon is dotted by small trees every few yards, and as I approach the first one I assume that the whispering I can hear is just the wind in the new leaves. Only as I turn to look properly do I realise that the whole tree is shivering with what must be at least fifty excited, restless willow warblers. The faint, sibilant noise is a combination of thin contact calls and the flutter of tiny, tired wings wearily taking flight to the next tree along.

  It’s obvious that these birds, each no bigger than a blue tit, have just made landfall after their flight from France: like many small birds, they’ll have made their longer journey, from tropical Africa, in a number of stages, stopping off whenever necessary to feed and rest, and always waiting for the wind to turn in the right direction for them to hitch a lift on Mother Nature’s coat-tails. As I scan along the trees, away into the distance, I can see that each one is similarly alive with these tiny songsters, neat and quietly beautiful in their green-brown, pale yellow and white finery.

  What’s most astonishing, perhaps, is that despite arrivals such as this, which make the willow warbler one of Britain and northern Europe’s commonest birds in the spring and summer, it’s a species that almost entirely fails to register on the radar of non-birdwatchers. These birds, and the thousands and thousands more that will arrive along the south coast over a period of a few days (there are more than 2 million breeding territories in the UK), will move inland, spreading out like a fanned wing, with birds dropping off as and when they reach their old breeding areas. There they’ll spend the short months of summer feverishly working to raise a family, occasionally even two, before the whole daunting return journey begins again as early as the end of July.

  And they’ll do it all without attracting the attention of the Great British Public. Even birdwatchers won’t give them too many second glances.

  In the case of birds making this round trip for the first time, they’ll have the added anxiety of knowing they need to find new territories, new mates. In recent years in Britain, habitat has been squeezed and numbers have fallen, but the north of the country – especially Scotland, with its extensive birch woodlands – remains a stronghold; and perhaps the majority of the birds I’m seeing will end up there, silvering the glens and mountainsides with their ripplingly melodic song, which begins high-pitched and faint, builds to a crescendo, then descends to a slower, sadder ending. It’s both familiar – somewhat recalling the song of the ubiquitous chaffinch – and yet wistful, ungraspable, with a plaintive quality that a chaffinch, perhaps, could only hope to achieve if it too had travelled half the world and seen all its sorrows on the way.

  As I stand, a willow warbler sings. Shyly and hesitantly at first, testing itself against memory and weariness and the growing cold of the Sussex afternoon. And then another, and another, and another takes up the song, and there’s no way back. The season cycle has moved into a higher gear.

  In spring, scenes like this occur along the whole of the south coast. When the wind is right, which is to say from the south and south-west, huge ‘falls’ of migrants can occur as backed-up bird traffic floods in from the continent. Headlands such as Beachy Head and Selsey Bill in Sussex, and Berry Head in Devon, can be the best places to look, as the birds naturally make for whatever piece of land is most visible to them from far out to sea; but in truth they can arrive absolutely anywhere. Vegetation is important – it provides cover for the new arrivals, and will be a source of the insect food that they need – but at times the old adage ‘any port in a storm’ applies.

  At some of those aforementioned headlands, such as Dungeness and Portland Bill, birdwatchers and ornithologists have long taken advantage of birds’ liking of t
hese sites as ports of entry, in order to carry out a huge, ongoing citizen science project. Incoming birds can be trapped with fine mist nets without being harmed, before being ringed. Some of these birds – actually a fairly small percentage – will subsequently be trapped again, and the information on their location will be fed back to the original ringing site. Similarly, the rings from birds found dead are often returned to the organisations that ringed them. It’s this, above all, that over the last hundred years or so has enabled us to start to understand the sheer scale and variety of bird migration.

  Or so we thought. In recent years advances in technology have enabled birders and scientists to fit electronic geo-locators to birds. These, originally fitted to large birds such as ospreys, transmit the bird’s exact location (and sometimes certain information about that location) at least a couple of times a day, enabling those studying the bird to get an exact picture, and map, of its movements.

  As always in the modern world, the technology has rapidly got smaller, less heavy and intrusive, allowing it to be used on lighter birds without affecting their ability to fly. Perhaps the most remarkable results of all, so far, have come from the British Trust for Ornithology’s Cuckoo Project, which set out to discover if any of the reasons for this iconic species’ worrying decline were to be found along its migration route, rather than simply on its British breeding grounds.

  The first surprise was just what that migration route was. In the first batch of birds to be tracked, all selected from nests in East Anglia, some took a central European route, passing down through Italy and then hopping across the Mediterranean via Malta (a hazardous undertaking, given the scale of illegal hunting on that island). Others, though, passed down through France and Spain, crossing the Med at or close to the Straits of Gibraltar. All, from that first batch of six, made it across the forbidding barrier of the Sahara Desert.