A Sky Full of Birds

by Matt Merritt

  Perhaps the grandness of the name, Rutland Water, created wholly unreasonable expectations, because when I caught sight of it, it looked no more impressive than any old flooded field. Leafless trees stuck up from the murky water here and there, and closer inspection revealed old buildings, fence posts, hedges and telegraph poles as well. Far from being an image of natural beauty, it looked like a scene of post-industrial desolation, or some appalling natural disaster. I turned away and promptly forgot about it for another fifteen years.

  Where I was being ludicrously unfair, of course, was in failing to work out that the reservoir would develop and mature. Water levels rose. Those rather sad vestiges of the former valley of the River Gwash disappeared beneath them. The harder edges of the lake were smoothed out, and reeds, bushes and trees soon gave the banks a wholly natural look. Not that everything about the place suggested an unspoiled rural idyll, of course. Car parks and visitor centres sprawled over parts of the shores for those visitors who wanted to walk or cycle around the perimeter, while a sailing club occupied a site on the south arm (the lake is essentially the shape of an elongated horseshoe laid flat, with the Hambleton peninsula separating two arms). Sailing, fishing and general tourism provide owners Anglian Water with valuable extra income, as well as doing their bit to assuage any dissatisfaction from locals upset that their valley has disappeared.

  Even so, at a site the size of Rutland Water, it’s not that difficult to get away from such activities. There are still plenty of quiet corners if you want them. Two of these peaceful spots were set aside and designated as such right from the outset. Together these areas at Egleton and Lyndon make up the Rutland Water Nature Reserve, with a main visitor centre situated at the former and a rather smaller building at the latter. In the years since their creation they too have matured and developed, until now they form a location of international importance in conservation, especially of wildfowl.

  Not many men, these days, get the chance to shape an entire landscape, or at least not for the better. But that’s exactly what Tim Appleton has done in his forty years as manager of the Rutland Water Nature Reserve.

  He remembers driving past the site even as the lake was being created – it was on his route from Peakirk, near Peterborough, where he worked for the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, to his home city of Bristol. He watched as the dam took shape, and the valley started to fill, not thinking that within months he’d be working there. It was a hard decision to move. He loved working at the WWT, but in the end, when the reserve manager’s job came up in 1975, the lure of being in at the start of something with such enormous potential was too much to resist.

  ‘No one had done anything on this scale before,’ Tim explains. ‘I did have something of a vision as to how it would work, and I was given a pretty free rein.’

  As he says this he points out of his office window in the Egleton visitor centre. Virtually every tree or decent-sized bush that we can see, with the exception of some distant giants on the hill at Burley, is there as a result of the creation of the reserve, not to mention the lagoons and reed beds that make this anything but your typical reservoir.

  ‘I planted 100,000 trees in the first two years,’ he says. ‘With the reed beds, I dug twenty-five channels by hand, and then piled in rhizomes from the Burley Fish Ponds. Now we have fourteen hectares of reed bed, with booming bitterns.’

  Two things, he says, have made this all possible. One is the massive support he has received from staff and hundreds of volunteers. The other is the way the reservoir as a whole has been managed. Strict zoning policies have enabled conservation and recreation areas to thrive alongside each other, and alongside the lake’s day-to-day raison d’être – supplying water to nearby Peterborough.

  ‘The proudest thing about my time here, perhaps,’ says Tim, ‘is that we have maintained a forty-year partnership with Anglian Water.’

  He’s right. This is a working reservoir that is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, an internationally recognised RAMSAR site – the designation given to globally important wetlands – and a European Special Protection Area, on account of its wintering populations of ducks such as shoveller and gadwall. As we speak, two of the latter paddle across the lagoon in front of us. They’re subtly beautiful birds, easily overlooked in favour of showier ducks, such as the pintails just beyond them; but Rutland Water’s story, and more importantly that of the British Birdwatching Fair, is inextricably linked with wildfowl from the start.

  Like all the best ideas, Birdfair (as it’s known to most birders) was born in a pub, the appropriately named Finch’s Arms at Hambleton to be exact, on the peninsula jutting out into the middle of Rutland Water. There, Tim Appleton met with Martin Davies of the RSPB, and the rest is history.

  ‘It all stemmed from the mid-1980s, when we used to stage what we called a wildfowl bonanza here,’ says Tim. ‘Martin had started working in the area and was an innovative guy, and my mentor had been Sir Peter Scott, whose ethos was very much “birds and people”, not conservation with a fence around it.

  ‘The Game Fair was held at Belvoir, and it struck us that there was nothing similar to that kind for birdwatching, even though it was becoming increasingly popular.’

  Tim and Martin spoke to optics retailer In Focus, who had already enjoyed some success staging demonstration days, and got them on board; and they in turn secured the support of Swarovski Optik, the new boys on the block in the binocular market at the time, who chipped in £2,000.

  ‘We wanted it to be about places that people could go to, so there was and is an ecotourism bias,’ says Tim.

  ‘We made money for conservation right from the start – £10,000 in 1990. It occurred to us to ask how we were going to manage the money, and so BirdLife got on board, too.’

  The involvement of BirdLife, the international umbrella organisation that coordinates the conservation efforts of charities and NGOs in well over a hundred countries, was a huge seal of approval for Birdfair, and the catalyst for an expansion that continues to this day. I find myself seeing it like one of those shots from a TV programme, where an aerial camera pans back from its focus on a single house, rapidly taking in first the whole British Isles, then Europe, then the globe. The work and vision of one small division of The Wildlife Trusts – Leicestershire and Rutland is one of the country’s more modestly proportioned – was being taken to the rest of the country by the RSPB, and to the rest of the world by BirdLife.

  Tim says: ‘We thought we could probably do a lot more good with the money abroad – if our own NGOs can’t do enough here, we’re on a hiding to nothing anyway. And so we’ve looked overseas, and we’ve been quite bold, targeting places like Cuba and Myanmar.’

  Throughout it all Birdfair has retained a pleasantly homespun feel; for all the talk of it being ‘birdwatching’s Glastonbury’, it has little of the music festival’s present-day slickness and in-your-face commercialism.

  ‘For twenty years we never really had a proper budget – we just gave away the money we raised, and started again when the money from stallholders started coming in,’ Tim says. ‘We have limited expenses, and a great team running it all.’

  Nevertheless, there’s been a certain amount of carping about the fair on forums and in the under-the-breath chatter you hear around hides, and Tim admits that such criticism hurts. But the real refutation of such nay-sayers comes from Birdfair’s success: £14 million raised for conservation, once match-funding and seeding is taken into account, and an ever-increasing itinerary of bird fairs all around the world, all taking the Rutland event as their model. Tim’s kept busy visiting them to offer advice, or just to speak at them – at Doñana in Spain, in Portugal, Colombia, South Africa, Uganda and the United States.

  So what has made Birdfair such a success? What is the magic ingredient these far-flung locations seek to emulate?

  ‘We had three goals when we started,’ he says. ‘First, we wanted to be a shop window for conservation, and conservation organisations and b
usinesses. Secondly, we wanted to bring birders from around the world together.’

  They’ve certainly succeeded in the latter. It’s not unusual at Birdfair to see Israelis and Palestinians sharing birding stories, for example. And the third factor?

  ‘Fun! We wanted it to be fun.’

  It is fun. It’s the fun of being surprised by birds and destinations you didn’t know existed (even if, like me, you’ve been to the last eight or nine Birdfairs), and feeling a sudden, overwhelming longing to see such beauty. It’s the fun of learning the smallest details about birds – from the reproductive habits of the bullfinch to the hunting strategies of the Steller’s sea eagle – from as celebrated a collection of birdwatchers and ornithologists as you’ll ever see gathered together. It’s about hearing speakers who have travelled from the other side of the planet – literally, and who pack so much passion, local knowledge and hope for the future into a thirty-minute lecture that you leave enthused, educated and convinced that conservation isn’t merely a long, hopeless rearguard action against conspicuous consumption and perpetual growth.

  It’s about walking through the art marquee, marvelling at the huge hold birds have on our imaginations and hearts, as you take in photos, paintings and prints that play with your entire concept of our wildlife and countryside. It’s about watching and hearing some of the biggest names in birding showing off their knowledge and/or making fools of themselves at one of the many quizzes and panel shows upon the main stage.

  It’s being persuaded to part with your money and personal details by a bewildering array of businesses, NGOs, charities and other organisations (and, yes, Bird Watching magazine is among them). It does take willpower not to find yourself penniless after the first hour, but you’ll return home with at least one classic field guide you thought you’d never find, or one shiny new pair of binoculars that will change your birding life. It’s the powerful, phenolic flavour of whisky from Islay, and the sharp, refreshing kick of pisco sours from Peru, and it’s steel bands from Trinidad and folk singers from the heart of England.

  It’s hearing the keynote lecture (speakers have included the likes of Sir David Attenborough) and knowing the message that’s inspiring you will soon be winging its way around the world like a migrating bird.

  Above all, it’s about people. People you don’t see from one year to the next, but who at some time or another have played a vital role in sparking and nurturing your own love of birds. People you’ve met on remote Scottish islands, or halfway up Andean volcanoes, or in the African bush. People who can change your life for the better, whether it’s by persuading you to volunteer for a cause, or to travel to the destination you always wanted to see, and people who just want to share a beer or a coffee around the campfire and chat about the one thing all 25,000-plus attendees have in common – birds.

  ‘There are thrills unspeakable in Rutland, more perhaps than on the road to Khiva.’ So wrote a gentleman called Stephen Graham in 1923, in a book called The Gentle Art of Tramping. Whether you consider that Birdfair justifies his assessment probably depends on just how obsessed you are with birds; and the subtle, understated nature of Rutland’s natural glories and picturesque towns can also tend to make it look like slight hyperbole.

  But in recent years, Rutland has acquired one attraction that fully fits the billing, and I’ve left the crowds of the fair behind to find it. I head south from the main visitor centre, steadfastly ignoring the signs to a succession of hides named after some of the many species that visit Rutland Water or make it their home – tree sparrow, snipe, shelduck, and so on. I walk on past Lax Hill, and finally come out at wigeon hide, from where in winter you can watch big flocks of the eponymous ducks whistling as they feed.

  The first of these birds could arrive any time now, but the stretch of the reservoir I’m looking at, Manton Bay, is known in summer for something else entirely. The hide, even with the competing draw of Birdfair, is almost full, and before I’ve had a chance to ask any of the occupants about our target, it shows up.

  It’s unmistakable. Short-tailed but long-winged, the latter distinctive by virtue of their four ‘fingers’ and the way they’re held flexed at the carpal joint as the bird glides in from the left. It’s pale, too – unusual among British raptors – and as we lift our binoculars and focus in, we can see the slight crest and the bandit stripe through the eye.

  And then it stops. Unlike the kestrel, which stands absolutely motionless on the breeze as it hunts, the osprey’s hovering is a little clumsy and heavy-winged, always on the verge of tipping over into forward flight or surrendering to the force of gravity.

  But it’s every bit as effective. Our bird has spotted a rich vein of silver just below the surface, and moves fast to stake its claim. Wings fold, and the bird drops, hitting the water with a loud splash. It’s gone from sight for what feels like an age but can’t be more than a couple of seconds, the bird transformed instantly into some strange creature of the deep, and then its head emerges from the lake, and its powerful wings haul it clear, back into the deep blue element that has been associated with birds from the earliest days. Even without optics, we can all see the trout it’s carrying, slung in both talons, nose first, like a torpedo.

  Ospreys are literally in a class of their own, one of the few bird species in the world to be in its own family. Found in most parts of the planet, they’ve adapted to catching fish, and absolutely nothing else. The fact they are found worldwide made their appearance in Rutland controversial, at least initially. Having become extinct in Britain between 1916 and 1954, with egg and skin collectors mainly to blame for their demise, they recolonised Scotland naturally: Scandinavian birds pass through Britain on their migration, so there was always a chance that some would stay to breed.

  This recolonisation was slow but steady, and the species is under no threat globally, so a plan to release birds into the East Midlands with the intention of establishing a breeding population met with some opposition. Not just from fishermen, worried about what the raptors might catch, but from some birders who felt the money spent on the project would have been better used to meet other conservation priorities.

  But the scheme went ahead, and it’s hard to argue it hasn’t worked. In 2014, for example, there were six pairs raising young at the reservoir and eighteen birds in total around the place; non-breeding youngsters often hang around likely nesting sites, checking out the possibilities for years to come.

  Importantly, the Rutland ospreys have started to spread. Successful breeding pairs in Wales are birds that originally came from Rutland Water, and in the next few years this colonisation is likely to continue. The scheme’s success is in encouraging other reservoirs to try to get in on the action. While a translocation scheme takes a lot of time, money and effort to implement, attracting a passing osprey or two to settle and breed is a far more feasible option; and so nesting platforms are starting to spring up across the Midlands and beyond, at places such as Carsington Water in Derbyshire.

  Rutland’s ospreys have had two more beneficial effects. They’ve captured the public’s imagination as surely as an osprey snags one of the reservoir’s tench, for starters. Special ‘osprey cruises’ on the lake are booked up months in advance; and if you visit Rutland Water’s nature reserves any day between the middle of March and the middle of September, you can be sure every other birder you meet will ask if you’ve seen an osprey yet. On a local level, everyone from schoolchildren to local businessmen have got behind the birds, and it wouldn’t be stretching things too far to say that the bird has helped bolster England’s smallest county’s sense of identity.

  On an international level the project has built links between this country and Senegal and Gambia, the ospreys’ main wintering grounds, and has created a far greater understanding of precisely what challenges these amazing birds face at all stages of their life cycle. There’s that zooming-out feeling again: as I watch our osprey circling in front of the hide I’m transported to a sweltering African estua
ry, the high Atlas Mountains, parched Spanish steppes, a stormy Atlantic coastline, and everything in between.

  Success has bred success, too. The popularity of the scheme, and its ability to pull in paying punters, has made Anglian Water more willing to put money into less glamorous, but equally vital, projects. Such as schemes to help tree sparrows, and water voles, and to extend and develop the lagoons so that Rutland Water will continue to be a site of the utmost importance to British wildfowl and waders in particular. This alone should justify the decision to reintroduce a species that isn’t threatened on a global scale: every headline the ospreys grab is a step forward for the cause of conservation as a whole.

  Over the next hour or so, the osprey perches on the dead limb of one of the trees just across the bay, alternating between pecking vigorously at the fish it caught, and gazing imperiously about. Birders come and go, and several of us attempt to read the ring on its leg identifying it, without success. Do so with a bird in the normal course of things and you can send the details of your sighting off to contribute to the great wealth of citizen science data that has added so much to the knowledge of British ornithologists. Do so with the ospreys, and you can go online and read about that particular bird’s life story – the nest in which it was born, its journeys to Africa and back, breeding successes and failures, and so on. Technology such as satellite tracking devices combined with the dedicated work of volunteers from the Osprey Project, who travel to Africa each winter, and the generally high profile enjoyed by the scheme, mean we probably know as much about these individual wild birds as any others in history.

  The hide has cleared by now, and there’s a slight chill in the air to announce autumn’s imminent arrival. The osprey is nowhere to be seen, either, having flapped leisurely away behind a screen of trees. I pack up slowly and walk back towards the visitor centre and Birdfair, wondering how long it will be before the raptor starts the long journey south.