Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? 200 birds, 12 months, 1 lapsed birdwatcher

by Lev Parikian

  The statistical side of birdwatching has me torn. On the one hand I’m happy to take the birds at face value, to note their existence, observe their habits, derive pleasure from the way they flit from branch to branch or riffle through their feathers with their beak.

  On the other hand I have an irrational feeling that if I can see more birds this will in some subtle way make me better. Better at birdwatching; better at life.

  It’s pathetic, this need for validation through something so inconsequential. Ludicrous, absurd, laughable.

  It’s also just a bit addictive.

  A part of me dies inside to consider this compartmentalising of nature, this reduction of the glories of the avian world to a series of ticks in spreadsheet cells. But then there’s the other part, the kid who pored over the league tables in the Rothman’s Football Yearbook;* who memorised the first sixty decimal places of pi from a postcard bought at the Paris science museum; who will never forget that Garfield St Aubrun Sobers was the leading run scorer in Test matches, notching up 8,032 runs,† and that Donald Bradman’s 6,996 runs were scored at an average of 99.94. The ability to summon such useless factoids at will has deserted me, but interest in them hasn’t waned. That’s the kind of boy I was, the kind of person I am. Maybe it’s time to come to terms with that. And that sad, tragic, spoddy me loves the counting, the ticking off. He is, in fact, secretly thrilled by it.

  How many birds could I see in a year? 100? 200? 300? Which would be my 100th, 200th, 300th?

  Come to that, how many birds are there in Britain?

  I don’t know.

  I take to the Internet. There has to be a list somewhere.

  There’s a list. Oh boy, is there a list. Birders love a list. Day lists, week lists, month lists, year lists, life lists, garden lists, county lists, walk-to-work lists, seen-from-the-train lists, glimpsed-out-of-the-bathroom-window-while-doing-a-poo lists.

  So inevitably there’s an official list, compiled by the British Ornithological Union, of all the birds seen in Britain since records began in 1879. At the time of my looking it up, it numbers 601.

  I go through it, tallying. Lacking a napkin or the back of an envelope on which I can do the calculation in time-honoured fashion, I resort to a Moleskine notebook. It’ll have to do.

  About half the 601 are classified as ‘rare’. In some cases (booted eagle, eastern towhee, Scopoli’s shearwater), they’ve been seen in this country just once. Even when sightings have been reasonably regular (Bonaparte’s gull, Blyth’s reed warbler, semipalmated sandpiper), they’re sporadic enough for an amateur like me not to bother with them. So, much as I’d love to see a dark-eyed junco, Moussier’s redstart or yellow-bellied sapsucker, I’m not going to hold my breath.

  One bird, the great auk, is an even less likely prospect. It was hunted to extinction in the nineteenth century.

  Well done us.

  I divide the birds into four categories: Already Seen, Will Probably See, Might See and No Chance. The Already Seen column, after some hawk-eyed feeder-watching and a couple of trips to the park, numbers nineteen. The No Chance column kicks on towards fifty and beyond.

  As the columns fill I find myself mentally reorganising my year. Maybe I can wangle a gig in west Wales, nip out in the break, lean over a cliff and tick off a chough.

  Quite a number of birds go into the Might See column simply because I’ve no idea where or how they’re to be found. Is a long-tailed duck commonplace in the right part of the world or a notable rarity? What is the right part of the world? What the hell am I doing?

  There are birds of whose appearance I have only the vaguest impression. If a garganey sat on the table in front of me, could I identify it? Beyond knowing that it’s a kind of duck, I’d be stumped. The same with waders. What’s the difference between a dunlin and a knot? Hold on, I know this. Umm, no I don’t. And just reading the list of warblers, all of them small, greeny-brown and – to my inexperienced eye – identical, is enough to put me off the whole idea.

  But I persevere, and in the end, through a combination of 15 per cent rigorous scientific research and 85 per cent what-the-hell guesswork, I land on a possible total somewhere between 180 and 210. Let’s say 200, a pleasingly round number. Achievable but not ridiculously easy.

  As I delve deeper into where and when these birds might be found, I discover that while 200 seems a lot, for some people it’s merely a launch pad for their annual birding activities. There seem to be plenty of birders who regularly see 300 or more in a year. Should I be setting my sights higher?

  Not if I want to retain my sanity, dignity and family.

  My provisional schedule is already full of controversial jaunts, diversions and enforced family days out. I envisage Tessa and Oliver trailing twenty yards behind me in the hail on a December day in the Cairngorms, muttering to each other as I reassert my conviction that we’re bound to see the ptarmigan just after this next peak. Devoted wife and son they may be, but I fear that extending the target would stretch the limits of my expertise and our family unit to, and possibly beyond, breaking point. It would mean crossing the line from nascent birder to apprentice twitcher.

  There’s that word. Twitcher. Commonly misused to denote anyone with a passing interest in matters avian. I’ve done it myself.

  But twitchers are a breed apart. Where a birder* goes out prepared to enjoy any bird that might cross their path, the twitcher’s agenda is more specific. Rarities.

  Distance and inconvenience are no object. If a Hudsonian whimbrel is reported in Penzance, off to Penzance they rush, even though they live in Swaffham and have a meeting with Derek from HR at half two. If, on the way, news comes in of a gull-billed tern at Grangemouth, well that’s Sunday morning sorted, and never mind the trip to Alton Towers with the kids.

  The twitcher exhibits little interest in commonplace birds. Show them a blue tit and a faint sneer will cross their face, as if to say, ‘Really, though? A blue tit?’ But tell them a semipalmated plover has been seen in Cley and they’ll pause only to grab their spotting scope before setting the satnav and disappearing in a cloud of exhaust.

  Like any obsessive, the twitcher is easy to mock. But their affliction is no different from the one that drives Andy Murray or Jonas Kaufmann to be as good at tennis or singing as they possibly can.* There’s the thrill of the chase too, the sublimation of the primitive hunting urge. Until really quite recently the standard way to identify a bird was to blast it out of the sky and then have a look. Only with the development of sophisticated optics and a more benevolent approach to the environment has the modern way of ‘look but don’t touch’ become prevalent. The twitcher is part hunter, part collector. Find the bird, log it, on to the next. This isn’t to say that the twitcher is without sentiment. For most of them the driving force, albeit sometimes masked by a frenzied desire to see more birds than his† competitors, is a genuine love of birds. And this is matched by identification skills of which I can only dream. So if I mock, it’s from a place of affection and admiration, even jealousy. But, fascinating though twitching is from an anthropological point of view, it’s not how I want to spend my year. So there’s my first rule: no twitching. I’ll travel – a year watching the birds in the back garden would see me fall short by a distance – but there will be no careering across the country because someone in Liskeard thought they saw a wryneck.

  Another factor restricting my final total is my second, unbreakable rule: no cheating. I intend to be firm with myself on this, almost requiring that any bird wear a lapel badge and greet me with a warm, ‘Hello, Lev. I’ll be your gadwall for today. Do tell me if I can be of any assistance,’ before I admit it to the list. Not only is it a moral imperative, I’m keen to avoid a repeat of the Swimming Test Incident.

  I have my rules: no twitching, no cheating. Let the game begin.

  January ticks (19)

  West Norwood & Dulwich

  Blue Tit Cyanistes caeruleus, Woodpigeon Columba palumbus, Great Tit Parus major, Blackbird Tu
rdus merula, Robin Erithacus rubecula, Rock Dove/Feral Pigeon Columba livia, Magpie Pica pica, Carrion Crow Corvus corone, Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis, Starling Sturnus vulgaris, House Sparrow Passer domesticus, Wren Troglodytes troglodytes, Dunnock Prunella modularis, Mute Swan Cygnus olor, Canada Goose Branta canadensis, Mallard Anas platyrhynchos, Tufted Duck Aythya fuligula, Moorhen Gallinula chloropus, Coot Fulica atra

  Notes

  * Oxford United, 20th in League Division Two in 1976 with 33 points and a goal difference of -20 – relegated, along with York City and Portsmouth. You’re welcome.

  † Dammit, now I need to change my PIN.

  * They were called ‘birdwatchers’ when I was young. If the current mania for abbreviation runs to its logical conclusion, it’s only a matter of time before they’re known as ‘brdrs’.

  * Other tennis players and singers are available, but you’re not going to do much better than those two.

  † And yes, they are, as far as I can tell, mostly men.

  FEBRUARY 2016

  Richard Strauss was not a man plagued by self-doubt. As he lay on his deathbed at the end of a long and fruitful life, he said to his daughter-in-law, ‘You know, Anna, it is just as I wrote it in Death and Transfiguration.’

  The work he’s referring to was written sixty-five years earlier. It has a notably transcendent ending, the foreboding and turmoil of the opening twenty minutes resolving into peaceful acceptance. So if he’s to be believed, your passage to the hereafter will involve little more than lying on a gilded Hungarian goose-down duvet while winged cherubs spoon Alphonso mango juice into your mouth and unicorns bear you heavenwards on gossamer wings.

  He knew a thing or two, did Strauss. He knew the full extent of an orchestra’s capabilities. He knew how to write music that transports you to another realm.

  And he knew how to make violinists suffer.

  I stand in front of twenty of them on a Monday evening in February. They look dispirited, as well they might. Not their fault, not my fault. Strauss’s fault. It’s only five seconds of music, but to them it lasts an age. Strauss has a way of driving his music forward with turbulent rhythmic figures, repeated and varied, striving ever upward. It’s only when the ratchet is fully cranked that he strips away the complex web of orchestral texture and abandons the violins to their fate.

  Into those five seconds Strauss has packed a wealth of technical difficulty, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that just as they have to contend with these notes, everyone else stops playing, leaving them as vulnerable as a chaffinch in the path of a sparrowhawk.

  The violins, committed to a high register, cascade downwards, as if thrown over the edge of a cliff. Somehow, grabbing at tufts of grass and protruding branches to slow themselves, they make it to the bottom, where their fall is cushioned by the reassuring weight of orchestral sound rejoining the fray, and we’re off again, tossing and turning to yet another climax.

  In performance, it’s a precarious moment, even with seasoned professionals. With non-professionals, it’s a reason to give up the violin. But I’ve decided to programme the piece anyway, because it’s a cracker, and I’m not one to spoil the ship for five seconds of particularly glutinous tar.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  They’re good people, these violinists. They play in an orchestra for enjoyment, to slough off the cares of their jobs, to take part in a cultural endeavour that can be larger than the sum of its parts. This isn’t what they signed up for.

  But I’ve committed them to it, and now, standing in front of them armed only with a white stick and limited powers of persuasion, I look for words of reassurance. ‘Try not to panic,’ I offer. ‘Try to play at the same speed as everyone else. Remember: whatever happens, nobody died.’

  I’m rewarded with a small chuckle. They’ve heard that one before. They’ve heard them all before. I need new material.

  ‘OK, one more go. From letter L.’

  A voice from the back of the orchestra.

  ‘Excuse me, Maestro.’

  The capital ‘M’ is clearly audible.

  ‘Steve.’

  I’ve known Steve for twenty years, our friendship surviving the potentially fractious relationship between trumpeter and conductor. When he uses the audible capital ‘M’, it’s because he knows I hate it.

  ‘Can you clarify when you’re going into two between L and M?’

  It’s a reasonable request. Players like clarity from conductors. Grappling with an unruly instrument is hard enough without the incoherent gestures of the person at the front.

  I know the passage in question. At the beginning, the music is firmly in four beats per bar, march-style. But by the end the feel has changed and the pulse is felt with only two beats per bar. Steve wants to know where I’m going to make the change so he can mark it in his part. It will facilitate his next entry, leading to greater security and confidence. As I say, it’s a reasonable request.

  But I have other ideas.

  The trouble is, you pigeonhole the arcane gestures of a conductor at your peril. The transition between the two characters of the music isn’t clearly defined. It’s like asking when blue becomes green or when your depression first came on. A definite answer isn’t always possible. If they have it marked in their parts the players will subconsciously pay less attention to the conductor, and we wouldn’t want that.

  It’s not that conductors crave attention for reasons of deep-seated insecurity.

  OK, it is that. But not completely. The more the players pay attention to the nuances of a conductor’s gestures, the more likely they are to react as one with their colleagues.

  In theory.

  So after due consultation with the text, I say, with a quiet smile, ‘I don’t know.’

  A nervous chuckle eddies round the room. Steve, a wise old hand, accepts the answer with a rueful shake of the head. I’ll explain my thinking to him later over a pint. He’ll understand.

  I can understand their nervousness. Conductors aren’t supposed to say ‘I don’t know’. We’re leaders, knowers, certainty brokers. Orchestras are like horses. They sense fear. They also suffer in silence when people in strange clothes climb aboard them and make them do things they don’t want to. And they like sugar lumps.

  And like horses, to stretch the analogy to breaking point, they can get lazy unless kept up to the mark. Not because of any inherent character flaw, more because the natural instinct of any group of humans is to get away with as much as possible. They want to play the music to the best of their collective ability, but unless someone is there to nudge them, it’s easy to follow the path of least resistance. And on the wayside of that well-worn path is a cosy pub called Ignoring the Conductor.

  A simple tactic is to ask people to watch, but everyone, conductor included, gets bored of that. By saying ‘I don’t know’ I’m hoping the players might be curious enough about the exact point of transition to cast the odd glance in my direction.

  So it’s a tactic, underpinned by the confidence of two decades of experience, and a fundamental feeling that I basically, more or less, some of the time, with a clear road ahead and a light prevailing wind, know what I’m doing.

  As for that tricky violin passage, I’m sure it’ll be fine in the concert.

  The rehearsal continues, and into my head, from nowhere, pops the arcane knowledge that ‘Strauss’ is the German word for ‘ostrich’.

  The ‘I don’t know’ that echoes in my head repeatedly on my birding trips in early February is a beast of a different hue.

  What’s that bird?

  I don’t know.

  Not that one. The other one, flitting into that bush.

  I don’t know.

  Ooh, that’s a lovely song. There, in that tree. Oh, it’s gone. What was it?

  I don’t know.

  Was that a goldfinch that just flew over?

  I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know shutupshutupshutup.

  I’d forgotten
just how much of birdwatching is uncertainty and guesswork. It’s one thing sitting in your favourite armchair, musing on the plumage differences between first- and second-winter black-headed gulls, but that doesn’t help identify the scrubby little blighter that’s just jigged into that bush, never to be seen again. And it’s no use asking them politely to damn well sit still blast you while I jot down the distinguishing features of your plumage in this notebook dammit which pocket is it in now where did I put the pencil ah here it is oh bugger it’s gone. They just won’t. Most disobliging.

  I’m on relatively secure ground, as you’d hope and expect, in the back garden. South London isn’t a hotbed of exotica, and as I charge the feeders with the RSPB’s finest suet balls, buggy nibbles and no-mess sunflower mix, I’m fairly confident of the birds it will attract. It’s not as if I’ve been completely blind to the charms of the avian universe all these years. They’ve just been in the deep background, like extras in a crowd scene.

  The birds that have been coming to the feeder all these years, the ones that come now in some abundance, these are the birds of my childhood.

  With one exception.

  Among the tits, scattering scraps of fat onto the rosemary bush below like dandruff onto a dinner-jacket collar, the blackbirds hopping around the lawn, and the robin without which no British garden would be complete, is a bird whose abundance today was undreamt of when I was growing up.

  Psittacula krameri.

  In the late 1980s I started playing for a friendly cricket team called the Fulham Taverners. Starting life as the radical cricketing wing of the Fulham Young Conservatives, the team evolved, eventually welcoming players of all political persuasions and cricketing abilities. In that time – taking as our ethos the theory that sometimes it’s better to be truly atrocious at something than merely mediocre – we’ve experienced the highs, lows and middles familiar to any amateur sportsperson, while providing regular entertainment for literally tens of people.