by Lev Parikian
One Sunday, during a game in Teddington, I was distracted by a flash of green. This would have mattered less had the object it distracted me from not been the ball, which, in accordance with the conventions of the game, I was expected to catch, but which whooshed past me like one of Douglas Adams’s notorious deadlines. Above the stifled groans of my teammates I heard a mocking squawk, as if my humiliation was the result of a carefully hatched plan. I retrieved the ball, restricting the batsmen to a paltry five runs,* and turned to see the colourful bird circling me, still squawking and giving me its finest beady look from a livid crimson eye. Notwithstanding this rocky start to our relationship, I started to look forward to my encounters with these exotic birds, their rarity adding to the frisson caused by their appearance. Lovely birds, I would think as I patrolled the boundary. Beautiful. Look at the contrast between the lush green of their plumage and the raw red of their hooked beak. I could almost imagine myself in Delhi, if I hadn’t been wearing three jumpers and clamping my hands between my thighs to stop them from dropping off.
Affection can be eroded by familiarity, and when familiarity becomes intrusion, affection is no longer the word that springs to mind.
One parakeet in the garden? An exotic visitor. Two? Aw look, he’s found a mate. Three? OK guys, you can stop now. Four? Fetch the air rifle.
Because, you see, parakeets are bastards. Oiks, louts, hooligans. If they were human they would have angry old men chasing them, shaking their fists and shouting ‘I’ll get you, you ’orrible kids!’
They encircle the garden, screeching. At first it’s hard to discern them from the surrounding foliage, but they’re visible enough when they descend on the feeder, stripping it bare like vultures with a fresh carcass. Then with a grawk and a squeal, they’re off.
But they’ll be back. Oh, I know they’ll be back.
Bastards.
Lest you think me unduly harsh, I’d say the same about any bird in similar circumstances. The golden eagle, for example. One of them soaring over a Highland valley is majestic, stunning, primeval. Sixteen in your garden, ripping the hydrangeas to shreds and crapping on the patio? Not so much.
The origins of the ring-necked parakeet in this country are subject to various explanations. One version has a pair escaping the set of The African Queen at Shepperton Studios; another holds that Jimi Hendrix released them in Carnaby Street in a drug-crazed stupor. The mundane likelihood is they escaped from an aviary and found the comfortable habitat of suburban Surrey to their liking. With two broods a year, high survival rates and few predators to disturb their spread, they’ve thrived, and their population has grown to the extent that they’re now considered, like many non-native species across different branches of wildlife, a pest. Grey squirrels, Spanish bluebells, rhododendrons, Canada geese and now the ring-necked parakeet – strange how the mere mention of an invasive species can make a mild, left-leaning nature enthusiast foam at the mouth like a UKIP supporter.
The parakeet that clings to the feeder and destroys the suet ball with a maniacal glint in its eye one rainy morning in February goes on my list. It’s a naturalised bird, and therefore a permitted species for those who care about such things. The bird was admitted to the British list in 1984, so it counts, and while part of me resents it for its parakeet-ness, I am, on the whole, glad to have seen it. My list is in danger of stalling. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the garden birds. Each appearance of a goldfinch or great tit delivers a little jolt of pleasure, lifts my day a fraction. But while this celebration of the familiar adds a dimension to daily life, it merely whets my appetite. If I’m to make significant inroads into my target, I need to spread my wings and venture to pastures new.
I need to visit a bird reserve.
It’s chilly in the hide. Comfort and warmth aren’t what it’s designed for. The thinking seems to be, ‘Look pal, the birds out there, wading up to their wingpits in cold sludge, they’re not comfortable, are they? So why should you be?’
Yeah, but they have feathers to keep them warm. And they’re birds. They’re used to it.
I adjust my binoculars and scan the scrape again.
Gull. Gull. Gull. Duck. Duck. Gull. Duck. Cormorant. Duck. Gull.
Loads of gulls and loads of ducks and not much else.
I’m aware that my descriptions of ‘gull’ and ‘duck’ are woefully inadequate. I would love to be more specific, but am hindered by two things.
Firstly, my binoculars.
That’s right. Blame the binoculars.
The trouble with the binoculars is that they’re of the pocket variety. They’ve been knocking about the house for years, nobody really sure whose they are or where they came from. Looking through them is frustrating, because they improve your view of anything by a degree that can be described as ‘not quite enough’. But really the problem isn’t so much with them but with the birds. They’re too far away. There’s a lovely stretch of water just in front of me. Why can’t they float there?
But all this kvetching is by way of diverting attention from the real problem. Me.
I’m assailed by voices from the past.
Have you done your homework, Parikian?
Yes, sir.
Really?
Well, I’ve done some, sir, but…
Well?
There are so many birds, sir, and they never look like the birds in the books, and they all have different plumages at different times of year, and… sorry, sir.
I recognise the mallard. We all recognise the mallard. It’s the park duck. Dark head, ring neck, purple feather on the wing. Waddle waddle. Quack quack.
And I know the tufted duck. That’s the other park duck, the blackish and white one with the tuft on its head and a disconcerting yellow eye.
Ooh, and I know the shoveler, because of its outsized bill. It’s not grotesquely big, like the spoonbill’s or the toucan’s or the pelican’s. It’s just big enough that if you were talking to a shoveler you’d go to great lengths not to look at it or refer to it, but would inevitably blow it all with a stray comment about the size of this month’s gas bill, er, I mean invoice.
So I’m fine with those. But then there are the others, all sounding like firms of solicitors. Pochard and pintail. Gadwall and garganey. Goldeneye, scaup and smew.
There’s ducks out there, Jim, but not as I know them.
Luckily, the good folk of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust have thought ahead, providing for the hapless apprentice a bird guide, firmly attached to the wall with theft-proof wire. I never knew birders were so untrustworthy.
I riffle through it, finding the wildfowl pages. There are illustrations of birds in various plumages: male, female, winter, summer, juvenile. The plumages I know, the ones I wish the bally birds had the decency to wear at all times, are the adult males. These are generally the most striking, females being largely brown, and juveniles not yet fully developed and therefore not needing colourful plumage with which to attract a mate. The awkward fact is, however, that not all birds are adult males, which is good news for the survival of the species, but bad news for me. Not only do we have to learn the difference between all the species, we have to learn the variations too.
In the case of the duck-like object floating nearest to me, I’m in luck.
The bird’s body is predominantly silver, with black-and-white hindquarters. Its head is a warm chestnut, with a light pink below. There’s nothing overstated or gaudy about this bird. It seems to have been designed by someone with expensive taste. I look back at the book. The vagueness of ‘some kind of duck’ quickly coalesces into certainty.
‘Wigeon. You’re a wigeon.’
I murmur the words under my breath. They’re not loud enough for the wigeon to hear – I’m not mad – but just loud enough for them to be real, for it to be real, for my tiny moment of triumph to live for a second on the air.
I’ve taken to doing this. Hearing a bird singing in a tree, I’ll stop and scan the branches. When I’ve found it I allow myself
a quiet, ‘Ah, there you are,’ as if it’s just arrived ten minutes late for a meeting. Then I move on, my day fractionally enriched.
They say birders are eccentric. I’m going to fit right in.
The lagoon where these birds are floating is part of the larger entity that is the London Wetland Centre, miraculously created on the site of old reservoirs in Barnes, in West London, in 2000.
In my research I’ve ascertained that the answer to the question, ‘Where should a Londoner go to see 200 species of bird?’ is basically, ‘Don’t live in London.’ I concede this is an unfair assessment, giving the impression that London is a concrete jungle devoid of wildlife, except for swarms of rats, mangy foxes and one-footed pigeons.
While it’s true those creatures are present in some abundance, it’s not beyond the wit of man to scrape the surface and find the delights hidden within, not least because London has a lot of green common land, by some estimates more than any city of a comparable size in the world. While these havens are welcome, the presence of a full-on nature reserve just a couple of delayed train journeys from my doorstep is a boon, so I’ve come to Barnes to see what’s about.
As an introduction to wildfowl, the wetland centres administered by the WWT around the country could hardly be bettered. This one, nestled in a curve of the Thames, has a welcoming visitor centre, with a family-friendly cafe and a shop selling gifty knick-knacks, cuddly ducks and general birding paraphernalia. On leaving the visitor centre through an attractive brick courtyard, you’re immediately beset by ducks and geese. These, I quickly realise, are part of their captive collection, terribly tame, and prolific excreters. They – and the captive otters whose feeding time twice a day coincides with an opportunity to see flocks of west London yummy mummies in their natural habitat – lend the immediate environs a zoo-like atmosphere. Everything’s well cared for, but nothing’s going anywhere soon.
Venture further out, however, and you quickly find yourself on a nature reserve, with paths leading through wooded areas and reed beds, and hides overlooking lagoons and grazing marshes. These carefully managed habitats are attractive to all sorts of waterbirds, including the wigeon I’ve just masterfully identified.
The addition of just two species to my list is a result of my general ignorance more than anything else. The other birds that were no doubt there remained unidentified by my overwhelmed brain. Nonetheless, there’s a spring in my step as I walk back to the station for another round of ‘Train Cancellation Bingo’. Rus in urbe can do that to you.
With one visit to a bird reserve under my belt in a relatively busy period, I prepare to draw a line under the list for this month.
But we all like a bonus, the little treat that appears when you least expect it.
It’s not a long drive to the hotel near Windsor for a family wedding on the last weekend in February, but fear of forgetting vital items (clothes, wallet, child) on any trip away, no matter how short, blanks my mind to anything else. Only when we’ve checked in and are exploring the hotel’s television options does the possibility of an unexpected addition to my tally become apparent.
I get a text from my sister-in-law, two rooms away.
‘Kites!’
At first I’m confused. Is it Chinese New Year again already? Have I neglected a vital aspect of the celebrations? What a fool I will look in the photos, the only guest not clutching a kite.
Then the penny drops and I go to the window.
To see a red kite hanging in the air, manoeuvring its lithe body with agile movements of its wings and controlling the airflow with precise and fluid wriggles of its forked tail, is to witness an aeronautical miracle.
To see six outside your window is to risk missing a wedding and causing irreparable family ructions.
When I was a child, the red kite had near legendary status, its numbers having dwindled from pest-like abundance in earlier centuries to a handful of breeding pairs in South Wales. It was firmly on my list of romantic must-sees, as forlorn a hope back then as my desire to see a golden eagle. The reintroduction programme initiated in the Chilterns in 1992 came too late for me to realise my childhood dreams, but even in the midst of my thirty-five-year ornithological lull I was aware of their resurgence, and any car journey on the motorways to the west of London was lent an added frisson by the possibility of a sighting.
I summon Oliver. He’s the same age as I was at the height of my birding passion. His enthusiasms lie elsewhere, but he’s always had a fascination with birds of prey, and here is a free display just for us. We stand at the window until we absolutely have to get changed, then, just before we go down, I sneak another look. They’re gone, no doubt seeking a less fickle audience. This is how it should be, a natural puncture to the birder’s rampant egotism. I’ll see another kite the next day, nearly crashing my bike into the Cumberland Gate in Windsor Great Park as I crane my neck trying to prolong my view of it. But the bike ride will yield a tick yet more outlandish.
Give a five-year-old a box of crayons and ask them to draw the brightest bird they can imagine. When they’ve finished, ask them to add a few more colours.
You now have a picture of a male mandarin duck. This striking bird’s scientific name, Aix galericulata, means ‘bewigged waterbird’, but that’s just the start of it. It’s a cartoon bird, the extravagant decoration of its exotic plumage immediately catching the eye, and the sail-like feathers on its back offset by a boa round its neck. Not for the mandarin the subdued pastels of the wigeon or subtle grey specklings of the gadwall. The male mandarin is gagging for attention, not just from females of its species, but from everyone.
Like the red kite, this bird’s population has increased since I last looked. But where the kite has benefited from conservationists’ desire to reintroduce a declining bird, the mandarin’s spread is the result of birds escaping from wildfowl collections and going feral. Birders sniff at escapes, or ‘plastics’, but when those birds gain a toehold as a breeding population, they reluctantly add them to their lists while reserving the right to carry on sniffing.
I don’t sniff at the mandarin duck I see on Virginia Water the day after the wedding. It sits on the water, oblivious to my approval, bobbing gently among a group of altogether less showy wildfowl. There’s no identification difficulty here, no comparison of primary projections or problematic bill shapes required. It’s a male mandarin duck in breeding plumage. There’s no bird quite like it.
Tick.
Another evening, another rehearsal. Strauss remains unnecessarily vindictive to violinists, but they take it in good heart, and confidence for the concert is middling to high.
Afterwards I walk to Victoria rather than take the single-stop tube journey. Whichever way I go I’ll end up standing on the station concourse while a Southern employee sees how many times they can cram the word ‘cancelled’ onto the departures board, so I take the healthier option.
It’s a crispish and still evening, and as I walk I review the rehearsal in my head, mostly oblivious to the few cars crawling along the back streets around Eaton Square.
My thoughts are interrupted by a totally unexpected sound. High up in a tree, piercing in the prevailing tranquillity, a bird sings. It stops me in my tracks. A soft ‘Oh!’ escapes my lips as I scan the tree.
It’s a mellow song, by turns fluting and warbling, short phrases tailing off, a gap, then another phrase, related but not the same. I stand underneath the tree, searching. What can it be?
I think of the newly purchased CD box set sitting on my desk. British Bird Sounds – its authority confirmed by the reassuring words ‘British Library’ on the front. Useful as this might prove in the coming weeks, it’s not much help right now.
Without the aid of the permanent ambient light of London’s streets, I would never find it. It also helps that the bird stands still throughout the recital. Colours are difficult to discern, and as I’m standing directly beneath it all I can see are the underparts. They are, as far as I can tell, uniformly beige.
Andrew is my birding mentor. Not that he knows it yet. It’s just a decision I’ve made, like Benjamin Braddock deciding to marry Elaine Robinson in The Graduate. Andrew works in IT, but we know each other through music. Formerly a violinist in the very orchestra I’ve just come from rehearsing, he clearly divined the direction things were taking and jumped ship, choosing to pursue his musical activities in a choir, where the technical challenges are presumably less terrifying. But we’ve kept in touch, according to modern custom, via Facebook, and it’s there that I’ve seen the occasional post that reveals him to be a keen and accomplished birder. He’s just the person I need to guide me through my year, and I’ve been gearing up to email him about it. This is the perfect opportunity. I send him the recording.
Andrew,
Hope you’re well. Just wondering if you can help identify this bird. Something exotic?
All the best,
Lev
Within a few hours I get my answer.
Hi Lev,
Depends what you mean by exotic. It’s a robin.
Best,
Andrew
This is going to be harder than I thought.
February ticks (8)
London, West Norwood, WWT Barnes, Burnham, Windsor Great Park
Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo, Black-headed Gull Chroico cephalus ridibundus, Ring-necked Parakeet Psittacula krameri, Rook Corvus frugilegus, Wigeon Anas penelope, Lapwing Vanellus vanellus, Red Kite Milvus milvus, Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata
