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

by Lev Parikian

  My memories of the visit are mixed. Some are razor sharp, as if newly minted. Sand martins – brown and white darts – flitting in and out of their nest burrows in the sandbank near the car park; the hushed atmosphere of my first bird hide, dark wood rough and raw; adults, taller than tall, letting me perch on bare Dickensian benches to train my childish binoculars on the marshy lagoons; my first sight of an avocet – smaller than I’d imagined, the black patches on its wings, neck and head sparse enough on a predominantly white body to lend it an air of daintiness, and its retroussé bill, perfectly adapted for sifting the silt for prey, making it, to my eyes, the embodiment of cuteness.

  But at the same time I felt an undertow of uncertainty, a feeling of ‘is that it?’ Having scanned the scrape for birds, failed to identify most of them, and watched them pongling around for a while, I wanted to move on. They were lovely, but now what? The bench was uncomfortable, sharp edges digging into the backs of my legs, and I was aware that my mother was tolerating rather than enjoying the experience.

  I’m still unsure what I expected. The birds could do no more than exist, and the enterprise would have been pointless without them. But part of me wanted more, without knowing what that meant. So this formative experience was confusing: part exhilaration, part anticlimax.

  And after that? Did we drive across the country just for me to spend ten minutes in a hide before declaring, ‘I’m bored, I want to go home’? I don’t remember. I’d like to think I had the grace to spin it out for the sake of decorum. But I’m not betting on it.

  These memories flood my mind as I approach Minsmere one sunny morning in early April. I have two days blocked off in the diary, family permission for the selfish excursion, and a new pair of binoculars on the passenger seat.

  I’ve decided I can’t arrive at the flagship reserve of the RSPB ill-equipped. It would be like making my Test debut at Lord’s armed with the Slazenger bat of my childhood. Not knowing the first thing about binoculars, I’ve thrown myself on the mercy of the salesman, who is so relieved to have human company he treats me to a lengthy and informative dissertation on the merits of half a dozen models. I’m tempted by the top-of-the-range Swarovskis, which are so magnificent they almost deliver the bird, with identification, to your visual cortex in surround-sound 3D, but for my level of expertise and commitment £2,000 seems excessive, so I buy the first pair I saw. Mid-range, mid-price, mid-aspiration.

  The roads narrow, but Minsmere remains tantalisingly out of reach. Woodbridge, Ufford, Saxmundham, Yoxford. Fields, trees, hedgerows, lanes narrowing and winding.

  A movement to the right.

  The most fundamental principles of common sense and road safety say you shouldn’t birdwatch while driving. But it’s too tempting. I know what it is, nailed it from its jizz within a nanosecond, but I just need a sight of it. I slow to what I consider an uncontroversial speed. The bird is still there, its miraculous understanding of airflow allowing it to hang motionless in the air like… well, like a kestrel, because that’s what it is.

  The sight is like a time machine, dumping me back in 1976 as surely as the smell of linseed oil, the straw colour of parched lawns or the word ‘standpipe’.

  We’d see them above the verge of the A40. ‘Sparrowhawk?’ someone would ask. And I’d reply, after a calculatedly casual glance, ‘Kestrel.’ It was the shape of the wings, I’d explain with irritating world-weariness. The kestrel’s are narrower, more pointed. And the hovering. If it’s hovering, it’s a kestrel.

  Instinctive recognition of a kestrel is one of the few birdwatching skills I retain. It’s not much, but I’m grateful for it as I add the tick.

  Lost in thought, I nearly run over a pheasant and two red-legged partridges. Their efforts to escape an untimely death under the wheels of a Škoda Octavia are comical. They have wings. Why don’t they fly? At the last second one of the partridges does indeed take off in a frenetic burst of flapping. This has no discernible effect on its speed, and barely any on its altitude. Maybe that’s why.

  The game birds are my second and third ticks for the visit and I haven’t even arrived yet. This is going to be a doddle. The birds are actually throwing themselves at me.

  I park and enter the visitor centre, a new addition since I was last here thirty-eight years ago.

  ‘You don’t need a map, do you?’

  Something about me gives the volunteer the false impression I know my way around. I finger my binoculars nervously, fearing their obvious newness will betray me as a beginner. He hands me a sheet of paper.

  What’s about at Minsmere? it reads.

  Quite a lot, apparently.

  Shelduck on The Scrape. Stone-curlew near the North Wall. Black-tailed godwit on The Levels.

  The word ‘godwit’ triggers a memory. Me and Michael, fellow Young Ornithologists and relentlessly competitive in every sphere. I’ve invited him on holiday in Scotland, and we’ve spent three days outdoing each other in ornithological smart-arsery.

  Michael is better than me at everything. Birdwatching is the one area where I have a chance. It’s a miracle my mother hasn’t killed us both.

  We’re on a beach, looking at a flock of waders.

  ‘Dunlin, look. Knot on the right.’

  ‘Oystercatchers over there.’

  ‘Common sandpiper to the left. Greenshank.’

  Competitive birding for kids.

  Michael gets excited. ‘Ooh look! Godwits!’

  I train my binoculars on a group of brown birds with long bills. His identification is plausible. But there are two kinds of godwit: black-tailed and bar-tailed. To tell the difference we need to see their tails, tantalisingly hidden by folded wings. We’re going to have to flush ’em.

  That’s what we tell ourselves, anyway.

  A proper birder wouldn’t do that. A proper birder would work it out from other indications. Bill or leg length, subtle plumage variations.

  And a proper birder wouldn’t run screaming at a group of harmless waders just for a tick.

  In my defence, I’m not the first to run, nor the first to scream. But I am the first to see the identifying bars on the terrified birds’ tails as they scatter to the four winds.

  If my mother is unimpressed by our behaviour, she doesn’t show it. Much.

  And now I’m fifty, not twelve, and sitting in a hide overlooking The Scrape at Minsmere. There’s a godwit in front of me and I know it’s a black-tailed, partly because of its bill shape and leg length, but also because it was on the list at the visitor centre, and I thank the birding gods for the expertise of others as I jot ‘Blank-taped golmit’ in my notebook.

  The hide is populated by four men, two women and a telescope. The women ask questions, the men answer them, and the telescope points at a reed bed. The tallest man, a study in lugubriousness, looks at me gravely and asks if I want a look. I accept, hoping it will become clear what I’m supposed to be looking at.

  Reeds, apparently.

  I’m torn. Admit I can’t see anything, or make appreciative cooing noises?

  ‘I’m sorry… I can’t… there doesn’t seem to be…’

  I relinquish the telescope and he takes my place. I hold my breath, expecting to be exposed as an idiot to six strangers and an expensive piece of optical equipment.

  ‘Oh. It’s moved.’ He adjusts the scope. ‘There. Jack snipe.’

  Flushed with relief, I look again. Even now it’s difficult to see, its camouflage highly effective. It’s a dumpy-looking thing, yet the fine streaking of its variegated brown plumage, highlighted in the dappled sunshine, somehow lends it a quiet elegance. It skulks in the reeds, safe in the knowledge it can’t be seen.

  Little does it know.

  I murmur thanks, vacate the scope, and revert to surveying The Scrape through my own, newly acquired optics.

  Before long, in an orgy of ornithological discovery, I’ve seen a dozen new birds. A shelduck – half duck, half goose – is easily identifiable by the large orange knob on its head.
A dozen oystercatchers, black-and-white bodies finished with a snowman’s carrot nose, patrol the far side. With a fishwife squawk, an avocet, protecting its territory with the tenacity of vintage-era Rafael Nadal, chases a dunlin until the smaller bird is forced to take wing and forage elsewhere. So much for the daintiness of the avocet. But the disruption is temporary and soon both birds are back to normal, the dunlin scurrying around the foreshore pecking at the mud for morsels of food as if nothing had happened.

  I make jottings in my notebook, occasionally checking my identifications with the Collins app on my phone. The list spills over to a second page. Herring gull, shoveler, lapwing. Knot, dunlin, redshank. Little grebe, teal, gadwall. A great big pile of birds right in front of me and I don’t know where to look next. Here’s the world-famous birder, mopping them up like there’s no tomorrow.

  I take a moment to admire the understated plumage of a gadwall, the vermiculated greys of its chest and subtle brown streakings on its back a pleasing contrast to the block colours of the shelduck and stark monochrome of the avocet. It’s a fine duck, easily overlooked. I overhear the tall gentleman talking to his lady friend.

  ‘Gadwall there. Underrated bird.’

  There’s reverence in his voice. He could be talking about a cricketer or an author, a Rikki Clarke or J. L. Carr, but I know what he means. He’s a connoisseur, rejecting the accepted hierarchy that places the gadwall below flashier birds. We exchange glances, a slow smile and a nod, and this simple shared moment buoys my perception of human nature. People are good, on the whole; bird people especially so. It’s such a simple thing, to share pleasure in a slice of nature, yet so enriching, so life-affirming.

  Leaving the hide before I’m overwhelmed by my own cloying sentimentality, I crack on. There’s a lot to cover. Minsmere has seven hides, as well as extensive heath and woodland. The reserve, with spring blossoming, is buzzing with activity. Some wintering birds are still around, promising themselves they’ll leave soon, but just one more dabble in this nice warm mud; early spring arrivals are trickling in, possibly disappointed it’s not warmer.

  I reach another hide, overlooking the main scrape from the other side. The view is dominated by a flock of about forty gulls, ranged along a narrow spit of land. I’d tentatively identified them as black-headed gulls from a distance, while secretly hoping they might be something more exotic. Now I’m close enough to check.

  They’re black-headed gulls.

  The name is misleading, their heads a warm shade of chocolate. They’re attractive enough, delicate compared to the brutish great black-backed gull or everyone’s favourite chip-stealer, the herring gull. But they’re not noted for their taciturnity, and their rabid squawking has me considering an early departure to pastures more peaceful.

  Two men enter. They exude expertise, scanning the lagoon with occasional mutters which are neither designed for public consumption nor particularly secretive.

  ‘Med gull there.’

  A small nod from his companion, a mild yelp from me.

  The ‘what’s about’ list noted the presence of seven Mediterranean gulls on The Scrape, but I’d assumed the arcane knowledge required to identify one would be beyond me. There are about a dozen gull varieties to be seen in Britain, each with several age groups, and to my untutored eyes they’re a confusing mess of interminable variations of black, white and grey, with some brown thrown in for good measure, depending on the age of the bird. The guides cite arcanities like scapulars, primary projections and gonys angles as ways of telling them apart. I’ve tried, I really have, but it’s too much for my tiny brain. I’m drowning in a frothing cauldron of gulls.

  But now, with a possible tick before me, and experts at hand, I’m incentivised. I check the Mediterranean gull on my phone. The adult bird is described as ‘unmistakable’, a sure sign I have no chance of identifying it. I pluck up courage.

  ‘Excuse me… so sorry… which is the Mediterranean gull?’

  Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

  ‘You see the left edge of the island? Count… hold on… one, two, three… sixteen birds in.’

  I count sixteen birds in.

  ‘That’s your Med gull.’

  ‘I see. Thanks.’

  I don’t see, but keep looking, searching for clues. I suppose the bill is a shade heavier, and there’s a deeper red to it. And maybe its nascent balaclava is black rather than chocolate brown. I flick between it and the neighbouring bird, comparing and contrasting.

  Yes, I’ve got it now. I think.

  I take my notebook out and note ‘Med gull’. Then a small tick and, as an afterthought, a question mark.

  Honesty in all things. Well, most of them.

  As I drive to Minsmere the next morning, rosy-fingered dawn doing its thing on the horizon, I cram the hotel’s complimentary shortbread into my mouth and call it breakfast. I’ve lived in Britain for fifty years, but it seems I still haven’t twigged that April is fundamentally a cold month, and my thin jumper offers inadequate protection. I’ll just have to think warming thoughts.

  From the car park I hear a sound like someone blowing across the top of a milk bottle. It’s instantly recognisable, and adds purpose to my stride as I make for the Bittern Hide.

  The bittern is a secretive bird, fond of hiding in reed beds, a habitat with which Minsmere is amply equipped. The expanse of reeds is so vast it’s difficult to know where to start, but I assume if someone’s gone to the trouble of naming a hide after a bird, that’s as good a place as any.

  All is calm. A little egret sloshes around in the swamp to my right, the pure white of its plumage reminiscent of 1970s detergent adverts. A little grebe dives, leaving concentric ripples in its stead. The bittern is notable for its absence, but there’s no hurry, and it’s hard to imagine a more tranquil environment.

  CHACK!

  I jump two feet in the air. My skin stays on the bench, while my binoculars opt for the floor.

  CHACK-A-DACK!

  A big noise. Explosive, harsh and close to my left ear.

  CHACK-A-DACK-ADACKADOCKADIGGADOGGA-DACK!

  I recover my composure. I heard this sound yesterday, but from much further away. This bird seems to be in the hide with me.

  The Cetti’s warbler didn’t exist in my day. Not in Britain, anyway. It was filed under ‘rarities’, with just a handful of sightings ever recorded. But it started breeding here in 1973, no doubt drawn by the variety of Britain’s cuisine and the open and welcoming character of its people, and has made inroads since then. This novelty factor makes it particularly alluring, and I’m keen to see one in the flesh.

  The song strikes up again, strident, insistent. I leave the hide on a whim, tiptoe and tenterhooks. Finding its exact source is surprisingly hard. Just as I think I’ve narrowed it down to a single bush, it stops. I have the bush in my sights, poised to pounce. I’m relying on the naked eye to spot the first movement, but have the binoculars ready so I can pinpoint the bird when it shows its face.

  It’s lying low, waiting for me to make the first move. But I can outwait it.

  A minute passes. No dice. A chill wind slices through me. This is silly. I should give up.

  One more minute.

  CHACK!

  I wheel round. The crafty blighter’s behind me. I get it now. It sings to make you look, and immediately flies somewhere else and watches you looking in the wrong place, a maniacal grin plastered over its scheming face. But I’m wise to it, and after a mere six repetitions of the game, I nail it. It’s sitting lower than I thought, hidden in the shade, but there’s no doubting its identity. Just as I catch sight of it, it gives another peremptory ‘CHACK!’ as if admitting defeat, and whirrs off to torment someone else.

  I am birder. Hear my mighty roar.

  Buoyed by my victory over the hapless Cetti’s warbler, I almost forget I was after a bittern. I return to the hide, but twenty minutes yield nothing but a philosophical shoveler and an ominous numbness in my toes, so I move on, disappo
inted. Bittern Hide? Yes it does.

  As I follow the path out of the woods, I realise I’m yet to see a human being. This solitude, the slow pace of the day allowing thoughts to percolate and coalesce without the distraction of conversation, is one of the joys of birding. Nothing against my fellow humans. Well, most of them.

  A ramp leads up to the Island Mere, the newest hide on the reserve. I scan the reed beds below, hoping for a water rail, another secretive bird. A lady walks towards me, bright and breezy. Her smile is one of sympathy and understanding.

  ‘I always hope to see a water rail down there, but I never have.’

  It’s so similar to what would have been my own opening gambit that I’m thrown off guard. I feel my friendly smile turn into a self-conscious rictus. I try to formulate a response, fail, feel obliged to make some sort of noise so as not to be thought a lunatic, mumble something that sounds to my appalled ears like ‘meffroonle’, trip over my feet, and escape into the safety and solitude of the hide.

  If I’d hoped for a few moments of peace and quiet to lick my wounds, I’m disappointed. Eyes swivel towards me, swing doors flap, the pianist in the corner stops playing.

  My new companions are four men, two women and industrial quantities of Tupperware. They’re set in for the day. They seem unmoved by the glory of the scene before them, but I’ve already learned that birders are undemonstrative souls. They keep their enthusiasm under a veil.

  The frisson occasioned by my arrival abates, and peace descends. A fierce wind whips through the half-open windows and cuts my neck in two as I look across the broad lagoon with its loose girdle of reed beds. A pair of teal nuzzle around in the silt; sand martins swoop, up, down, diagonally, aerobatic miracle made flesh; a marsh harrier, a shallow V in the distance, floats over the straw-coloured beds; greylag geese veer across my view like honking fighter planes on a recce mission; two great crested grebes in the middle distance choose that moment to instigate their famous courtship display. The words ‘get a room’ spring to mind, but for them a cold lagoon on the East Anglian coast is a room – we humans, with our insistence on snuggly duvets, forty TV channels, a minibar and a loo roll with the end folded into a V, we’re the weird ones.