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

by Lev Parikian

  Tumty tumty tum.

  This is a common human reaction, simultaneously logical and nonsensical. On the one hand it makes you feel less alone, but on the other, if you’re frightened of being attacked by an axe murderer, why draw attention to yourself?

  But I keep quiet, for tonight my watchword is stealth. I don’t want to disturb the nightjar, if nightjar there be, which I’m beginning to doubt.

  In my heightened state of nervousness, any unexpected sound would be enough to turn me into a whimpering husk, so the eerie, high-pitched mewing that rings out ten inches above my head not unnaturally scares the living bejesus out of me. On sober reflection I realise that the sound is coming from a distance of yards rather than inches, and as it filters into my jittery brain I recognise it as the sound of a circling buzzard,* so the danger is less immediate than I first thought. But coming hot on the heels of my thoughts about flying monkeys, it’s enough to make me watch the buzzard until it’s spiralled out of sight.

  The path is both familiar and unfamiliar. It feels as if I’ve been here before. Maybe I have. Not so much déjà vu as nightjar vu. The trees crowd in on either side of the path for a spell, then open out again. There’s a small clearing, just the kind of place you might find a nightjar.

  Or not.

  I wait for half an hour, eyes adjusting to the encroaching darkness, ears attuned to the ambient sound, hoping to catch the faintest hint of nightjarly movement or noise. But if there is one in this forest, it’s not here. And because of my hopeless meanderings, it’s now too late to find another spot. Dusk has almost shot its bolt. It’s time to go home.

  I continue on the path. Five minutes later I stumble – more by luck than judgement – upon one of the forest trail signs. Like Theseus, but without the triumphant sense of murderous achievement, I trace my steps carefully back to my starting point. I stand by the car for a moment in a way that I hope conveys to the forest just how disappointed I am with it, then I get in and start the drive home.

  I’m not sure why I glance to the left as I leave the car park. It’s the merest instinct. There’s no danger of oncoming traffic. The place is deserted. The paved path, which I ignored when I first arrived, is wide enough for vehicles, but it leads back into the forest and is blocked by a single-bar gate. There are no cars there, just a lone figure silhouetted in the pale moonlight against the dark trees behind.

  Wait a minute.

  Why would anyone be standing on a path in the forest just after dusk?

  There are two possibilities. The most likely explanation is that this is ‘Desperate’ Dave Djibrovic, recently escaped from Parkhurst and lying in wait for a chance to wreak motiveless havoc on disappointed nightjar-hunters. But it’s the other possibility that makes me reverse the car, get out and walk towards him. If I’m wrong, I can always defend myself with my binoculars.

  The wing clap of a nightjar in a dark forest is a distinctive sound, like a soft whip-crack or a wet towel being flicked against a buttock.* As it echoes round the forest once, twice, three times, I scan the treetops and see a shadowy shape agitating high in the conifers on the edge of the clearing.

  Had I not been so determined to take the path less travelled, I would have found this clearing within a minute of arriving. Still, I’ve had a nice walk, and now here’s my nightjar.

  It can’t seem to settle. No sooner has it disappeared from view in the upper reaches of the trees than it’s up again, clapping and flapping and causing a localised kerfuffle, at odds with my impression of the bird as a stealthy hunter. Then it seems to tire of this activity and with easy wingbeats escapes the clutches of the forest and flies across the clearing towards a single tree by the path. On landing, it squats lengthways and immediately becomes just another branch, its silhouette only discernible if I squat down to view it against the darkening sky, and even then only because I already know it’s there.

  And now it begins, an other-worldly and mesmerising sound, a reeling so fast and compressed it has a rattling quality. It has two gears, one marginally lower than the other, alternating between the two every few seconds without pause. There’s no stopping for breath, no rise and fall of natural phrasing, the mechanical nature of the song an inherent part of its appeal and adding to the nightjar’s already substantial mystique, enhanced by the eerie atmosphere of the forest.

  Gabble ratchet, they used to call the nightjar in Yorkshire. It seems appropriate.*

  I haven’t moved for five minutes. I remember, belatedly, that I’m not alone. My companion, the shadowy figure without whose presence I would now be halfway back to the cottage, is standing ten yards to my right. Like me, he’s doing a decent impersonation of a statue. This isn’t an occasion for the usual stilted greetings and awkward exchanges that often colour a birdwatching trip. He’s given no sign of noticing my presence. Now, as the churring stops and dusk gives way to night, he turns and walks past me. No words are spoken; none are needed. We exchange a glance, a quick nod, the merest acknowledgement of our shared experience, more potent than a thousand words.

  A bat flies by on silent wings. I can still just make out the silhouette of the nightjar on the branch, but the show is over. I walk back to the car, pausing to send the forest a grudging retraction of my former disappointment, and drive home.

  The hawk waits, poised for action, its beady eye uncompromising, dark brown plumage blending with the tree. It braces, and then with one mighty flap of its wings launches itself into the air, gaining height and speed quickly before turning towards its prey. There’s barely a second to react. I watch, powerless to move, as the bird descends, wings controlling its speed, tail flicking from side to side to make the vital adjustments necessary to its goal. It’s a killing machine, awe-inspiring unless you’re the hapless individual in its sights. And now the talons come out, sharp and deadly, ready to grasp. A final flurry as the bird homes in on its target, and now it’s there, perched on Oliver’s head and accepting the applause and laughter of the crowd as merely its due. Oliver, his sangfroid barely disturbed when the bird landed on his falconry-gloved hand a few seconds ago, is laughing, the kind of nervous laughter that says, ‘This is amazing just as long as it doesn’t rip my head off.’

  I’ve seen more new birds during this falconry display on Streatham Common than I have in the rest of July. None of them count, of course. If tame birds counted I could just pop into London Zoo and my list would be full within minutes. But it’s mildly disconcerting to see the barn, tawny and little owls, so elusive in the wild, sitting on their perches, taunting me with their calmness. They’re professionals, these birds, tame as your cat. But they do go off-piste from time to time, seizing the chance to escape their trainers and terrorising the local pigeon population.

  My feelings on falconry are mixed. On the one hand there’s the soft-centred, overemotional, well-meaning-but-muddle-headed part of me that goes, ‘Oh, but wouldn’t the poor ickle barn owl be happier in the wild?’ And then there’s the hard-nosed, level-headed, now-let’s-just-look-at-the-facts-shall-we part that acknowledges that properly treated, captive birds of prey have longer life expectancies than wild ones, and if you tried to release any of these birds they’d do one lap of the common and come straight back to where they know they’ll be fed and kept warm.

  And if you asked any of them if they’d like to swap with a battery chicken, they’d give you a look and say, ‘You know what, old horse? On the whole I’m happy where I am. Now lob me that vole, will you?’

  In the grand scheme of Man’s inhumanity towards animals, there are far bigger battles to be fought.

  On the way home, Oliver cycles ahead of me. I come across him, stopped by the side of the road, staring transfixed into a front garden. I follow his gaze. Hunched under a rhododendron, watching us with a wary eye, is a sparrowhawk. At its feet, a pigeon, unequivocally no longer of this world. There’s something brutally magnificent about the scene, nature in the raw, or as raw as you’re going to get in SE27 without venturing into the sewers. />
  I wonder, as we watch the hawk shield its prey, waiting for us to leave so it can tuck in, how I would react if it were a blue tit or a chaffinch lying dead at the hawk’s feet. There’s no doubt my first reaction would be of pity for the smaller bird. And I acknowledge that this is irrational, based on an anthropomorphising of the cuddlier birds versus the unlovable feral pigeon.

  The fact is, the hawk survives in the urban environment because of the abundance of prey. The presence of an apex predator, rather than threatening the local population of small birds, is a sign of its health. If there weren’t plentiful food, the hawk would move elsewhere or starve, and the blue tit population is well able to withstand the relatively minor hit caused by predation. But our natural instinct is to take sides, to attribute the human values of good and evil to any meeting of hunter and hunted. This is a mistake. There is no good. There is no evil. There is just nature, red in tooth and claw as ever it was.

  I dwell on these issues as we cycle home. Then I feed the cat a double portion in the hope that it won’t bring in a blue tit.

  July ticks (6)

  Isle of Wight

  Greenshank Tringa nebularia, Common Sandpiper Actitis hypo leucos, Barnacle Goose Branta leucopsis, Curlew Numenius arquata, Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata, Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus

  Year total: 141

  Notes

  * Wild birds descended from domesticated ones. Birders can get a bit sniffy about them.

  * Why yes, since you ask, I am a younger brother myself. What of it?

  * Oh my.

  * Fuck me sideways.

  * Just me? OK then.

  * At first this seems to be a description of the sound the bird makes, but its derivation is rather more sinister. It stems from ‘Gabriel’s hounds’, ‘gabble’ being a mangling of ‘Gabriel’, and ‘ratchet’ a variant of the Middle English ‘racche’, a dog which hunts by scent. The birds were supposed to embody the souls of unbaptised infants doomed to wander forever in the air. The name was also used to refer to the sound made by a flock of bean geese in flight, which resembles a pack of dogs. Confusing stuff.

  AUGUST 2016

  I’m standing by Portree harbour in bright sunshine, phone to my ear, looking at a millpond in disbelief.

  ‘Sorry? Say that again?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re not going out today. It’s just too rough out there, and it’s only a wee boat.’

  I can feel the eagles slipping from my grasp. I express my incredulity as gently as possible, hang up, and call the second number.

  ‘Well, we’re going out, but the advice we’re giving is only go if you’re comfortable in rough seas.’

  And now I’m ten, enduring a Sealink crossing from Dover to Calais. I’m sitting on the top deck, clammy and pale. The sea is calm, the only disturbance a light wind blowing through my hair and ruffling the bag held to my lips. My mother sits patiently beside me, long accustomed to my ability to chuck up at the slightest provocation. I am, she later tells me, a fetching shade of pale green.

  The queasiness usually sets in on the A418, about a mile from home. By the time we’ve reached the ferry terminal we might have stopped three or four times, but these are merely the preliminary skirmishes. It’s only when we’re at sea that the nausea shows me, quite literally, what it’s made of. The roughness of the sea is irrelevant. We’re travelling, ergo I vomit. Travel-sickness pills are effective only in the sense that they’re brilliant at bringing on a bout of travel sickness.

  I’ve eaten two meals today. The evidence is in the bag.

  The vice gripping my stomach relents. There’s nothing left to give. I feel marginally better. Better than what, I’m not quite sure.

  My mother has a consoling hand on my shoulder.

  ‘How’s that?’

  I feel a wan need to reassure her I’m not about to perish.

  ‘Not out.’

  I eventually muster the energy to go below deck, force down a blackcurrant-flavoured boiled sweet with icing-sugar coating, and lose 70p on the fruit machine.

  I’ve got better at travelling in the intervening forty years, but my aversion to rough seas remains. Lurking at the back of my mind is the fear that to reach 200 I’ll be forced to go on a pelagic – specialised boat trips that go far out to sea in search of seabirds like petrels and shearwaters. Today’s plan, a tour of the waters around Skye in search of white-tailed eagles, seemed more harmless, but apparently I was wrong. How desperate am I to see a white-tailed eagle? Not quite that desperate.

  I hang up and relay the news to Oliver. He goes quiet and stares at a herring gull.

  They say you should go birding in all weathers. But the memory of our soggy day in Ashdown Forest is strong, and a forecast of relentless and thickening rain on Speyside, where we’re staying, has forced us westwards in search of clearer weather. Locals have expressed surprise at this decision. It usually gets worse as you head west, they say. Are we sure it’s not chucking it down even harder on Skye? But the forecast is adamant. Sunshine and scattered cloud, light winds.

  Define ‘light’.

  I’ve forced myself to watch the road and not the scenery as we’ve travelled west, the views becoming ever more brazenly picturesque the further we go. And the weather has played ball. The mizzle that accompanied us around Loch Ness has abated, and now we’re basking in warm sunshine at Portree. Two apprentice pipers, in full garb and with a combined age of about six, work through their repertoire at the top of the path, the sound wafting towards us on the still air. Up close, it’s a pungent noise; down here the edge is reduced, and I stick to my belief that it’s an instrument best appreciated from a distance.

  I look again at the harbour. I drink in the stillness of the day, the calmness of the water. How is it that a mile away it’s too rough to sail? This is a major blow. It’s a long day out – three hours each way – and we’ve risen early. Our reward was supposed to be an almost guaranteed sighting of those enormous, majestic raptors. We won’t be in Scotland long enough for a return visit. It’s today or bust.

  Even in my disappointment I notice that one of the birds strutting around the harbour, scavenging chips and crusts of bread, is a tick. Ten yards away, among the thirty or so gulls of different shapes and sizes, is a grey-and-black bird that until fifteen years ago would have been disallowed. It’s a hooded crow, close cousin of the carrion crow, their distributions separated by a firm but narrow line of hybridisation cutting across Europe. Go to France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and most of Spain and you will see the all-black carrion crow; in Ireland, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Italy and north-west Scotland, it’ll be its two-tone cousin. Once classified as the same species, they were separated in 2002, so now I can tick it with impunity. This kind of decision leads to what’s known as an ‘armchair tick’. Scientists discover that a bird formerly considered a subspecies is a species in its own right, and birders worldwide celebrate the increase of their life lists by one without having to move a muscle.

  Funny old world.

  This hooded crow, casting a beady eye on Oliver’s chocolate brownie, is scant consolation for the loss of the eagles. We’ll spend the day here anyway, renting bikes and exploring the hills around Portree. We’ll see birds, each of them enhancing the naturally striking landscape. We’ll look out for eagles, trying not to fall into the common trap of mistaking a buzzard (large, a.k.a. a ‘tourist eagle’) for a golden eagle (massive, a.k.a. an actual eagle). At the end of the day we’ll embark on a last-ditch drive across the island to a known eagle spot. We won’t see any.

  I saw an eagle, back in the day.

  I’d just bought, with almost my own money, my first pair of binoculars. They were the most exciting and grown-up thing I’d ever owned, better than my Sanyo cassette recorder, more eagerly anticipated than my copy of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and more alluring and sensuous, if such a thing were possible, than my lovingly oiled Slazenger cricket bat. Armed with these binoculars, I would take my birding
to the next level, rooting out hitherto unimagined riches from familiar territory. No more would Oxfordshire’s birds evade my gaze. I would be master of them all at last.

  The truth was, as I roamed the village’s lanes and paths, the new acquisition slung proudly round my neck, that the birds stayed frustratingly out of reach in the depths of bushes and hedgerows. But at least now I could catch a fleeting glimpse of their disappearing backsides in glorious 8x42 binocular magnification. The ability to approach a bird without causing their immediate absence was a skill that eluded me, and no amount of highfalutin optical equipment would make up for that. It had something to do, I think, with impatience, my idea of a slow and cautious approach being not dissimilar to that of a puppy on speed.

  But if I happened upon a distant and motionless bird, for example a white-tailed eagle, I knew they would come into their own.

  Eagles aren’t generally creatures of lowland England, and this white-tailed would have been more at home soaring on the updraughts above the crags of the Norwegian coast. But odd winds and dodgy navigation plonked it temporarily within reach of the twitchers of central southern England, and the network began to buzz. Communication was understandably less sophisticated in the 1970s, and the twitching community’s network seems to have revolved around a single telephone in the hallway of a small cafe in north Norfolk, but word still spread remarkably quickly, and the eagle stayed long enough for the news to percolate towards me. The local farmer, alive to my interest, rang with the news, and I stationed myself, binoculars poised, by my mother’s desk, ready to nag her until she drove me to see it. It was no more than a few miles away. The journey was brief, the stay briefer. For all my fiddling and adjustments, my magical new equipment couldn’t compensate for the eagle’s determination to stay perched on a distant fencepost. With the naked eye, it was a barely discernible dot; enhanced by state-of-the-art binocular technology, it graduated to a blob. As the bird was on private ground, we couldn’t get closer without breaking the law. Apart from one notable occasion when she stole a plastic fork from a delicatessen, breaking the law wasn’t my mum’s thing, so I resigned myself to the inadequate view available, and she settled into a solid bout of hinting that we should leave.