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

by Lev Parikian

  My reward? Zero ticks. Keine Zecken. Nul tiques.

  In fact, not many birds at all. They’re hardy, the birds of Poole Harbour, but not stupid. Most of them are under cover, nursing a mug of cocoa and watching a Ginger Rogers movie.† And even those birds for whom water is a more natural medium look as if they’re suffering. Mallard, shoveler and shelduck variously float, dabble and squelch around the pools and mudflats, apparently unaware that this is supposed to be nice weather for them.

  A herring gull moves sideways across the shore, powered more by the wind than its own resources. Far away, just visible through the binoculars, a shape I’m assuming is an osprey sits on top of a tree. Black-tailed godwits perch stolidly on one leg, looking put-upon, as if suffering the company of a tiresome relative while forcing down stale ginger nuts and weak tea in an unheated sitting room.

  Believe it or not, I’m having fun. Yes, I’m thinking of learning how to pirouette, and rebranding myself as a sprinkler system; yes, I’ve just spent fifteen minutes under a tree trying to identify the chipping and whistling noises of a mysterious bird that turned out to be a chaffinch; and no, I haven’t furthered my Grand Cause an inch. Nonetheless, I regard this morning at RSPB Arne as an unmitigated triumph. The forty-five birds I still need can wait. Because today is a kingfisher day, and that makes today a good day.

  My exaggerated delight at the sighting of any kingfisher has been one of the surprises of the year, not just explained by its undeniable attractiveness. Sure, they’re elusive, but what birds aren’t?

  I have a feeling it’s to do with childhood disappointment. Our local kingfisher – or, presumably, a series of them, as their average two-year lifespan is distressingly short – always evaded me. Someone dropping in for a cup of tea, knowing of my interest, might mention they’d seen it. Off I would go, down the shady lane away from the village, right up the dusty path, fields either side, left at the stone bridge by the water mill, and along the river bank, picking my way through the overhang of willows and steering well clear of the edge of anything, according to parental instructions.

  The blend of incipient curmudgeonliness and rose-tinted hindsight common to those approaching the arse end of middle age no doubt accounts for my feeling that such an excursion, so routine and welcome back then, is neither available nor desirable to the current batch of tomorrow’s adults. It’s the kind of walk I took for granted, outdoors a natural place to spend an afternoon doing nothing in particular. But it’s not as if I was some sort of feral urchin, staying out from dawn till dusk and returning caked in the blood of wild animals. Other attractions were available. Like many cricket-lovers of my generation, I wasn’t averse to drawing the curtains on a sunlit day and watching seven hours of a Test match in total darkness. These marathon sessions were interrupted only by a bacon sarnie and a glass of juice served by my long-suffering mother, or occasionally a boiled egg fastidiously cooked by my father – his attention to detail manifesting itself in every aspect of the cooking down to geometrically sliced toast soldiers and a small pyramid of salt on a side plate. But equally, they seemed happy enough for me to roam the village and surrounding countryside on foot or bike with no more than a ‘back by supper time’ to send me off. The sense of danger so prevalent today was as absent as the kingfisher.

  I would sit on the bank, knees up, feet tilted towards the river, picking idly at the long grass or drawing a pattern in the mud with my finger so that the dirt got nicely entrenched under the nail, and keeping an eagle eye out for the telltale flash of iridescence I’d read about in the books. But always to no avail, the bird either too shy or too canny, somehow knowing when my attention was elsewhere.

  This 2016 kingfisher, the fifth of my year, has streaked across my line of sight and is sitting on a fence post ten yards away. It stays there, its vivid plumage enlivening the surrounding gloom. The unfairness of this is not lost on me. Pity the small brown birds, dismissed as drab and uninteresting, getting on with life unadmired while all the attention goes to the flashy and flamboyant, our shallow human sensibilities attracted to the blur of colour streaking across the water.

  Do they care? Aren’t they just concerned with survival and procreation, feeding and breeding?

  Maybe.

  Nonetheless, always rooting for the underdog, I make a point of studying and admiring those birds whose colour palette is limited to shades of dun, as well as those whose plumage has evolved to catch the eye.

  Dabbling in front of the hide are a couple of gadwall, the bird so many people have told me is underrated it’s in danger of becoming overrated. They’re having a barney, the female chasing away the male, nipping at his backside. The male retreats to a safe distance, then has another go. She’s not having any of it. This tussle engages my attention briefly, but I’m aware throughout of the kingfisher on its post. In the end its glamorous allure is too strong. I break away from the gadwall fracas and turn my binoculars on the kingfisher. Even in the dull light it would make a decent photo, so I swap binoculars for camera, make the adjustments and press the shutter just as the kingfisher decides it wants to be elsewhere. The result is a pleasing photograph, against a backdrop of grey water and cloud, of an empty post. Very artistic, and a decent metaphor for my year. Here is the post that until recently boasted a colourful and fascinating bird. If you squeeze your eyes together you can just discern the remains of its aura. I can almost feel the karma winging its way towards me from the Isle of Wight six weeks earlier and draping itself round my shoulders.

  The kingfisher is the zenith of my visit. I call it a day and squelch my way back to the visitor centre for a vat of coffee and a slice of chocolate cake the size of Bournemouth.

  The weekend hasn’t been a total washout, list-wise. No sooner had we unpacked after the long Friday evening drive to Dorset than we were greeted by a congratulatory ‘woo-hoo’ from a tawny owl in the neighbouring copse. After the woo-hoos – easily mimicked by anyone capable of blowing into their cupped hands and prepared to put in the hours of practice – it gives a couple of calls, a sharp attention-grabbing upwards squiggle (hee-yip!) to prove it’s the real thing. My overarching rule – that heard birds count as surely as seen ones – has only come into force once, with the grasshopper warbler back in April. And the memory of Oliver’s barn owl in May is still strong. I’m behind on my owls, so this is a welcome addition. I ditch the idea of trailing around the local woods in search of a brief glimpse, retire to bed and update my total: 155.

  It’s time to begin honing the list. The loss of the Scottish birds* has dented my confidence, but my hopes of reaching 200 are far from forlorn. I’ve lost a couple of quick wickets to the second new ball, that’s all. It’s 2–1 with twenty minutes to play. A quick break of serve, a nine-dart finish and a converted try in the last quarter and I’m set for a ninth-inning comeback.†

  I list the birds I’m counting on: eight waders, about fifteen duck-geese-swans-divers-grebes-and-so-forth, four owls, up to eight perching flitters, and two raptors. That takes me into the low 190s, with the rest to come from I know not where.

  The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve realised that instead of footling around stroking robins in my back garden during February and March, I should have been freezing my nadgers off in the wilds of north Kent looking for wintering wildfowl and waders. But not to worry, because winter will bring at least twenty I’ll be hard pushed to avoid. And even in September I should be able to mop up a few easily enough. And so it proves. Another day devoted to the holy trinity of biking, birding and garden-visiting takes us to Fingringhoe Wick, just south of Colchester, and a conveniently flat and medium-distance bike ride from the Beth Chatto Gardens. Hobbies-wise, we’re Mr and Mrs Sprat and Son.

  For me the trip is a small slice of nostalgia, Fingringhoe imprinted on my memory as the home of my great aunt. It’s thirty-five years since I’ve been there, but I’m sure if we drive around the area for a bit we’ll as good as trip over the place. It was a house, as I recall. Walls, chimney
, windows, that kind of thing. And the lane it was on had a hedge running down it. Should be unmissable.

  My memories of her and the house are impressions rather than vivid recollections. A quietly formidable lady, awarded the CBE for her contribution to the WAAF in the war. Thin,* with bright eyes and a ‘you can’t fool me’ expression hiding strong inner warmth. Tea in bone china cups. Hens at the bottom of the garden. A narrow winding staircase up to a low-ceilinged spare room. Outside, the lane leading down to the marsh, forbidden territory when the red MoD flag was flying.

  One specific memory lingers. A walk, when my mother and great aunt were otherwise occupied. I was old enough to roam alone, and the red flag wasn’t flying. So I wandered down the lane to the marsh, feeling terribly grown-up, returning an hour later with earnest reports of numerous sightings. Reed warbler, sedge warbler, marsh tit, willow tit, spotted flycatcher, redstart, wood warbler, lesser spotted woodpecker – you name it, I said I’d seen it.

  Let’s give me the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I did see those birds.* Certainly the house was well placed for them, right on the edge of the marsh and with woodland nearby. But more likely I thought I should have seen them, that I felt reports of a robin, a song thrush and a couple of blackbirds would somehow disappoint. Maybe I heard twitterings and saw flutterings, and made the natural leap from ‘This is the kind of place I might see a reed warbler’ via ‘That was a small brown fluttery thing’ to ‘Yay! Reed warbler!’

  I want to find the house, partly to pay homage to a lady who was part of my childhood without being physically present – my parents’ evident esteem for her ensuring she was mentioned in dispatches far more often than I met her. Perhaps she was significant because she was the only familial link I had with the generation above my parents’. Three of my grandparents died before I was born. My maternal grandmother lived in Australia. Here was a woman born in the nineteenth century, who lived through two world wars – wasted on the twelve-year-old me, but if she were around now, wouldn’t I want to talk to her all evening?

  The detour is also to mark the place where one of the great lies of my birding childhood was perpetrated, a symbolic exorcism of past misdemeanours.

  As we drive towards the reserve, I get an overwhelming feeling of nearly déjà-vu. The landscape feels familiar, hedges and fields all around but with an underlying hint of being on the edge of something larger. Round every turn I think, ‘Here it’ll be,’ but there it isn’t. There’s no moment of recognition, no sense of homecoming, no feeling of wonder at how much larger, smaller, broader or narrower everything seems in comparison to my memories. For there’s nothing to compare. While the landscape feels intangibly familiar, the specifics – the shape of the lane curving away from us, or the outline of a wall or roof – remain elusive.

  My faith in my own instinctive powers of recollection is fatally undermined, and after twenty minutes of fruitless meandering, I call off the search and Tessa drops us and the bikes off at the nature reserve.

  In the first hide, brand new and overlooking the Colne Estuary, good water management has allowed the high tide to push the birds close, and there are a lot of them, but after fifteen minutes I’m assailed by an unfamiliar feeling. Ennui.*

  I don’t know where it’s come from. Maybe it’s the other occupants. There are four of them, in two pairs, their common ground a stolid demeanour which somehow announces, ‘We’re going to watch the hell out of these birds, whether we like it or not.’ I may have read it wrong, but there’s something joyless about them I haven’t yet encountered on my travels.

  They’re not impolite, just secretive. A glance towards us, a hint of suspicion, something intangible in the air, possibly carrying a whiff of my own paranoia. Nonetheless I feel, for the first time in the year, that I’ve stumbled in on a meeting of a club that the members don’t want me to join.

  Or maybe I’m just having one of those off days when you’re assailed with an inexplicable sense of whatchamacallit and everything feels ever so slightly drungly, the kind of day that’s only salvaged, if at all, at its end, with the help of a bathtub of pistachios and a schooner of cheap booze.

  Perhaps it’s the fault of the black-tailed godwits. Yes, OK, let’s blame them. There are dozens of the blighters, huddled on an island rapidly shrinking with the rising tide. Their backs are defiantly turned towards me, and they appear determined, every one of them, and with a barefaced cheek that fair takes the breath away, not to be the bar-tailed variety I so avidly crave. Nothing against black-tailed godwits. Fine, upstanding birds. Sublime, in the right circumstances, but today they fall some way short of filling my trug with raspberries.

  And so it goes. Half a dozen avocets cavorting in the middle distance. Meh. Ringed plovers, pecking about on the foreshore then up with a flurry and banking round the island in formation. Whevs. Even a distant glimpse of a marsh harrier doesn’t stir me. I’m feeling so disaffected you could pull my trousers halfway down my legs and call me a teenager.

  After fifteen minutes of this, I catch Oliver’s eye and we exchange slightly raised eyebrows, a tacit agreement to leave. He’s taken some photos but is now showing every sign of sharing my apathy.

  We visit the second hide without optimism. It’s a smaller and more ramshackle affair overlooking a small pool with reed beds all around. But here it’s a different story. Released from the oppressive shackles of joyless Tupperware, we join another party of four, their mood as carefree as the other hide’s was downbeat. Gentlemen of a certain age,* they’re squeezed together on the narrow bench. As we arrive, one of them vacates his seat, muttering, ‘Twenty minutes – time for a fag,’ by way of explanation. He beckons us to take his place, and offers an apologetic rundown of what’s on offer as he leaves.

  ‘Not much, but there’s a spotted redshank and a grey plover near the back.’ He eyes the camera round Oliver’s neck. ‘Maybe the young man can get some photographs.’

  And with a smile he’s gone, leaving us to the ministrations of his equally friendly companions. Despite the bareness of the hide, there’s warmth in the air, and we leave twenty minutes later, nourished by two unexpected ticks and the full-fat milk of human friendliness.

  As we return to the visitor centre, there to collect our bikes for the ride to the gardens, I reflect on the strange infectiousness of other people’s demeanours. Then, with exaggerated good humour, I chase my son across the flat Essex countryside.

  The passage of time plays tricks. It seems only a week ago that I had the idea to see 200 birds in a year, and just a couple of days earlier I was standing by the bird table as an obsessive ten-year-old, hoping to lure a chaffinch into a moment of intimacy.

  The bird table at my childhood home wasn’t a table but a disused water tank, conveniently placed in direct view of the kitchen window, and covered with a large piece of plywood. I watched the usual smaller birds come and go, their smash-and-grab tactics inevitably meaning sightings were short, sharp and frequent. If I watched carefully I could see them flitting about in the overhanging branches, waiting for their opportunity. While these views were satisfactory, I yearned to see the birds up close, and became convinced it would be possible if only I could find the ideal vantage point. The table was wedged against a wall. Perhaps if I waited by it, close by but quiet and unthreatening, they would be irresistibly drawn to me.

  It was a hopeful plan, undermined by some fundamental flaws.

  I had a red sweatshirt. It was nice. I wore it a lot. In retrospect it might not have been the ideal camouflage.

  Nonetheless, things might have been fine had I kept absolutely still. This I failed to do, checking every thirty seconds that my mother was still at the kitchen window in rapt admiration of my stillness and blending-in-itude.

  After a lengthy three-minute vigil, I lost patience with the birds’ unwillingness to cooperate and went off to play Scalextric.*

  I think of those birds and their understandable wariness as I stand by the side of the road on the heat-baked flats of
Oare Marshes in north Kent one afternoon in mid-September. There are several hundred birds here, the nearest of them no more than five yards away. But unlike the garden birds of my childhood, this lot seem unperturbed by my presence. I could re-enact the 1977 Silverstone Grand Prix and they wouldn’t bat an eyelid. If I were a bird of prey it would be a different story, but they can tell from my benevolent demeanour that I’m not a threat, so they stay put.

  On the left are black-headed gulls and lapwings, familiar birds made more fascinating by proximity. The variations of dark greens and purples on the lapwings’ backs are particularly attractive, bearing detailed examination as they patiently submit themselves to our scrutiny.

  There are three of us. Ten yards away to my left, a burly man who seems to consist entirely of flesh and sweat has his scope trained on a distant group of birds, a hundred or more, lining a spit of land, and it’s to them that I now turn my gaze. As I do so, they take off, spooked by something or other, dainty wingbeats belying the urgency of their action. In this light the fine notching of their burnished plumage glimmers with understated warmth, and you can see how they got their name. Golden plover. The quiet satisfaction of another new bird is eclipsed by the sight of these elegant creatures scattering against the cobalt sky. Another snapshot for the memory bank. They fly up and around, closely grouped in a long flat line, then wheel away from us and back round to the spit, some collective instinct telling them it’s safe to return. As they settle, I look again towards the birds nearer to hand, and it’s now that the third of our little group addresses me.