2008 - The Bearded Tit (27 page)

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, some binoculars; a spotter; or a telescope.’

It was a bad-tempered trudge back to the car.

‘I assumed you had brought the spotting-scope with you!’ I snapped.

Tori snapped back, ‘You were the one who announced, ‘I’ll get the gear out of the boot.’’

‘Well, I assumed everything would be in the same box.’

‘Why?’ She tutted. ‘They are two completely separate items. They wouldn’t fit in one box anyway.’

‘Oh, I see; so when you saw me only carrying one box you didn’t think to say, ‘Darling, that’s just the tripod, why don’t you bring the spotting-scope, as well?’’

‘I wasn’t really paying attention to what you were bringing out of the car. I assumed you knew what you were doing!’

Deep breaths all round. ‘Well, why did you assume that?’

‘Because of something you said, which was, I think: ‘Don’t fuss, dear, I know what I’m doing.’’

We were back at the car. We had walked quickly and I was now annoyed and hot; the cold water dribbling from the twice-submerged tripod on my shoulder was welcome.

‘Look, let’s not spoil the day bickering,’ Tori said soothingly, as she opened the boot. ‘Let’s start the day again. At least we now know how to set the tripod up; we’ll just get the sporting-scope and go back and pretend none of this happened.’

‘You are lovely,’ I said and gave her the kiss of peace.

‘Where is it?’ she said, pointing into the empty boot.

‘What?’

‘The spotting-scope.’

‘I don’t know. What’s it got to do with me?’ I said guiltily.

‘I left the tripod and scope in the hall by the front door. You said, ‘I’ll put the gear in the car.’’

‘Yes, but you didn’t tell me both boxes were required.’

‘I didn’t think I needed to tell you; I thought it was obvious,’ she said, trying to make it seem as if it was my fault.

‘Oh, so it’s my fault, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t recall you saying, ‘Have you put both boxes, i.e. the tripod and the spotting-scope, in the boot, darling?’’

She tutted a tut for Britain. ‘No, but I did say, ‘Have you put the gear in the boot, darling?’ and you said, ‘Of course, I have!’ so definitely and confidently that I didn’t dare ask for an inventory of said gear.’

‘Right, that’s it. Get in the car.’ I slammed the boot shut, got in the car and started the engine.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Well, as it’s my fault, I thought I’d better drive the seventy-five miles back home to collect the spotting-scope!’

‘Not really?’

‘You don’t have to come, as it’s my fault—you can go to the visitors’ centre and look at the next generation of spotting equipment that we’ll have to get when our own becomes obsolete.’

‘Or lost at the bottom of a lake!’ Tori quipped, and I smiled.

‘No, I’m not really driving home, but I know somewhere we can go that could make the day. And it doesn’t matter if we haven’t got the spotting-scope.’

Half an hour later: the day of birdwatching had been saved. Tori and I were friends again and we found ourselves just feet away from a pair of rare, secretive birds. Woodcock.

‘Fantastically hard to see, you know. The cryptic camouflage is so accurate. Amazing plumage; looks like a pile of dead leaves but still manages to be beautiful,’ I whispered.

‘Not that we’ll see the feathers today,’ Tori said as the waiter approached.

‘And who’s having the woodcock?’

I
lay in bed staring through tired eyes at the rotating ceiling. I thought hard.

I’d gone to the Imperial Arms to persuade Danny to stop drinking and go home for an early night so we could get up at four for birdwatching. Danny wasn’t there and I’d ended up getting drunk and…

Here the memory became a bit ragged at the edges. Did I have a fight with Tony Zanetti? I looked at the clock. 08.30. Oh dear. So we didn’t go birdwatching then?

And it was my fault.

I soon became aware of daylight behind the curtains and a fabulous smell of freshly ground coffee. And toast. Heaven. Yes, if I died and went to heaven and found that it was nothing more than waking up with a hangover and having fresh coffee and toast, I wouldn’t complain to God.

‘Coffee, sweetheart?’ It was lovely Tori.

I smiled. She stroked my face and whispered, ‘Late-night drinking and birdwatching don’t go together!’

‘Have I died and gone to heaven?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said comfortingly.

‘All well,’ I sighed, ‘show me to Arsene Wenger’s throne, then.’

I heard a match being struck and smelled its acrid smoke. I heard somebody inhale and breathe out wheezily. I smelled cigarette smoke and knew that the next voice I heard would be Danny’s.

‘You OK, mate?’

‘Danny saved your life last night, you know.’ Tori sounded annoyed now.

‘Well, that’s not strictly true,’ Danny interrupted. ‘I suddenly remembered I’d left my car at the Imperial a few nights ago. And, obviously, I’d need it to drive us up to the coast this morning. So I thought I’d wander over to collect it. When I got to the pub, that twat Zanetti was staggering about outside just as you were leaving the bar. The arse looked as if he was about to jump on you so I grabbed him and got a couple of the boys from the pub to help me ‘neutralize’ him.’

‘Cheers, mate.’ I reached out and shook Danny’s hand.

‘Then I dropped you back here. Course I realized the twitching was out the window.’

‘You’re a mensch, as Kramer would say.’

‘Don’t worry, mate,’ Danny went on. ‘Plenty more days for the dickybirds!’

‘Right, come on then. Breakfast,’ Tori said as she stood up. She turned to me and beamed sunnily. ‘Hey, some good news, though.’

‘What?’

‘That’s fifty quid you owe me.’

B
irds and birdwatching on television are very different to birds and birdwatching in real life. I have watched David Attenborough’s
Life of Birds
dozens of times. It’s a breathtaking piece of work. In one episode there is wonderful footage of a goshawk. Goshawk is
Accipiter gentilis
. It is a stunning bird. A powerful, awesome predator of woodlands. Dark grey-brown above and an unmistakable whitish breast with fine grey barring. Its broad wings with rounded edges and its long rounded tail mean it can fly fast through woodland, retracting its wings to dodge and weave with breathtaking precision though dense trees. It feeds on other birds, rabbits and squirrels, using speed and stealth as its weapons. If it doesn’t catch its prey on the swoop, then it can land on the ground where its long legs make it a formidable runner. All this you can see in exquisite detail on David Attenborough’s
Life of Birds
, in the episode called ‘The Meat-eaters’.

Real life, I warn you, is very different. My experience of spotting a goshawk bears no comparison. Tori and I were staying in Ross-on-Wye. The huge Forest of Dean was minutes away and at that time of year, early March, there was guaranteed very good birdwatching. The loud whisper in the Goodrich Arms was that the goshawks were up and superb sightings were a foregone conclusion. All you had to do was go to a viewing point called New Fancy, point your binoculars to the east and your object lens would be rammed with goshawks.

Four freezing hours we waited on the viewing platform with half-a-dozen doughty twitchers.

‘Never seen a goshawk before?’ They looked shocked, as if you’d said something world-shattering like, ‘I’ve never seen the ‘chandelier’ episode of
Only Fools and Horses
.’

’

Then, eventually, a jolly, red-faced man with a greyish beard shouted something barely intelligible and jabbed a ringer towards the distant horizon.

‘Look, there it is! It’s up! Wow. It’s the female. She’s big. Awesome. Look at that!’

With freezing fingers trying to steady the binoculars and pull focus, we eventually saw it. For a full two seconds, a small dot disappearing rapidly from the white horizon into the dark canopy of conifers.

‘Wonderful.’

‘What a great spot!’ was the general view.

What a tiny spot, I thought.

‘Magnificent,’ the twitchers agreed, shaking hands and all but opening a bottle of champagne.

‘Hope you new boys got that!’ they said to us.

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘The female’s bigger than the male then?’

‘Oh yes, absolutely.’

‘The male’s an even tinier nondescript grey dot,’ murmured Tori, and we sped off to our cottage to watch
Life of Birds
on the video again.

But you don’t need television’s state-of-the-art hi-tech natural history documentaries to enjoy birds on television. Tori and I spend many a winter’s evening huddled on the sofa together twitching. The lights are low, the screen flickers, there’s a drink by our side and pen and paper in our hand. The tense music of
Midsomer Murders
starts, the scene is set…

Barnaby’s classic car glides up the winding driveway between the rhododendrons and stops outside the Tudor-beamed farmhouse. He gets out and looks around the impressive garden.

‘Chaffinch!’ shouts Tori, and I jump.

But she’s right. There in the background is the bright, rolling chirrup of the chaffinch. Damn, one—nil to her.

Barnaby reads the sign on the door:
Midsomer Lodge
. He bangs on the door with the heavy wrought-iron knocker.

‘Green woodpecker!’ Tori shouts. ‘Two-nil.’

‘That’s not fair, I was having a sip of wine!’ I splutter. ‘I heard it!’

‘Ah, well, you need to concentrate on the programme.’

After twenty-five minutes we’d clocked up three chaffinches, a green woodpecker, two yellowhammers, a rook, eight collared doves, a moorhen, an unconvincing sex scene and three murders. After the third advert break, we joined the inspector and Sergeant Troy by a river where a fisherman had stumbled upon the semi-naked body of the new vicar whom none of the villagers had taken to. I was ready.

‘Sedge warbler!’ I triumphed. ‘Nine-eight and I storm into the lead for the first time in the match!’

‘Er, hang on a minute,’ said Tori, switching the sound off.

‘What? That
was
a sedge warbler. Unmistakable!’

‘Yes, I heard it.’ She looked serious. ‘But you said sedge warbler before it started singing.’

‘Er…’I wasn’t expecting this. ‘Well, look, it’s clearly set in April. They’re down by the river, I thought it was a fair punt that we’d hear a sedge warbler sooner or later.’

‘Sooner or later, maybe. But not half a second before it starts singing.’

‘Pure luck!’

‘You’ve seen the episode before, haven’t you?’

‘A long time ago,’ I confessed. ‘I didn’t realize till I saw the floating vicar. That’s what reminded me. I remembered there being lots of sedge warblers about.’

Tori huffily switched off the television and the game was declared null and void.

‘Don’t you want to know who the murderer was?’

‘It was the estate agent, wasn’t it? I mean—‘ She stopped mid-sentence.

‘You’ve seen it before as well, you cheat!’

The following night there was a repeat of
Morse
. Hostilities would recommence.

Many apologies to everyone concerned with the productions. But once you know a few birdsongs they will be with you forever. They will forever distract you. Any drama, or comedy, set in rural England in the spring or summer, and they usually are in spring or summer because that’s when England can be most attractively sold to America, will be spoiled for you by the twittering in the background. I’ve lost count of the number of episodes of
Last of the Summer Wine
that have been ruined for me by a wren or song thrush. Oh, and the script and the acting.

A
shell landed close by. The blast sounded shockingly close. I was assured that it was way off and told to calm down. The tanks were busy today. The few seconds between the boom of the shell being fired and the dull explosion as it landed were long and anxious. Was this the stench of war? The choking smell of ordnance discharge I had expected, but all around us I breathed in the smell of freshly turned soil; I thought about the trenches and wondered if this was the real stench of war. I trusted that those men knew what they were doing.

Another heart-stopping boom. I jumped.

‘Here they come now,’ someone said and we heard the approaching engine of a jeep. A soldier shouted over to us, ‘All clear; thanks for waiting!’

We drove on.

What a strange location Salisbury Plain is, a striking variety of habitats for all sorts of diverse creatures. Rabbits, hares, foxes, badgers, deer, game birds, larks, pipits, buzzards, harriers, buntings, finches and the British Army go about their business side by side.

On this day we were looking for a rather special bird.

Some birds are more interesting than others. No, that’s not true. What am I saying? Some birds interest
me
more than others. I suppose that’s it.

I walk past ducks every day. I hear crows every day. Most days I can hardly move for wood pigeons. They’re all interesting birds.

The crow family is devilishly savvy. Wood pigeons shouldn’t be disregarded just because they’re so good at breeding. And the poor mallard is stunning really, but it’s just so common. And tame. You have to swing a well-aimed boot at one before it even considers waddling away. Without being in the ‘duck-is-a-duck’ school of birdwatching, it’s tempting not to spend too much time and effort on them. You have a stretch of water, you’ll get duck on it; mallards definitely, and OK a few others: teal, wigeon, gadwall and garganey, perhaps even an American wigeon, but they’re all rather ‘ducky’. And geese. They’re more ‘goosey’ than ‘ducky’, but the same thing goes. Easy to see, geese, and they hang around in huge gangs. Swans the same.

And seagulls are all, to a lesser or greater extent, a bit samey. White and grey and loud and definitely ‘seagully’.

Perhaps I should have been more excited when I saw my first great bustard.

Now, here is a quite amazing creature. The world’s heaviest flying bird and at one time very much a part of the British countryside. This beast of a bird has a pale blue-grey head, white under-parts and ruddy plumage, heavily barred with black, and an often cocked fantail. In breeding plumage the male develops bizarre, strangely human, large, white, moustachial whiskers. These features and its size made it very attractive to collectors. Being attractive to collectors is not a good thing for a bird. Being stuffed and mounted in a glass case in someone’s drawing room are not ideal breeding conditions for a bird. This generously breasted bird, so reminiscent of the turkey, was also more than welcome on the dining table. Changes in agricultural practices as well as human persecution would have contributed to its decline, but whatever the causes the last known breeding pair of this once abundant British bird was resident in Suffolk in 1832. The name ‘bustard’ or ‘bistard’ was first recorded in the 1300
s
. It shares the morpheme ‘tard’ with its scientific name,
Otis tarda
. From Greek and Latin this should mean something like ‘the slow bird with funny little ear tufts’, but there is nothing particularly slow (or late, or tardy, or retarded) about this huge bird. For its size, it runs and flies quite powerfully. It certainly looks no dimmer than most ‘game’ birds.
Tarda
may be an even older Celtic or Basque word, the meaning of which no one knows, or if they do know, they’re not telling.