2008 - The Bearded Tit (31 page)

‘Thing is,’ said Danny as we walked toward the lake. ‘Thing about photography is that there’s nothing to it. Being a good photographer just means being in the right place at the right time and having a camera with you. The rest is pretentious bollocks.’

‘Mmm.’ I pretended to muse on this. ‘I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with you.’

‘Stuff’em.’

We were at Rutland Water, about sixty miles north of Cambridge. When I was a little boy, in the days when you had to learn things at school, everybody knew that the smallest county in England was Rutland. For a long time it was subsumed into Leicestershire but the plucky Rutlanders had agitated for it to be restored to its former tiny glory. So now it was Rutland again, with the pretty town of Oakham as its capital; a beacon of hope for rapidly disappearing Britain. Rutland Water was built in the seventies when I was still a student panting after the most beautiful girl in the world. It was originally called Empingham Reservoir and had been created to supply water to the East Midlands. It is an impressive site and one of the largest man-made reservoirs in Europe.

‘Now, look, Danny, follow my finger there. What do you see?’

‘Water.’

‘Er…correct; keep watching—something’s about to appear.’

There was a plop and a dark, toy-duck-shaped bird bounced to the surface.

‘Recognize that?’

‘Oh yes, that’s another one I photographed at Titchwell. Oh, it’ser…’

‘If I said
Tachybaptus ruficollis
to you, what would you say?’

‘I’d say cut out the bloody showing off and remind me what it is!’

‘Little grebe.’

‘Oh yes, I remember. Hang on. I don’t think it is, you know.’

‘It is, Danny, trust me.’

‘I spent about an hour developing those photos; the little grebe didn’t have a red eye and those funny yellowy feathers on the side of the head. Not that I remember anyway.’

I looked at the bird closely though the binoculars and saw that there was something odd about this little grebe, but I put it down to a seasonal plumage variation.

‘It’s probably some seasonal plumage variation.’

‘Oi, mate!’ Danny was calling out to a passing birder. ‘What’s that little black ducky thing down there?’

I’m sure this was another severe breach of twitching etiquette. The stranger looked Danny up and down suspiciously as if he were the sort of person who’d set fire to hides with fag ends. He gave the bird a brief going over with his scope.

‘It’s a black-necked grebe.’

‘Not a little grebe, then?’ Danny asked.

‘No, a little grebe doesn’t have that bright red eye and those yellow ear tufts.’

‘One-nil to Danny!’ he shrieked annoyingly.

‘
Podiceps nigricollis
, ’ I announced, limply trying to get back some self-respect and pixie points.

Tori laughed at this anecdote. ‘It’s not a race: who sees the most birds, who sees the most species, who sees the rarest one. It’s not a competition to see who knows the most Latin names for birds.’

‘Well, I’d win that. Hands down.’

‘Teh, there you go again! He’s learnt a lot from you, what’s wrong with you learning from him? There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t be so proud. You don’t have to save face all the time. Be wrong occasionally. I know you’re not used to it but give it ago.’

‘How dare you say I’m not used to being wrong? I’ve been wrong eleven times. Twice in the same year.’ 1982, it was.’

‘You may joke, but you don’t like to be shown up, do you?’

‘Nonsense. Alright then,’ I said, reaching for the nearest bird book. ‘I’m going to show you a picture of a bird and you tell me what it is.’

Reluctantly Tori went along with this. I turned to the black-necked grebe. I covered up the name and turned the book towards her.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a black-necked grebe,’ she said instantly.

‘Exactly. Black-necked grebe. Just what I thought.’

A
spring day on the coast. I am with a hardy old countryman and birders surveying the estuary and its inhabitants.

‘Look at that. Huge flock of dunlins,’ say I.

‘A fling.’

‘Sorry?’

‘A fling. That’s what you say for dunlin. A fling of dunlin, not a flock.’ And notice he says ‘dunlin’, singular, not ‘dunlins’ as I did.

‘And a large group of pintails, as well.’

‘Knob,’ says countryman.

I pause to work out whether this is a comment about me and my ignorance of collective names for birds, or the collective name for pintails.

‘It’s a knob of pintail.’

‘Oh, of course.’ I press on tentatively. ‘Is that not a flock of guillemots?’

‘No, that’s a bazaar of guillemot.’

‘And what about those thrushes?’

‘A mutation.’

‘Linnets?’

‘A parcel.’

‘And what about that flock of shelducks?’

‘A dodding of shelduck.’

‘Well, I never.’

I should perhaps inform you that this dialogue never actually took place. You know this, first, from the odd collections of species: would I really be able to see a bazaar of guillemot from the same point I could see a mutation of thrush or a parcel of linnet?

Collective nouns, eh? Can you really be doing with them?

Compilers of pub quizzes apart, is anyone remotely interested in them? Who on earth would use them in everyday conversation?

A ‘swarm of bees’ or a ‘den of thieves’ is passable, but a ‘siege of herons’? A ‘cadge of peregrines’? I ask you! Some of them have a vague logic. A ‘ballet of swans’, for example. An ‘ostentation of peacocks’ makes sense. But does it imply that the peacocks have to be adult males with their tail feathers fully extended and fanned? Can you have an ostentation of baby peacocks? Or what about the females, the peahens? Is it a ‘self-effacement’?

But what is more worrying: who bothered to make them up? Who the hell thought it necessary to have a different collective noun for each bird species? And besides, answer me this. If a ‘dodding’ can only be of shelduck, why would you ever say a ‘dodding of shelduck’? And not just ‘dodding’? Eh? See: not so clever now, Mr Collective-noun-inventor!

Having said that, I will own up a strong affection for one or two. If you’ve ever watched a group of goldfinches sociably tripping from bush to bush, singing its trilling, chattering, liquid song and flashing its patches of black, yellow and bright red, then you cannot argue with this flock being called a ‘charm’.

A charm of goldfinch. Perfect.

And what about ‘a parliament of owl’? Those wise-eyed, grey faces, deep in thoughtful debate on matters weighty and solemn. (Not that at any time in our history would we associate ‘parliament’ with wisdom or serious, thoughtful debate, but you get the idea.)

And as for crows: huge, brooding, smart and powerful. A ‘murder of crow’ and an ‘unkindness of raven’ are spot on.

I also have a soft spot for a ‘murmuration of starling’, because a murmuration is something special. When you see one, you’ll know; and you’ll never forget it. A murmuration is a dramatic display of the majesty, power and mystery of the bird world. People who think ‘birds’ are boring are stopped in their tracks.

The memory of one November afternoon over a city park will stay with me for ever. Not for the birds, particularly, but for the people. A sun was disappearing over the horizon leaving a narrow strip of gold on the edge of a sky, which was the colour of slate. Dog-walkers, families and children, strolling lovers, late shoppers, all stood with open mouths on the footpath as a giant, fluttering ball of starling wheeled and shimmered above them. A cloud of birds, a thousand strong, like a massive shoal of black fish, swirling in all directions with perfect coordination. The onlookers were bewitched, awed, and even a little scared, by the alien spectacle.

Yes, a murmuration of starling; I’ll buy that. Better than a ‘plump of moorhen’, definitely.

T
his lilac-breasted roller is a stunning bird. I have enough difficulty finding the superlatives to describe our own British specials, like the humble kingfisher, so the hyperbole needed to convey the magnificence of an East African bird like the lilac-breasted roller is truly beyond me. It can only be described by the words: ‘Go to East Africa and see one.’

‘Any idea what this champion is?’ Danny had said, laying the photograph neatly down on the table in front of us.

‘Wow,’ said Tori on the intake of breath. ‘That’s a beaut.’

‘Yes, pretty,’ I admitted. ‘No idea what it is, though. But I bet it’s a bird you photographed in East Africa.’

‘Spot on,’ Danny laughed. ‘It’s a lilac-breasted roller. And this one?’

Another slickly professional photograph was offered unto us. This one again depicted a bird with predictably superb markings. Impossibly coloured as only tropical birds can be. A huge iridescent flash of turquoise on its cheeks and neck, bright orange breast and a snowy-white rump. Its head, black with a staring white eye, and its beak, slightly curved and stabby, gave it the look of a starling.

‘It’s superb,’ enthused Tori.

‘Looks like a starling in fancy dress,’ I unenthused.

‘Well, what about that? It’s a superb starling!’ chuckled Danny. ‘Now what’s interesting about that piccie is that I shot it with a Canon EOS-IDs Mark II with a Canon EF lens 300mm f⁄2.8 IS plus 1.4x converter.’

‘Ooh, Danny, you’re blinding us with science now,’ Tori said rather kindly. ‘Boring us without science’ was how I was going to put it.

‘No, but what I was going to say was this: the interesting thing about the two photos—’

‘Careful of incontinent use of the word ‘interesting’, Danny!’

‘No, it’s just that the starling, that superb little feller, was shot on film. Ilford XP2 with an Olympus OM-1N. I was wondering if you could see any difference in tone or quality or anything.’

I ummed for a bit and said, ‘I think I’d need to know a bit about the apertures, shutter speeds and focal lengths first.’

‘Well, actually,’ he started, then realized I was being sarcastic and stopped, looking genuinely deflated. He lit a cigarette and Tori reached for the next photograph. It showed a pretty bird with a snow-white breast and head, perilously perched on a branch covered in huge thorns.

‘That looks like a shrike,’ Tori said.

‘A northern white-crowned shrike,’ Danny confirmed.

‘It’s on a good tree for impaling its prey,’ I said, and Tori reminded me of our first ever sighting of a shrike, a great grey shrike, in Lanzarote. It was our first holiday together in the early, nervous days of our relationship, and I remember needlessly worrying that the habits of the shrike might be too bloodthirsty for her.

The glossies kept coming; on each one some wonder bird from another continent. Bigger, more bizarre and more brightly coloured. After half an hour we’d ‘ooh-ed’ and ‘aaah-ed’ our way through Somali bee-eaters, red and yellow barbets, African paradise flycatchers, spotted morning thrushes, sooty chats, pin-tailed wydahs and a whole host of drongos. My respect and admiration for Danny’s work was made grudging by a slight irritation I couldn’t really put my finger on.

‘You weren’t very enthusiastic about his photos,’ Tori said as we lay in bed later.

‘I was. I thought they were fab.’

‘You didn’t show it. You should be pleased. You pestered him to go birdwatching with you and he did. He gets really good at it and into it through photography, and gets paid by a magazine to go round the world photographing birds. I’d have thought you’d be delighted.’

I blew out a deep breath in the direction of the ceiling and tried to think honestly.

‘Well, the thing is with Dan that we do different things now. We’re both busier than we used to be so there isn’t time for the crack we used to have; you know, just going out on the town, on the piss, to football, womanizing.’

‘What womanizing?’ Tori cut in hard.

‘Well, that was mainly Danny’s department. Obviously.’

Tori was not completely satisfied with this. ‘Because you’ve already got a lovely woman you’re devoted to!’

‘How did you find out about her?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘No, but it was a laugh at first,’ I went on. ‘Twitching with Danny. A few hours in the bushes then a night on the piss. Now he’s gone all serious about it.’

Tori forced out a snide guffaw. ‘Well, that’s rich. I thought you were the serious birding bore trying to get your best mate to join your club. Was he only allowed to join on your terms then? Has he broken the rules by becoming more interested and serious about it than you?’

She was right. I had started it and it was fun having Danny as the new boy, as my private pupil.

‘Do you resent the fact that you got him these shoots abroad?’ Tori said, cuddling up to me.

‘No, not all,’ I said, truthfully. But another truth was beginning to dawn. I was interested in birdwatching in Britain. I would be exhilarated to see a British rarity. A black redstart or a golden oriole. It seems almost to be cheating to go to a far-off country where birds like a Lewin’s honeyeater or a cobalt macaw or a streamer-tailed humming bird are two a penny.

‘Where’s the skill in going to Java and seeing a Java sparrow?’

‘Oh I see,’ said Tori in best
Advocutus diabli
mode. ‘If you want to be a birdwatcher, you can only do it in the country you live in?’

‘Not really. If we go abroad, we always take our binoculars just in case, but we don’t go abroad precisely in order to bird-watch, do we?’

‘We could do, though. And what’s wrong with people who do?’

Nothing, of course. I was unsure now what I thought. I knew that I was pleased the exotic birds, and indeed the dull ones, of other countries existed, and I was pleased that people would travel to see them and photograph them, but I was pleased not to be one of them, and I was pleased to carry on doing casual birdwatching in Britain with our small but varied collection of birds, not all of which I’d seen by far.

Since Tori and I had been living together, I’d seen less of Danny and all my friends. But that is normal and to be expected. I thought we’d spend more time together if he came birding with me occasionally. It worked, but now that he was seriously into it through the photography, I hardly saw him at all. He felt the same way, I think, which is why one day he surprised me by inviting me on a trip to the Gambia.