2008 - The Bearded Tit (32 page)

‘He’s said I should go with him on his next trip: a photo-shoot in the Gambia,’ I told Tori.

‘That’s great. Will it be expensive?’

‘He wants to pay. Not him personally but the job. He thinks he owes me.’

‘Ah, that’s lovely. You must go.’

‘I’m not sure I want to.’

‘You’ve got to go.’

It was a nice offer, but for whatever reasons I did not really want to go. Tori seemed touched by the whole idea. ‘Why don’t you go, just for Danny? You’ve done a lot for him. It would be nice.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I’d enjoy it if I was doing it just to please him. I don’t think he’d enjoy it either.’

‘Amazing birdlife I bet. And I’m sure you’ll be in a luxury hotel.’

‘Probably.’

‘With a bar and womanizing facilities.’

I laughed. ‘For Danny, of course.’

I came up with several excuses as to why I couldn’t go. The hassle of rearranging work, the administrating of flying, my loathing of airports and the tedium of air travel, the mosquitoes, missing my daughter’s birthday and an Arsenal home game, but the truth was that this was his thing and not my thing, and while I was pleased for him, I didn’t want to go.

‘That’s a real shame, mate.’ He seemed genuinely disappointed. This made me feel awkward. He started coughing so much I could almost feel the scratching pain in my own chest.

‘A change of climate will do you good. You go off and have a great time.’

‘You’ll be sorry.’

‘Maybe, I will.’

And he was right.

I would be sorry.

B
ut sometimes the best birdwatching moments are not watching a bird, but
seeing
a bird. You haven’t planned a trip, you’re not in some exotic location, you haven’t chosen the time of year or the place and you haven’t got any complex gadgetry with you. You’re just out for a walk in the country as Tori and I were, one early summer’s evening. We were taking a short cut by a bend in the river across a lane thick with nettles and cow parsley. We weren’t exactly being silent and our thrashing through the undergrowth disturbed a heron, which took off scarcely a yard in front of us.

Have you ever seen a heron? You probably have. It’s a bit of a one-off bird. Or should that be a two-off bird, because, to my mind, there are two herons: there’s the standing heron and the flying heron.

A grey heron standing by the edge of a pond or river is a mesmerizing sight. Its trance-like stillness is hypnotic. Is it moving? Yes, imperceptibly, it moves. Staring into the water for its prey, which it grabs with a lightning strike from a spring-loaded neck. It’s one of those creatures that makes you think ah, that’s why God gave us slow-motion photography.

But a gift to the apprentice birdwatcher. Easy to see. Tall, elegant and boldly marked: beautiful blue-grey wings with black tips, a black cap elongated into a plume at the back of the neck and a white breast with little black streaks on its neck. And its beak: pinkish, orangey-yellow and…can I avoid saying dagger-like? No. Its beak is like a dagger. Go and look at one; that beak was designed for ‘dagger’ cliches.

And when you see one flying, or taking off close by, as Tori and I did that night, then you know straight away that you have
seen something
. It’s a stop-you-in-your-tracks moment. What is that huge bird, you think. Big, broad, scoopy wings struggling to get itself off the ground. Away it goes, massive against the sky with its yes, dagger-like head tucked into its shoulders and its long legs dragging behind. I always think, when I see one, especially this close, that it must be the biggest bkd in Britain, but I
know
that the mute swan is. But still I wonder.

My friend Mannie is in no doubt.

He has hugged one.

‘Have you ever hugged a heron?’ he asked me once.

‘Er, no…funnily enough I haven’t. I’ve kissed a frozen chicken, does that count?’

‘No, hug a heron when you get the chance.’

Now, Mannie is an experienced wildlife cameraman and has filmed many birds all over the world; if there’s anyone I know with good reason to hug a heron, it’d be him.

‘There’s nothing to a heron,’ Mannie continues. ‘You think they’re going to be massively chunky and heavy, but not a bit of it. Insubstantial. Feeble. Shandy lightweights’

‘So definitely not as big as a swan then?’ I venture.

‘Ooh no! And I beg of you: never hug a swan!’

I won’t, Mannie.

But people don’t like herons. Well, people with fishponds don’t like herons. Little garden ponds stuffed with carp and goldfish are very attractive to herons. A lot offish in one small area. It’s like a buffet, all you can eat for £1. 99, or whatever that is in heron. So owners of fishponds go to extreme lengths to deter them. Some get a life-size and life-like model of a heron and stick it next to their pond. They can look quite nice, but not as nice as a heron. Some use an air-rifle.

My friend Howie who lives near the coast in Lancashire has a beautiful fishpond with some lovely rare fish in it. He quite liked herons; he liked all creatures, in fact; he had three cats and a small dog. His neighbour liked birds too. Well, he liked pigeons; only pigeons, racing pigeons. So he didn’t like herons; or cats and dogs for that matter.

‘Here, Howie,’ said the neighbour, proffering the air-rifle. ‘Any time, it’s yours, pal.’

‘What for?’

‘Bloody herons. I’ve seen ‘em sat on the edge of your pond. Eyeing up your fishies. And I wouldn’t put it past them to have a go at my birds an’ all. I’ve lost a couple recently, you know.’

‘No, thanks, I don’t need a gun,’ Howie said meekly.

‘Well, don’t worry; I’ll be keeping an eye out.’

Over the next year and a half, Howie’s pond was unmolested by herons.

And so were his neighbour’s birds.

But Howie’s cats disappeared one by one.

And his little dog.

‘Bloody herons!’ said the neighbour. Unconvincingly.

Vermin, then, to many, the graceful and dagger-like heron. But in our history a lot of birds have been considered vermin, and not just the ones you might think. There are records from England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century that bear bleak witness to man’s fondness for destroying his fellow creatures. Birds as varied as cormorant, osprey, eagle, kite, green woodpecker, dipper, jay, starling, house sparrow and bullfinch were considered vermin and people could earn good money catching and destroying them. What made them vermin? Interfering with man’s provisions, we assume: attacking game, and farmed fish, and cereals and fruit.

But what of the heron? The dagger-headed fish-murderer? Why is his name not on the list of vermin?

Aha. An interesting reason, with man, of course, again calling the shots.

In the Middle Ages, falconry was at its most popular. Popular with the royals and nobles, that is. Falconry was a very expensive pastime. Edward ‘Longshanks’ the First who almost single-handedly rid Britain of wolves, and tried to do the same with the Scots and Welsh, was passionate about hawks. When one of his birds was ill he not only paid to have it specially looked after but had a waxen image of the bird made so it could be offered at the shrine of St Thomas de Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral. Most castles, palaces and noble houses would have a master falconer and numerous falcons, which were kept in cages round the back of the building. These were called ‘mewes’. Later the ‘mews’ were larger buildings for horses and later still they were converted into townhouses for yuppies. The falconers (who were called ‘austringers’ if they were using ‘accipitrines’—true hawks—rather than falcons) had to train their birds to hunt and this required some ‘live’ action.

Obviously inexperienced hunting birds could not start straight away on fast-flying game birds or fleet-footed rabbits and hares, so they had to practise on birds that were not too demanding. A large, slow bird, maybe, that could not hide away easily. And a bird that was not much use for anything else. The heron, of course. So the verminous grey man of the river became suddenly non-verminous.

Indeed, it became protected! Protected by the king so the king could practise killing it.

But from its years of being target practice for falcons, the herons learned something too. A peregrine falcon over the reed beds could easily knock out a standing heron, so when there’s a falcon about, the great grey bird invariably flies low over the water, as close to the surface as it can, knowing that no falcon is going to be able to attempt a high-speed dive at it without risking crashing into the water.

And one of my favourite things about the heron is in the cooking of it. I don’t mean that I like eating heron; I’ve never eaten one, nor would I; of course, we have it on good authority from Mannie, the wildlife cameraman who has hugged a heron, that there is not much on them. But before you cook a heron, or indeed any wild game, you need to prepare it. And dating from the early sixteenth century there are specific terms for jointing beasts of the field, air and water.

Apparently, one ‘thighs’ a woodcock.

A pike should be ‘splatted’, and in the unlikely event your fish supper consists of a porpoise, this should be ‘undertranched’.

A peacock should be ‘disfigured’, and a heron, my favourite, should be ‘dismembered’. It would be nice to answer the phone and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t speak just now, I’m dismembering a heron.’

Tori and I watched the undismembered heron fly off. Such an impressive flight too: the rhythmic flap of the wings so broad and so slow. This felt like a proper birdwatching moment; the sunset turned the sinuous river into a dazzling golden serpent zigzagging through the dusky reeds and we were alone with the great grey bird. So simple and calm.

B
ut I do go abroad occasionally. And I do look at the birds. I once worked briefly in India, a country with a daunting number of superb bird species. I hadn’t gone there to watch birds but to do a tedious job I did not enjoy. Bombay is a miserable place. Or perhaps a place of misery. I know that being brought up in English cities and English countryside is not a good preparation for places like Bombay. I know we judge things differently here and I know all about culture shock, but, nevertheless, to me Bombay was grim. Or was the misery inside me and I was projecting it on to my surroundings? Anyway, I was looking for something to lift my spirits. I looked to the sky.

Wow! What the hell is that?

A bird with the proportions and swagger of an eagle but the slim grace of a swallow.

A kite.

A black kite. Right over the middle of this vast, teeming Indian city.

And another next to it.

And another. And…against the glaring white sky, I could see the magnificent kite silhouette of thousands of individual birds.

‘Kites!’ I exclaimed to the local driver.

‘Pariahs,’ he said. ‘Pariah kites.’

That’s not nice, I thought. ‘Pariah.’ The lowest caste. In fact, even lower than that. No caste at all. The social outcast. Such a beautiful bird.

‘They are vermin,’ he went on. ‘Pests. Worse than rats,’ and he finished by spitting out the word ‘scavengers’.

This was always the way. Hyenas? Horrible creatures, scavengers, you know! Herring gulls? Nasty birds; scavengers, of course! Sharks, evil things, they mostly scavenge, you know!

Poor scavengers. Why such bad press? A lion is alright because it hunts and kills zebras and eats as much as it can. That’s fine, apparently. Then along come those filthy scavengers, hyenas, jackals, vultures. What is the suggestion: are they lazy? Can’t be bothered to chase their own antelopes? No, hyenas are doing all they can do, surely; all that nature intended them to do, which is be hyenas. The scavengers are vital to any eco-system. Could we not say: bloody lions! They kill a load of wildebeest, leave tons of it uneaten, just lying about the place, being messy and stinking to high heaven; thank heavens for those nice hyenas and vultures who come and clear up every last morsel.

I was captivated by the pariah kites above the teeming, steaming, choking streets of Bombay.

In Britain we have the red kite. A stunner. I remember my first. Where the M40 cuts a spectacularly white gorge through the chalky Chilterns in Buckinghamshire, I saw the magnificent bird swoop in to land on a footbridge. I would defy anyone not to look up and gaze at this masterpiece. A large but graceful bird, deep chestnut-red, greyish head and the distinctive and unmistakable forked tail, constantly twisted like a rudder throughout its elegant flight. Their presence on the M40 is a success story. Will the kite go back to its medieval status of irritating pest? Possibly, but for now it’s a beauty; a birdy masterpiece. Definitely the best thing about the M40. Though there’s really good a John Lewis at High Wycombe. The numbers in that area now are truly impressive and, if you’re not the driver, they make the motorway journey from London to Birmingham a delight.

Why the extinction? Why, man, of course. Birds of prey interfere with other birds. Other birds that man wants for himself for food (and in some cases for hunting, as well). And there is something so obvious about a bird of prey. They are attractive. One of the things they attract is attention. The attention of farmers, hunters and game-keepers. So the red kite was wiped out. But go back to the time before the shotgun and it’s a different story. In medieval London, the kite was at the peak of its scavenging menace, boldly swooping to grab the food out of people’s hands.

In those days to call someone a kite was an insult. Not just a bird but a low-life. Shakespeare called London the ‘city of crows and kites’ where ‘kites’ could easily have referred to the cockney populace. Hamlet, in referring to the ‘bloody, bawdy villain’ Claudius, says:

But am I pigeon-livered, and lack gall ⁄ to make oppression bitter
.

Or ‘ere this ⁄ I should have fatted all theregion’s kites ⁄ with this slave’s offal
.

But the beautiful red kite is back. Its success is staggering. They’re everywhere. Soon they may once again be as common as they were in the times of Shakespeare and Chaucer. People are already feeding them junk food in their back gardens. A few individual birds in Wales clawed the species back from extinction—since then there have been re-introduction schemes in many places, including the Chilterns.