2008 - The Bearded Tit (20 page)

I hadn’t realized my son knew what a hangover was. He must have been showing off.

‘OK, birds are nice to watch because they’re lively and interesting, and they make nice sounds and have pretty colours!’ There was no immediate answer coming from my children, though if they’d known more about birds they might have said that some make repulsive sounds: moorhens, magpies, bitterns, corncrakes, pheasants, peacocks; and that a large number of them are not pretty and colourful, in fact, most of them are variations of brown and grey.

‘And they can fly; that’s impressive—they can fly without an aeroplane, we can’t.’

Aha, I had them.

My son was quickly on the attack again. ‘OK, but who invented the aeroplane? Man. Not a bird. Not a red-knobbed hornbill!’

Loulou laughed.

‘So, Jon, how come you’ve heard of a red-knobbed hornbill?’

‘I was watching a programme about it last night. Very interesting.’

‘I see; so you were watching a programme about the natural history of birds?’

‘Yeah, well, I was hoping to watch the beach volleyball but I couldn’t find the remote.’

‘OK. So we invented the aeroplane and loads of other clever, technical things because we are intellectually so far ahead of most other species on our planet; surely that very fact means we are in the unique position of having control over our planet’s future. So we can look after it and all the species on it.’

Jon was undeterred in his role as non-twitching
Advocatus diabli
.

‘How much control do we really have? Volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, meteors, disease: a lot is out of our control.’

‘Well, we can control some of it.’

‘Besides, what’s birdwatching got to do with saving the planet and safeguarding our species as well as others?’ asked Louise.

‘It’s to raise your awareness. If you start learning about birds, and other creatures, then you will ‘feel’ for them: an affection; a sense that they belong in the world as much as we do. All creatures are equal.’

As soon as I said this I realized I would be hearing some of my own words thrown back at me. I had often argued that as you save badgers you endanger bumble bees. Who chooses? Why badgers over bumble bees? I once worked on a programme about the endangered European eel. This mysterious creature is threatened by a parasitic nematode worm that destroys its swim bladder and causes it to drown. But who decides we save the eel and threaten the nematode worm? The red kite was once a pest but we reintro-duced this glorious bird so successfully that it will soon be a pest again, so now we are talking about controlling it. Who is man to play God? I have no answer to this and was glad my children didn’t pick me up on it. Nor did they mention the animals and birds we don’t manage to work up an affection for as we observe or study them: the repulsive marabou stork or the scary lappet-headed vulture or the irritatingly dim corncrake which evolution seems to be doing its best to eliminate.

‘Are you saying, then’—my daughter again—‘that our intelligence gives us the duty to look after all other creatures because they can’t do it themselves and we can?’

‘No, not at all. We are not looking after other little fluffy and furry things; we’re looking after ourselves. We
need
a bit of wild. We need a bit of wilderness. We need to be in touch with wild nature. The countryside is better for us than the city. There is less stress where you can see animals, birds, trees, fields and rivers.’

‘Like on the telly!’

‘Shut up, Jon. People feel more at ease near nature, they recover from illness quicker and they feel healthier. It’s been scientifically proven.’

Thank goodness they didn’t ask me for my references and bibliography. I was on shaky ground but I do remember reading somewhere about a strictly scientific study that proved exactly what I was saying.

‘The more wilderness there is, the more human we are. Man has, after all, lived almost 99 per cent of his life in the wild. To make the world a better place for all other creatures is to make the world a better place for us. Going out into the countryside and looking at birds raises your awareness of wild things and that is a step, a small step, a microscopic step, maybe, in saving the planet for humans.’

An excited smile lit up my daughter’s face. ‘Hey,
Friends
is on in a minute!’

‘Loulou, it will help you look outside your tiny, private and egocentric world, the world of school, social life, television, Xbox, Facebook and
Friends
. It’ll make you open your eyes and see what there is in the world. Can you name all the flowers, trees and birds you see in a day?’

I had lost Louise now, who was sorting through the remote-control handsets.

Jon answered instead. ‘Why would I need to?’

‘Supposing you’re stuck in the middle of a forest and desperate for food: would you know which trees were useful and which were poisonous?’

He hit back straight away. ‘Ah, so you are saying that knowledge of the flora and fauna of a place is a purely functional thing, the end of which is helping with, or ensuring, one’s personal survival?’

‘No, that’s just an extra perk, I suppose.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Alright, alright, I’ve worked it out. The point of birdwatching is inexplicable. It’s pointless except in so far as it’s fun for the people who find it fun. Aha, I’ve got you here! What’s the point of cricket? It’s dull, boring and repetitive. Oh yes, but some people find it fun. And golf? That seems to be the epitome of pointless-ness. Trainspotting, collecting beer mats, yoga, astronomy—in fact, work. What is the point of work? Ah well, you have to work, don’t you?’

‘Why?’ said Jon.

‘To get money.’

‘Money for what?’

‘So you can eat.’

‘What’s the point of that?’

‘You’ve got to eat to stay alive.’

‘Why, what’s the point of staying alive?’

As I said, I love arguments that begin with: ‘what’s the point of…?’ They can only have one end. If one thing is pointless, everything is pointless.

‘So let’s go birdwatching then.’

A ‘tut’ from the girl-child.

‘After
Friends
, of course.

‘Do we have to, Daddy, it’s really boring,’ she whined.

‘How do you know it’s boring if you haven’t tried it?’ I said, sounding distressingly like my parents.

‘Er…how do we know it’s boring if we haven’t tried it? It’s not sitting in a nice warm room watching
WWF
on telly. It’s standing outside in a field in the cold. It’s watching, or trying to watch, small things that are continuously flying off to avoid being watched by you. It’s trying to separate one dull brown thing from another. It’s looking directly into the sun at a black silhouette which could be—’

‘I think you mean ‘continually’ not ‘continuously’,’ I interrupted—and, yes, I know it was a pathetic interruption. Even by my lofty standards of pedantry it was unnecessary. But I had to stop him. Not least, because he was beginning to sound like a lawyer again, and no self-respecting parent wants that of their child.

‘Neither of you mind exercising; just think of this as a walk in the fresh air.’

A wince from Louise at the mere mention of the dread phrase ‘fresh air’.

‘How do you know the air is fresh? I mean, who defines or quantifies the ‘freshness’ of ‘fresh air’?’

Don’t you love teenage boys?

‘Shut up, you two.
Friends
is starting.’

The eventual deal was four episodes of
Friends
in exchange for a walk in the country with some mild birdwatching.

‘And don’t interrupt every five minutes asking stupid questions like ‘Which one is Ross?’’ said Louise.

‘Or ‘Why do girls in American sitcoms always look anorexic?’’ added Jon.

I promised and we started watching the first one.

‘Which one is Buffy?’ I asked.

A
stranger came up to me and said, ‘You’re full of shit, aren’t you?’

Ah, one of the unforeseen perks of being on television is the charm of the passing stranger.

‘Sorry?’ I ask politely, as always; there’s no other way, unfortunately.

‘Yeah, I saw you on that B&Q thing.’

‘Oh,
QI
, you mean.’

‘Yeah, whatever. And you was going on about birds and their scientific names and all that bollocks.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember.’

‘I mean, fair play, but what’s the point of knowing all that toss?’

A very good question, I concede inwardly.

‘No offence, like. My gran likes you!’

What
is
the point of knowing all that toss? Well, as you know, I do love questions that begin with Svhat is the point of…?’.

Well, yes, I do know the scientific names for most British birds, and as I have told you about the girl called JJ, you now know why.

There are about a hundred British birds you can regularly see in a year, so it’s not a long list to learn, especially if there’s love and happiness at the end of it. But knowing the scientific names for birds is not particularly useful. Maybe it is
Quite Interesting
but it doesn’t mean you know anything about birds. A lot of serious ornithologists and world-class ‘bird people’ don’t bother that much about it.

I know Bill Oddie is indifferent to it. I once met him socially and the first thing I said to him was, ‘Hey, Bill, here’s one for you:
Plectroph enaxnivalis?

And you know what, quick as a flash, he said, ‘Oh fuck off, Rory, don’t start that crap!’

(He wasn’t even close; it was snow bunting.)

The scientific names are a sort of universal language. You may be talking to a Russian and not know the Russian for ‘kestrel’ and he might not know the English for
poostdygya
. But if one of you says
Falco tinnunculus
, you’re laughing. Well, maybe not laughing. I can think of funnier things than talking about kestrels to a Russian twitcher, but you get the idea. And I should point out that
Falco tinnunculm
means ‘little-bell-ringing falcon’. (No, I’ve no idea either.)

But a close examination reveals that neither the English names nor the scientific names are that precise or appropriate anyway.

Take the
Laridae
family.

They’re gulls.
Larus
is a seagull.

Yes, seagulls!

Come on, you know: white birds that steal the fish and chips out of your hand in Brighton.

They’re the noisy ones that like landfill sites and follow dustcarts about.

They’re all fairly big and you’ll certainly know if it’s a
Larus
that has crapped on your car windscreen.

One of the commonest gulls in Britain is the black-headed gull. Now, careful. Most of the year its head is white with a dark smudge just behind the eye. Even in the summer the adult does not have a black head at all, but a chocolate-brown hood on the face.

The scientific name for the black-headed gull should be
Larus melanocephalus
, which means ‘black-headed gull’, but
Larus melanocephalus
is the scientific name for the Mediterranean gull, which, unlike the black-headed gull, has a black head. The scientific name for the black-headed gull is
Larus ridibundus
, which means ‘laughing gull’. From the Latin
ridere
: to laugh, of course. (‘Ridiculous’, ‘risible’, you get the idea.) And, you guessed it: the black-headed gull has a call that is very much like a wild, cackling laughter.

But what about the bird that is called the laughing gull? Ah, well, the scientific name for the laughing gull is
Larus cachinnans
, which means ‘gull with the wild cackling laughter’, not unlike the black-headed gull.

It’s dead easy, really, isn’t it?

Oh, by the way, most people call the laughing gull the ‘yellow-legged gull’ nowadays, as it’s the only gull with yellow legs. Apart from the other ones.

As you know, most gulls are large, white underneath and grey on the back and some have black heads, though not, as we have seen, the black-headed gull. The commonest gull in Britain with a grey back is the herring gull. Now, before you say anything, this bird does
not
look anything like a herring. However, it may possibly eat herrings. This is not reflected in its scientific name,
Larus argentatus
, which mean ‘silver gull’, and is because of its grey back.
Argentatus
: silvery, get it? Latin
argentum
: silver. Chemical symbol for silver? Ag. (Atomic N°47: if you’re making notes.) And Argentina, the country famous for its silver mines on the banks of the river Plate (from the Spanish
plata
, meaning silver). Remember the flamenco guitarist, Manilas de Plata, ‘little silver hands’? You see it all ties up nicely.

Now, less common than the herring gull is the common gull. This is
Larus canus
, which means ‘grey gull’, to distinguish it from the more common herring gull, which has a grey back. But just to cheer you up, the little gull is a little gull and its scientific name is
Larus minutus…
say no more!

And what about
Oenanthe oenanthe?
A lovely bird. A joy to see hopping across farmland. Bouncing from cowpat to clod. Keeping its distance but affording you very good close-ups through your binoculars. Not much in the scientific name, but, in case you’re wondering, it has nothing to do with
oenanthe
: the flowering plant that looks superficially like celery but exudes a yellow juice that stains the skin and is highly poisonous.

No: it’s the charming wheatear, with the unmissable bright white rump clearly seen when it flies. However, its name has nothing to do with ‘wheat’, ‘ears’ or ‘ears of wheat’. The name is all to do with its ‘white arse’.

No, I kid you not.

White arse > wheet-earse > wheat-ears > wheatear. Love it.

And that’s also an example of a repeated Latin (or Greek) word. There are many of these.
Anser anser
, for example.
Anser
is the Latin for a goose. So the
Anser anser
my friend, is (not blowing in the wind wind) but the ‘goose goose’, or more properly the greylag goose.

This is our commonest goose. It looks like a browny-grey, barred version of a farmyard goose. It is, in fact, the direct ancestor of the domesticated bird. And as its scientific name suggests, it is the goose’s goose. The goosiest goose of all. The basic unit of goosedom.