2008 - The Bearded Tit (28 page)

Currently, the Great Bustard Group is running a reintroduction programme on Salisbury plain. Chicks hatched in Saratov in Russia are released into a huge holding pen, where they can eat and forage in safety until they’re ready to fly off on their own. Each bird has a colour-coded, numbered wing-tag for easy identification, and some have radio transmitters so that their whereabouts can be checked. It’s an exciting project and depends a lot on the general public who are encouraged to report any sighting of the bird, noting, at least, the colour of the wing-tag. And the great bustard is not a bird you’d mistake for any other bird, so the general public will be in no doubt that it has seen something special. This is more than an escaped turkey. But there again it does look a bit turkey-like. And it has that general ground-dwelling game-bird look to it, so, as I said, on seeing one in the wild my face registered the sighting with a lesser-than-expected Vow factor’.

It happened when I was filming for the BBC’s
Saving Planet Earth
. I was looking at three species under threat: the European eel, the barbastelle bat and the great bustard. I was being driven over the plain in a Land Rover by David Waters of the Great Bustard Group; there was a camera fixed on the outside of the vehicle, pointing back through the open passenger window at me. There was no hiding place. I had to be careful: no looking at my watch, reading the paper or yawning. The last was the most difficult as I’d just consumed two and a half pints of Great Bustard Ale in a pub near Stonehenge called, of course, the Great Bustard Inn.

It was a clear day and we were following the faint bleeps of the radio transmitter on our receiver; it was getter louder. Somewhere not too far away was a great bustard.

‘That signal’s getting stronger, David, does that mean we’re getting closer?’ I asked with the dim fatuity expected of television presenters nowadays.

‘It does indeed, Rory. Keep your eyes peeled.’

‘You bet,’ I said, struggling against the overwhelming desire to unpeel them. ‘I can’t wait to see my first bustard,’ I said, sounding like a twat, which I believe is also the job of most TV presenters now. Like all ground-dwelling birds, great bustards are hard to see, despite their size. David had advised me to look out for the long, grey neck above the stalks of the oilseed rape.

‘Wow, look, look, there! Over there! Amazing!’ I shrieked with genuine excitement. I grabbed my binoculars and trained them on the magnificent bird not ten yards away: large, elegant, soaring close to the ground, pale grey and white like a huge, malevolent seagull, its wings held in a shallow ‘V, the dihedral. It gently swooped out of sight behind the hedge.

‘That was brilliant,’ I said, turning to David. ‘The first one I’ve ever seen!’

The bustard man turned towards me with a mild rebuke, ‘That was a hen harrier, Rory.’

‘I know. Wasn’t it fantastic?’

The producer who was watching the footage from my camera without sound on a monitor about a mile away was very impressed.

When we met up with him later, he said, ‘That was great. Wonderful reaction from Rory when he saw the bustard. Genuine excitement!’

‘We didn’t see a bustard,’ David said. ‘It was a hen harrier.’

A pause.

‘Oh well,’ said Peter, the producer, ‘we’ll get a shot of a bustard and cut in Rory’s reaction to the harrier. That’ll look fab.’

‘B
loody hell, there’s hundreds of the buggers!’

Danny was looking out across the salt marsh from the hide at the huge numbers of birds assembled there.

‘Er, can you moderate your language, please!’

A prissy couple of birding spinsters in the hide objected to his beginner’s exuberance.

‘You must excuse him.’ I turned to them reassuringly, ‘He’s a beginner. Just started; full of enthusiasm.’

They tutted and walked out.

‘Right, Dan, lesson one: waders.’

‘I haven’t brought any, mate, I’ve only got my jeans.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll grow out of puns like that, Dan, eventually. Even I did. Tits, peckers, shags: all those. A wader is a wading bird. They tend to hang around together and they’re quite similarly marked so when you see a huge number like this it’s easy to think they’re all the same, but there are probably twenty or so different species out there. And we’re lucky it’s late spring because they’re in their breeding plumage. In the winter they are all identical. Identically dull. So, because they wade, they tend to have long legs; usually a long bill for poking around in mud and sand. Sometimes curled down like a curlew, occasionally turned up like an avocet, which is that white one with black bits.’

‘That’s a lovely bird!’ He began to set up his camera.

‘And what you’ll notice also is that waders are very obliging photographic subjects. They pootle about in the water for hours, hardly moving. They’ll pose for you, Danny. You can’t fail to get a brilliant photo of a wader!’

‘Wanna bet?’ chuckled Danny, taking out a cigarette.

‘You’re not going to smoke in here, are you? You’ll get arrested!’

‘There’s just you and me. Come on, mate!’

‘If anyone comes in, I’m not with you.’

He puffed away as he assembled the telephoto lens of his camera.

‘At least you haven’t bought a bottle of Scotch.’

‘Ta-ra!’ With a flourish, he produced a hipflask from his jacket pocket.

‘I’m sure we’re breaking all sorts of twitching rules, you know.’

I took a burning swig of whisky and conceded that this was fun.

Tarty time,’ he enthused. ‘All we need now is some birds! Look, there’s some. Ha ha ha. Sorry, mate. That’s the last time I do the bird pun.’

We settled down to some mild twitching and Danny turned out to be a keen learner.

‘So what’s that one on that lump of mud?’

‘That’s a dunlin.’

‘Is that common?’

‘Very common. It’s the wader’s wader. It’s the SI unit of waderness. It’s a good one to know well because you can use it as a yardstick to identify other waders.’

‘So what are we looking for to identify it as a dunlin?’

‘Well, size of course. About eight inches. Its beak: longish, black, tapered, slightly decurved.’

‘Hey,’ Danny interrupted. ‘Remember that time you couldn’t get your computer working and you rang me up and asked me if I could sort it out?’

‘Probably.’

‘And I said, ‘Is it booted up at the moment?’ And you said, ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Danny?’ And I said, ‘Booted up! Switched on! Running. Everybody knows what booted up means.’ And you said, ‘I don’t know what it means so everybody doesn’t know what it means so don’t use jargon. Don’t assume the person you’re teaching knows anything about what you’re talking about.’’

‘Yes, that sounds like me,’ I admitted.

‘Well, what the fuck does
decurved
mean, then?’

‘Oh, I do apologize. Curved downwards. These are adults, just about in their breeding plumage. So black patch on their belly, with dark streaks above on the breast. Back like all waders looks dull but close up is quite a nice arrangement of chestnutty-brown and black and cream.’

For the first time in my life I felt ‘wise’. A strange feeling. I was a schoolteacher. A mentor. I was a wise elder imparting my hard-earned knowledge to a keen, uneducated youngster. I quite liked it. It made me feel important, a feeling I realized I was unused to.

‘
Calidris alpina
is the scientific name, if you’re interested.’

‘No, I’m not. Don’t get all schoolteachery on me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean. The longer you look at it, the prettier it gets. Good: that’s one I’ve learned. Dunlin. What are those two by that wooden post?’

‘Dunlin.’

‘Oh yes, so they are. And that one there?’

‘Dunlin.’

‘Don’t tell me, that big group on the island: dunlin?’

‘Correct.’

‘That’s not a dunlin though, is it?’

‘Where?’

‘Four o’clock from that wooden post. About ten feet away?’

I turned my binoculars nonchalantly in the direction Danny indicated and gave the bird a casual look.

‘Yeah, dunlin. That lot are all dunlin!’

‘But it’s slightly smaller.’

‘Hard to tell through binoculars.’

‘And it’s more ruddy and hasn’t got an obvious black belly patch.’

I said, ‘Dunlin’, again firmly but had another look anyway. ‘Blimey, it’s a little stint. You’re right; well done!’

‘You see! Dunlin, my arse. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

I was slightly annoyed that I hadn’t been more thorough in my identification, so I thought I’d score a cheap point.

‘Yeah, but what’s its scientific name?’

Danny furrowed his brow and took in a sharp breath as if he was seriously thinking about attempting an answer.

‘Er…little stint? How about
Calidris minuta
?’

This shocked me. This was my territory. Not Danny’s. I’m the only person allowed to know all the Latin names for British birds!

He started laughing and pointed to a large coloured chart on the wall behind me showing all the common waders, their English and scientific names.

‘Jesus, what’s that smell?’

Danny had flung a cigarette end into the dry strawy corner of the hide and it had caught light. Splashing whisky on it didn’t exactly dowse the flames but after a few minutes’ jumping and stamping, the fire was out.

‘For God’s sake, Danny, we’re going to end up in jail at this rate!’

After that little shock we passed the time pleasantly, and within a few hours Danny could confidently identify dunlin, redshank, oystercatcher, avocet, ruff, knot, lapwing, golden plover, grey plover, curlew, little stint and a shelduck. The other ducks were still those quacky things and the seagulls remained seagulls. But his knowledge had grown admirably and there were some superb-looking photographs on the way. We got back to the car. Loaded it up and drove out of the reserve in search of an old·fashioned pub for a pint and an ornithological debrief. As we drove away from the coast we travelled up a slight hill and I looked in the mirror at the expanse of reed beds and marshes. To my horror, roughly in the direction of where we’d been, a large dark plume of smoke was arising. Something was on fire.

A
summer’s evening. A river. Ducks, geese, swans and that ubiquitous
pair
of wild water chickens: the moorhen and the coot.

Coot with its signature matt black plumage and spotlessly white bill and facial shield. Bald as a coot. The coot, of course, is not bald in the human sense of hairless. Neither is the United States’ sacred bald eagle. But then bald originally meant ‘white’. A bald person’s head was white, that is, pale, compared to a person with hair. I was musing on these things as Tori and I sat at a quayside bar. It was also a great place for other, non-avian, animate objects.

Look at those delicious creatures. Girls out on the town. Rolling, wiggling and bouncing firmly and sweetly. Their scant clothes hanging on to their bodies as if mostly by accident. A single man’s dream.

And I was sitting there with my wife sipping a flat lager.

‘Isn’t this lovely?’ Tori asked.

‘Perfect,’ I assented.

‘Then why are you looking so damned miserable, then?’

Before I had time to make up my answer, I noticed that walking towards us were two generously proportioned girls so scantily clad they seemed to be wearing their bodies on the outside of the clothes. Tori, who had noticed the target of my intent stare, turned to me and said, ‘I know what you’re thinking: whatever possesses some girls to come out dressed like that? Who’s going to look at them? The state of them! Appalling.’

‘Yes, you’re right, sweetheart; my thoughts entirely.’

It certainly does not happen in bird world. It’s a truth universally acknowledged among birders, though probably denied by a lot of them, that the bird they really want to see is the adult male. The adult male in full breeding plumage. Not the duller, drabber female. These words are not mine. Look in any bird book and the language is the same:

‘Next to the brilliant male, the female is rather plain.’

‘The female is smaller and duller.’

‘Female is a rather drab version of the male.’

‘The female is similar to the male but the colours and marking are weak and washed-out looking.’

‘Female drab.’

‘Female plainer with fewer streaks.’

‘Female plainer with more streaks.’

‘Female browner all over, with less pronounced markings and a generally drab look.’

The point can be illustrated by several common species that even the bird-not-watcher will recognize.

The mallard duck: every pond, lake, river estuary, harbour or puddle will have a mallard. The male with his shimmering bottle-green head, white neck ring, clean yellow bill and flashy purple-blue wing-bar, and a dull brown female paddling behind.

The blackbird; female a brown bird.

The greenfinch; female not green.

The chaffinch; female a dull version of the male.

The sparrowhawk: male slate-bluey-grey above and barred orange beneath; female greyish bars beneath and dull, dark brown above.

The golden oriole: male truly fabulous, startling yellow; the dullish green female doesn’t stand a chance against a stud coloured like that.

And as for the ruff…In spring, the male doesn’t bear thinking about. A bizarre, broad feathery collar that can be black, white or reddish-orange. Forgive me, but it’s bordering on the ludicrous. Especially for a British bird. No competition from the duller, drabber, plainer, dingier, mousier, more washed-out, lacklustre female.

‘Woah, wait a minute now, Rory,’ I hear you cry. ‘What about the grey phalarope?’

Alright, yes, I’ll let you have that one. The grey phalarope male is duller and drabber than the female, which is, in the summer, a rather fetching brick-orange. And the dreary male of this species is the one that incubates the eggs and rears the chicks.

Come on, male grey phalarope memo to self: ‘Must be more brightly coloured.’

But the rule of thumb is largely true, and in species that have drab males, the man-birds make up for it by having louder or more intricate songs.