The Bearded Tit Part 16

Animals are private. Mammals are boring. They are quiet and secretive. If it were not for cars driving too fast late at night down country roads, I do not think anyone would know we had wild animals in Britain. They mainly operate at night and spend all day in burrows, lairs, setts, forms, earths. I mean, what a ludicrously long list of names for the rank holes where animals spend most of their time. Animals are generally brown or browny grey. They lurk, they smell, they snuffle furtively in dank places. Yes, I know, the badger, of course, has a brightly streaked black and white face, but it only comes out at night and you rarely see it except when it's dead on the roads in the morning. For a long time I thought badgers were only dead badgers. Rabbits, hares and hedgehogs are mainly known for their flat, splotchy appearance on our roads. Despite their predilection for playing Russian roulette by the side of our motorways, crows, rooks and jackdaws rarely end up as road-kill.

And, yes, the fox is an impressive animal with its dashing, orangey coat. But the fox would much rather not be seen by humans for all manner of reasons. If you see a mammal by day: a vole, a weasel, a rat etc, it is invariably scuttling away from you at great speed. It's in the nature of these creatures to get away from you as quickly as possible. Except to the viewer with elaborate and expensive infra-red cameras and a flask of strong coffee, these creatures are never the spectacle that birds are.

A visit to the zoo I think will confirm that, apes and monkeys apart, the furry, snuffly, stinking, hairy, browny-grey mammals are the dullest inmates, often indistinguishable from the fetid pile of straw they live in.

Outside the zoo, in day-to-day life, in the city, in the country, in the mountains, by the sea, there are only the birds. You can't avoid birds. And for me now, every one of them was going to be a painful reminder of the one and only girl ever.

A stinging memory of JJ would always be there: in the daily, everyday, inevitable cooing of pigeons; the insistent alarm of the evening blackbird; the unworldly, electric-blue streak of a kingfisher; the cruciform kestrel frozen in mid-air by the motorway's edge; the tinkling bells of long-tailed t.i.ts dancing through shrubbery; the loud and lucid two-tones of a chiffchaff; the exotic yellowy-green bounce of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r as it cackles off to an invisible tree-trunk; the handsome and colourful jay, searching for acorns with its life mate; the drowsy, sweltering, midsummer song of the yellowhammer; the ghostly barn owl quartering the silence of twilight farmland; the plaintive oystercatcher scattering its musical tears over the bleak marshes; the huge, slate-grey grace of a heron taking off from the reeds; the constant flitting, flicking, bouncing yellow of a wagtail down by the monochrome weir; the tame but feisty robin, sometimes posing for a Christmas card on a snow-capped gatepost, sometimes defending its territory right to the red-breasted death; the black and white strobing of a lapwing's acrobatics; the lightning blur of blood and feathers in the jet-stream of a sparrowhawk; the broad, slow-motion majesty of a marsh harrier; extravagantly coloured and sociable goldfinches, tumbling over the wasteland looking for seeds; clouds of starlings above the twilight streets; a skylark singing invisibly from the hidden heights of heaven; the tiny flame-headed goldcrest, tingling from the tall pines; a boldly perched thrush revelling in its rich repertoire of music, repeating its flutey hits over and over; the black and white serenity of an avocet gracefully sweeping through the tidal pools; a microscopic wren shattering the dawn with its gigantic song; the scornful seaside laughter of herring gulls and black-headed gulls; greenfinches, beautifully coloured and wheezing unmistakably; house sparrows chattering energetically along the eaves and gutters; swallows bringing summer from the south on their fragile wings; the snap of a flycatcher darting from its perch to grab a pa.s.sing insect; jackdaws roosting and shredding the dusk with axe-like calls; the magnificent blue and orange of the upside-down nuthatch, guest of honour at the bird-feeder; a cormorant drying its wings on a dead tree, a disturbing snapshot of prehistory; a buzzard soaring and G.o.d-like on its broad feather-fingered wings; the treecreeper, tree-trunk brown and busy as a mouse, flying from tree to tree revealing a breast of snow; moorhens, close up, dark olive velvet, tiptoeing over the lily pads on their pale-green legs; the pink, blue, black, white, brown, olive chaffinch spluttering the arrival of spring; the nagging, non-stop call of the brashly coloured great t.i.t; and, of course, swifts; the birds for whom flight was invented; another of JJ's favourites and the definition of summer: swifts, screaming in a sapphire sky.

Part Two

Flapping Around A Lot

BIRDING FOR ADULTS.

Twenty-five years' worth of dark, bright, deep, shallow, murky and quirky water had sloshed under the bridge between the day I first laid eyes on the JJ and the day when I found myself on stage in a civic hall in Cheltenham addressing a room full of 'twitchers'-serious birdwatchers. I was taking part in a 'forum' discussing a recent bird book. I felt that I was out of my depth and that somehow I was an interloper who shouldn't really be involved in matters 'bird'. I think the audience sensed this and more questions than I expected were directed at me. A middle-aged man in the fifth row put his hand up.

'So, can I ask, Rory, when did you first start twitching?'

'Well, it started as a nervous tic when I was at school,' I explained.

Laughter engulfed a twentieth of the auditorium.

Twitchers are serious birdwatchers. They take it seriously. They don't want 'upstarts' from the telly making jokes about twitching; especially a joke they'd heard so many times before; especially the most obvious pun available, a pun that faintly ridicules the whole world of birdwatching.

'Oh, when did I first start birdwatching? Oh that's easy,' I continued with a well-rehea.r.s.ed h'e. 'Well, when I was sixteen I was in this bookshop and I came across a book called The Easy Bird Guide The Easy Bird Guide and I think I must have misunderstood the t.i.tle!' and I think I must have misunderstood the t.i.tle!'

At least double the laughter now. About six people. Yes, that's more like it. That's birdwatchers for you, you see. They're usually of an age when the word 'bird' still has a dangerous double meaning. Apart from 'feathered flying animal', the word is racy slang for 'girl'.

'Bird' is good for 'girl' though. I think it would be a shame to lose it. It's neutral. Not too patronizing or demeaning. It's safe. Bird. I mean, compare the word 'chick'. A chick: something lovable, small, sweet, perhaps vulnerable, needs looking after, nurturing and cherishing. And girls have 'hen nights', do they not? And the Scotsmen use 'hen' as an endearment without any social or political repercussions.

My teenage children tell me that 'bird' for 'girl' is not quite as common amongst their peers, and their friends don't use it at all. I attempted to verify this as part of my research.

'So when you and your mates go to a party, do you say things like 'Mmm, some nice birds here'?'

'No, Dad,' says my son as if he's talking tactfully to a person with mental-health problems.

'What about 'chick'? You know, 'I like the look of that chick over there'.'

'You're a perve,' says my sixteen-year-old daughter.

Totty?'

'Totty? Ha!' says the boy-child. 'Yes, we use that word if we're taking the p.i.s.s out of repressed middle-aged people.'

'What about 'babe'? Would you say to a girl, 'Hiya, babe'?'

'Babe is a fictional pig, Daddy. I wouldn't advise it,' warns my daughter, shaking her head.

'When I was a boy growing up in Cornwall, we used to say 'maid'. You know, 'She's a nice maid' or 'Have you got a maid at the moment?''

'What did they call you you?' asks my son.

'a.r.s.ehole,' says my daughter.

So here I am, addressing a room full of birdwatchers in Cheltenham and feeling very much like an impostor. Not a birdwatcher, not a twitcher, not an ornithologist, but just someone who loves being outdoors, alone in the country, in the woods, on the moors, in the mountains or by the sea. And someone who happens to know the scientific names for most British birds.

'Is that true, though?' asked a lady in the audience. 'About your interest in ornithology? The Easy Bird Guide The Easy Bird Guide and all that? Or was it just an easy pun on the word 'bird'?' and all that? Or was it just an easy pun on the word 'bird'?'

No, lady in the second row, it's not true.

'No. As a child I used to love drawing birds and colouring them in. And then in the first term of my second year at Cambridge, I met and fell in love with a girl called JJ who was into birds.'

And my interest in the subject became accidentally more public than I had antic.i.p.ated while taking part in a television panel show called QI QI, on which I stumbled into giving the scientific names for various British birds, and while filming a programme called Three Men in a Boat Three Men in a Boat, where I expressed my love for the odd 'twitch'.

'So do you go birdwatching now, then? Proper birdwatching?' asked somebody from the back.

'Well, my girlfriend, Tori, and I took it up properly about six or seven years ago. And we still go when we can; we've even got a 'scope now. But we don't go very far afield to do it. We keep it quite local. And we still haven't seen a golden oriole!'

A sweet, young woman near the front raised a tentative hand and asked with an embarra.s.sed smile, 'What happened to JJ?'

Now, that was was an interesting question. an interesting question.

NORFOLK RUSSIAN.

My hometown of Cambridge is well placed for birdwatching. It's in East Anglia. The wetlands of the fens and the coasts and varied inland habitats of Norfolk, Suffolk and Ess.e.x are just a short drive away. Cambridge is but twenty miles from the headquarters of the RSPB at Sandy in Bedfordshire. Cambridgeshire boasts the birding paradises of Wicken Fen and the Ouse Washes; Norfolk has the Breckland, t.i.tchwell and Holme bird reserves and Suffolk has Minsmere, the jewel in the RSPB's crown; which is also very handy for Southwold and the Adnams brewery.

Tori and I had decided to start our birdwatching career in North Norfolk. A love for nature and the outdoors was just one of the many things we had in common. Notable others included the joy of marriage and parenthood and the h.e.l.l of separation and divorce. We had both emerged at the other end of the latter two and their attendant nightmares, wiser and stronger; and completely knackered. Birding up on the coast was a comforting symptom of a new period of serenity in our lives.

A convenient, straight line north from Cambridge would take us beyond King's Lynn to Hunstanton and then we could take the coast road eastwards. It was going to be a first for me. Being a western man, I knew nothing of the landscape, the people, the towns, the geography or history of North Norfolk. I'd heard of the Norfolk Broads and probably made comments about them being a girl-band from Norwich. I'm sure there probably was one, or has been one since. Norwich, I knew, was famous for Colman's mustard, and the football team was called the Canaries and played in yellow, a source of much amus.e.m.e.nt to schoolboy football fans. Delia Smith, their celebrity-chef fan, had not been invented back then. I had heard of Cromer crabs, which I am sure we Cornish schoolboys had a.s.sumed were something venereal peculiar to East Anglia. And I think Bernard Matthews' turkey farms might have impinged on our remote south-western consciousness with the way he said 'boootiful' in the advert, which also contained the line 'Bernard Matthews' turkeys; they're good and they're from Norfolk', giving rise to the joke slogan: 'Norfolk 'n' good!'

And at university, a fellow language student was a girl who came from a place called Wells.

'That's near Bath, isn't it?' I'd asked her.

'No, not that Wells; Wells-next-the-Sea.'

My, my, how I laughed. A placed called Wells-next-the-Sea. This gave the little-travelled Cornish boy a lot of mirth.

'Is it on the coast, then?' I laughed.

'Of course, it is. Hence the name.'

'Does it change its name when the tide goes out, then? Wells-not-quite-as-next-the-Sea-as-earlier-on-today?'

I was later to learn that Wells is in fact at least a mile from the open sea due to changes in the coastline, but it was until the sixteenth century a bustling seaport.

'You've some need to laugh,' said the Norfolk girl. 'You're from Cornwall; you have the daftest place names in Britain.'

Ridiculous. My home village is called Illogan and we are within easy reach of places called Prospidnick, Warleggan, Gwennap, Ponsanooth and Praze-an-Beeble.

The priority was accommodation. After an hour of yellow-paged frenzy, I was armed with a list of hotels, B&Bs and pubs in Norfolk. This was the huge first step. Tori and I were about to become real birdwatchers. We were actually going to go to find the birds, rather than have them find us.

We were about to change from people who liked birds to people who deliberately went out looking for species they had never seen before. We were about to write lists: birds seen that day; birds seen that year; total bird species seen in our life. We were about to cross the line. Move up to the next tier of twitching. We now had binoculars, a Thermos flask and an RSPB sticker on our car windscreen.

OK, some might say we were about to become even sadder, even more middle-aged or that we were taking a big step further along the autistic spectrum, but let them scoff; for us it was an adventure. All things considered it was just me and my beloved, spending time together in the countryside, sharing a new experience.

I was not having much luck. All accommodation in the whole of North Norfolk seemed to be taken.

'Ooh, no, I'm sorry. You did say this this weekend?' asked one lady with the incredulous outrage of someone who'd been asked if I could take her teenage son away in a sack and tie him up in my bas.e.m.e.nt for a kinky weekend?' asked one lady with the incredulous outrage of someone who'd been asked if I could take her teenage son away in a sack and tie him up in my bas.e.m.e.nt for a kinky soiree soiree I was having with some Middle-Eastern business clients of mine. I was having with some Middle-Eastern business clients of mine.

'Yes.'

'That's only four days away. I've been fully booked for this weekend since last year!'

'Oh, I thought, as it was only the middle of April-'

Her interruption came snapping down the line.

'Well, exactly. Haven't you heard of 'birdwatching'? It's the the time of year, you know. Some people have rooms booked continuously year after year. You won't find anywhere round here at this late stage!' time of year, you know. Some people have rooms booked continuously year after year. You won't find anywhere round here at this late stage!'

'Oh I see,' I said blandly, which for me, in the circ.u.mstances, was quite an achievement.

'You're clearly not a birdwatcher,' she added. Well, that almost did it. I just hoped I didn't b.u.mp into her one daybreak in the salt marshes. I wouldn't be responsible for the final destination of my spotting-scope.

I explained the situation to Tori.

'Apparently in April and May all accommodation within a hundred yards of a bird is taken. By birdwatchers, of all people.'

Tori tutted. 'Sad b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Why don't they get a proper hobby?'

'Well, at least it sounds as if we've hit upon the right time of year to start.'

There was one place left on my list. A pub that had rooms. Very close to t.i.tchwell bird reserve. I called it, ready to adopt a different tone. A booming, cut-gla.s.s English voice answered.

'Good morning, Black Swan...' Must be an aristocrat down on his luck. 'Vladimir Sobolnikovski speaking.'

That threw me off guard.

'Oh hi, Mr Sobolnikovski, my wife and I thought, at the last minute, you realize, that we fancied a bit of twitching this weekend. So just ringing around the usual places seeing if there were any cancellations to be had...maybe? You know, sort of...er...lastminute cancellations...er, coz obviously we normally book the year before, being twitchers and all that...in April?'

I could hear pages being turned at the other end.

'No, sorry...no, wait. Yes. You're in luck. Cancelled last night. Best room in the place. Facing the marshes and the coast and what-have-you.'

'Sounds fantastic!'

Sobolnikovski went on, 'And I'll guarantee you see marsh harriers without leaving your bedroom.'

'Why, are they in the wardrobe?' There was a pause, then welcome laughter.

'What? Oh ha ha ha, yes. You silly a.r.s.e!'

'How serious are you about this lark?' asked Sobolnikovski.

'Which lark? Sky? Crested? Short-toed? Thekla?' I replied.

'Well, you obviously know your stuff.'

'No, we don't. He just know the names of lots of birds. This is really our first 'grown-up' expedition,' Tori admitted.

Sobolnikovski eyed me up and down from beneath a furrowed brow on hearing the phrase 'grown-up'.

He was refilling the shot gla.s.ses with bison-gra.s.s vodka as the clock behind the bar pinged midnight. The three of us were alone. The really grown-up twitchers were well into their serious early nights and probably dreaming of dark-eyed juncos or Corsican nuthatches, eagerly awaiting their five-thirty alarms.

'Where are you from then originally, Mr Sobolnikovski?' I asked our host.

'Oh that's not my real name, that's just a sham. I changed my name years ago. Didn't like the original.'

What was it?'

'Anatoly Zhukovovitch...' He paused. 'Too Russian-sounding.' He laughed uproariously. And so did we. I was beginning to like Vlad the Imbiber. This birdwatching business seemed most agreeable. And we hadn't even seen a bird yet.

'What time's breakfast?' asked Tori in a practical, female way.

'Six to nine.'

'That's a bit early, isn't it?' I spluttered through the vodka.

'Some of my residents think it's too late late! Especially when the mornings get lighter. Every one of my residents this weekend is a serious birder, you realize.' He paused and knocked back the firewater adding, 'Apart from you two phoneys. Of course.'

A few more za nashe zdorovjes za nashe zdorovjes later and we were tucked up on top of the bed, fully clothed and snoring contentedly. later and we were tucked up on top of the bed, fully clothed and snoring contentedly.

DANNY.

Whisper it softly, but there are more birdwatchers than you think. It could be as many as one in five people. Look around you on a crowded train or at a party, and someone, possibly someone standing near you, is a birdwatcher. Another thing about your birdwatcher is that he is not always prepared to admit it. It's one of those things you do that you think should be kept to yourself. A dodgy secret. It just takes one person in the room to own up and say, 'I go birdwatching occasionally,' to make the other closet twitchers open up.