MY MEMORABLE ENCOUNTERS WITH BIRDS

Posted: 06.07.23 in Articles category

 

Have you had any memorable encounters with birds? Do you vividly remember some occasions watching a particular bird that come readily to mind? You flash back and are there in the moment, re-living the experience. I have been blessed with plenty and share a handful here, beginning with a childhood memory of watching a woodpecker.

 

It is a cold afternoon in winter with traces of snow on the ground, but I am well wrapped up and sitting alone in some wood within walking distance from my home. I look out from my hidey-hole and watch the small bird as it clings to the tree trunk and pecks at it. I am watching my first Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and I am entranced. I lose track of time in my absorption, but eventually the bird flies off and I get up to go. Unaware of my presence, a fox is trotting down the path towards me. We are close when it suddenly sees me, stops, turns round and trots away. Two marvellous sightings that I can recall fifty years later. 

I am offshore with eleven friends on a fishing boat that we have hired for the day. The vessel is at anchor, and we pour overboard a barrel load of ‘chum’ – a mix of fish-heads, vegetable oil and cornflakes. It is a nauseously smelly concoction, but its attractiveness to birds soon becomes apparent as the oily film spreads like a small slick on top of the sea. From seemingly nowhere, various seabirds fly towards the boat and land on the water close by. They are mainly gulls and one catches the eye. It has a black head, black bill, and white forked tail, but its most striking feature is the wing pattern – triangles of black, grey and white. A completely unexpected find so far from the Bay of Biscay. My first Sabine’s Gull, seen ten miles off the Tyneside coast on 22 August 1987.

We are on route to Norfolk for our annual birding jaunt, but the latest news prompts us to take a slight diversion to Sunderland and head to Mowbray Park. We join the small crowd of birdwatchers and stare with incredulity at the wading bird at our feet – so confiding that I could reach out and touch it. At first glance it looks like a Water Rail, but it is much smaller, shorter billed and has obvious black and white barring at its rear. Normally elusive and the first seen in Britain for several years… a Baillon’s Crake on Wearside on 18 May 1989.

Working from home and sitting in the lounge. I hear an unfamiliar and disquieting sound, reminiscent of a squealing pig, coming from our back garden. I rush out and flush a male Blackbird, leaving in his wake another male lying on the ground and obviously injured. I look at the victim and see that his head has been pecked through to the skull. I pick him up and move him out of harm’s way to somewhere more sheltered, but the unfortunate bird dies within the hour. The date is 25 March 1994 – early in the breeding season when Blackbird territories are fought over and become killing fields in extreme circumstances.

The Long Nanny tern colony is a hub of activity this summer evening. We watch at close quarters beside the wardens’ hut as a steady stream of parent Arctic Terns fly into the nesting area with beakfuls of sand eels to feed their young before they return to sea and catch some more. After an hour the two of us had our fill, and we begin a half hour trek back to the car. We had walked barely two hundred metres through the dunes when we stopped. Ahead of us a young Cuckoo is sitting on a metre high wooden pole and two much smaller birds are fluttering around its head. We look through our binoculars and can see that these are Meadow Pipits. They fly down and land on the ground in front of the Cuckoo. One of the birds picks up a black caterpillar and flies up to the Cuckoo which responds by opening its mouth wide. However, the pipit does not feed the youngster, but instead flies back to the ground carrying the caterpillar. It repeats the procedure several times, flying up and fluttering around the Cuckoo with a prey item in its beak before landing on the ground again. Five minutes have passed when suddenly the Cuckoo flies down to the ground, picks up a caterpillar and eats it. Now it dawns on me as I realise what I was watching. The parent pipit has been trying to communicate to the young Cuckoo that its ‘parents’ will no longer feed it and the moment has arrived for it to feed itself. Eventually, the youngster got the message, and the fostering pipits from now on are released from feeding a bird with a monster appetite. My friend and I recognise that we have just witnessed a watershed moment and I record the details in my notebook later that evening. The date is 27 June 2005.

Sheila and I are in California, coming to the end of our May 2011 holiday celebrating our silver wedding. It has been a sunny afternoon in the Pinnacles National Park where we are completing a short circular trail. We have dipped on the Condor we had hoped to see, but nevertheless the birding has been successful with nine new species seen including Lawrence’s Goldfinch, Bewick’s Wren and Spotted Towhee. As we are nearing the car park we see a flock of twenty partridge-sized birds scurrying ahead of us. They are California Quail, and they look comical as they run. There are several adult males among the covey, instantly recognisable with black throats and prominent teardrop-shaped plumes protruding above their heads like little miners’ lamps. To our right we notice a tall wooden post, akin to a telegraph pole, which is riddled with holes. An Acorn Woodpecker is sitting on top, and we can see the tell-tale damage it has caused.

Finally, a much fresher memory from 12 June 2021. I am out on a Saturday morning visiting local sites and the North Pool at East Chevington is my second call. I am listening to Reed Warblers and standing by the hide at the south end with a few other birders, and I check our local WhatsApp group for news. Unbelievable! A swift with a white rump has just been seen flying over the lake at the north end. All I can see is a distant flock of Common Swift and they are too far away to spot any white rumps. Messages are being posted from the handful of local birders at that end watching the bird, while some people around me are claiming they can see it too as they look through their scopes. I scan the swift flock without success, but some birds are drifting nearer. Then I see it too – flying with other swifts several metres above the water in the middle of the lake. Fantastic, but what is it? Some birders are taking photos and soon confirm the bird is not a White-rumped Swift – a species which breeds in southern Spain. Its larger size and more extensive white patch point instead to a Pacific Swift, normally seen off China and Japan. By now I am seeing the bird well and it edges closer as it turns and loops above the water. Still closer and closer until it is flying towards me and soon passes directly over my head. Wow!!! I am almost in shock. How amazing was that? Thanks to the photographic evidence, Pacific Swift soon becomes the consensus about its identification. It is the first ever record for Northumberland and I am delighted with my luck in being there to see it.

 

Seven avian encounters drawn from a bank of personal memories. I have been privileged to travel on occasion and watch birds across five continents, but many of my most memorable episodes watching birds have taken place much closer to home. On page 90 of my book ‘Look at the Birds of the Air’ I wrote about seeing a young Long-eared Owl in coniferous woodland within ten miles of our house and it seemed just as keen to look at me – a case of the watcher being watched. Even at home I have enjoyed plenty of memorable bird encounters: being in the garden when a migrant Lesser Whitethroat sang for five minutes one May afternoon, hearing a Whimbrel at distance coming closer and watching it fly directly overhead one evening in August, or seeing a flock of 31 Waxwings outside our front door on a day in November. These are just a few of my memories, but many of you reading this will have your own treasure troves of bird encounters that you remember. I hope you can share your stories of watching birds with friends and family, and if I ever meet you, say on an Even Sparrows retreat, please share your stories with me as well.