This Birding Life (32 page)

There aren't many birds which have given their name to a piece of machinery. The crane is a notable exception. But the comparison fails to do justice to this magnificent species. Standing almost as tall as a grown man, with a long, curved neck and dagger-like bill, the crane fully deserves its reputation as the aristocrat of birds.

In medieval times, the crane was a dish fit for kings, when along with roast swan and stewed heron, it was served at royal banquets. The pressure from hunting, together with the draining of its native East Anglian fens, eventually took its toll, and by the year 1600 it was extinct as a British breeding species.

Since then, the crane has continued to survive on the Continent, though it has declined steadily, as its wetland habitats disappear. Cranes are shy birds, needing large areas of undisturbed land to breed. Today the species is mainly confined to the wet meadows, marshes and bogs of Scandinavia, where the returning birds perform their famous courtship dance each spring.

Each autumn, vast V-shaped flocks of cranes travel southwards, to spend the winter in the warmer climes of Spain, North Africa and the Middle East. En route, they run all kinds of risks: from the disappearance of feeding areas through habitat loss, to the shotguns of Mediterranean hunters.

Yet despite these problems, there is a small glimmer of hope for this splendid bird. For the past decade or so, a tiny population of cranes has bred in a remote corner of England – the Broadland area of north-east Norfolk. Despite their natural appearance, the Broads owe their existence to our ancestors' need to dig for peat to burn as fuel. Today, these reed-fringed lakes have become a holiday destination for thousands of pleasure-boat owners and day-trippers.

Yet even during the noise and bustle of the summer season, a few
pairs of cranes have found an undisturbed spot to build their nests. Since 1981, they have raised at least four young, despite the ever-present threat from foxes, rats and, of course, humans.

For birds of their size, the Norfolk cranes have been remarkably successful at keeping out of sight. Their nesting-place remains a closely guarded secret, but during the winter months they can often be seen from the quiet road running along the coast. Their presence here during the winter is due to the relatively mild British climate, which enables them to forgo the risks of a long migration and to stay near their breeding grounds.

On a visit to Norfolk last month I came across the flock, now numbering nine birds, feeding along the edge of a ploughed field near the village of Waxham. With their elegant gait, steel-grey plumage and mass of curling tail-feathers, they looked more like Victorian ladies out for a Sunday-afternoon stroll than their mechanical namesake. They fed in a leisurely manner, bending their long necks to turn the soil in search of morsels of food to satisfy their omnivorous appetite.

It is hoped that eventually this small family flock might colonise other suitable areas and re-establish the crane as a British breeding bird. Stately and proud in the afternoon mist, the Norfolk cranes are true pioneers.

Millennium fever is upon us, and with it a glut of articles looking back over the past thousand years. My aim is more modest: to review some of the changes that have taken place in Britain's birdlife during the past century and to look ahead to what we can expect during the next.

At the start of the twentieth century, Britain's birdlife was, like the curate's egg, good in parts. Farmland birds generally thrived,
benefiting from the gradual replacement of forests by agricultural land during the previous millennium. The birds of woodland, wetland, moor and mountain weren't too badly off either, for the Industrial Revolution hadn't affected most rural habitats.

But one group of birds was in big trouble: birds of prey. Almost any kind of hawk, buzzard or eagle was shot, trapped or poisoned, in some cases virtually out of existence. By 1900 Red Kites were down to a handful of pairs, and even these were subject to what Max Nicholson described as ‘the Victorian leprosy of collecting'. Egg-collecting, known in pseudo-scientific circles as oology, had a very real effect on populations of rare breeding birds. It almost certainly hastened the extinction, in 1916, of our largest raptor, the magnificent White-tailed Eagle.

Later on in the twentieth century, raptors faced another hazard from pesticides such as DDT, which thinned their eggshells and led to catastrophic population declines. When I was growing up in south-west London during the 1970s, any bird of prey other than a Kestrel was a rare sight indeed.

Today, things are very different. Several species of raptor, including the Peregrine, Hobby and Sparrowhawk, are doing very well indeed. Others, such as the Red Kite, Osprey and Marsh Harrier, are still fairly localised, but much more common than they once were. I can still recall seeing Britain's last remaining pair of Marsh Harriers at Minsmere in 1973. Today there are more than a hundred pairs, breeding in suitable habitat all over southern Britain.

There have been other success stories, too, though some are less welcome than others. Introduced species, such as Canada Goose and Ruddy Duck, are doing very well in the absence of competitors, while native birds such as the Woodlark and Dartford Warbler are also thriving. Mild winters have helped the Wren displace the Blackbird and Chaffinch as our commonest bird, while the ample supply of food on waste-disposal sites has enabled several species of gull to spend the winter inland.

So what of the future? Have our farmland birds finally turned the corner, or will once widespread rural species such as the Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer continue their seemingly inevitable decline? Will seabirds such as the Arctic Tern and Kittiwake overcome food shortages, or will there be a sudden population collapse? Can the Red-backed Shrike and Wryneck come back from the brink and return to breed in our countryside?

In my view, by far the greatest threat facing our birdlife at the turn of the millennium is global warming. For some species, a warmer climate spells extinction, as habitats change irrevocably or disappear. For others, especially birds whose breeding ranges lie to the south, it offers an opportunity to colonise Britain and Ireland.

Early casualties are likely to include the Ptarmigan, whose arctic-alpine habitat looks set to disappear during the first half of the coming century. Others, such as the Snowy Owls that bred on Shetland during a spell of cooling during the 1960s and 1970s, have already gone.

At the other end of the country, birdwatchers have a more pleasing prospect to look forward to. Recent colonists such as the Little Egret and Cetti's Warbler will undoubtedly extend their ranges northwards, while future breeding species are likely to include Black Kite and Cattle Egret — both common on the near Continent. Meanwhile the aliens, such as Ring-necked Parakeet, should take advantage of mild winters and plentiful supplies of food to spread throughout southern Britain.

Before the First World War, when my grandmother was growing up in Devon, she recalled her father saying that a bird was calling out his name. Of course it couldn't manage his full name – Edgar George
Russell Snow – so it settled for a less formal greeting: ‘Snowy, Snowy, pay the rent, pay the rent!'

Almost a century later, even on this meagre evidence, I can identify the species my great-grandfather listened to all those years ago. That insistent, repetitive, rhythmic phrase could only belong to one bird: the Song Thrush.

Using a mnemonic to remember a particular call or song is one of the most enduring aspects of our long-standing relationship with birds. Even today, when I hear a Yellowhammer singing it's hard to resist calling back: ‘A little bit of bread and no cheeeese!' Pied Wagtails (at least those living in London) call out ‘Chis-ick'; and on spring evenings in the suburbs, thrushes tell little children to ‘Go to bed! Go to bed!'

Other birds quite literally call out their own name. Cuckoo, Chiffchaff and Kittiwake are perhaps the best-known examples of onomatopoeic bird names. In the Cuckoo's case this goes back at least as far as the thirteenth century, when the bird made an appearance in one of the first poems written in modern English: ‘Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu!'

Less obvious examples include the word finch. This comes from ‘spink', a local Norfolk name for the Chaffinch — a reference to the bird's call. Many of the crow family also bear names derived from their harsh calls, including Rook, Jackdaw and Chough (originally pronounced ‘chow', rather than ‘chuff'). Many people assume that the name of our largest wader, the Curlew, refers to its decurved bill, but it actually comes from the bird's evocative call.

With bird songs and calls so deeply imprinted on our minds, it is hardly surprising that composers have taken advantage of our familiarity with these natural sounds. A recent report claimed that a Mozart composition was inspired by, of all unlikely sources, the sound of the Starling. During the twentieth century, the French composer Messiaen drew inspiration from a wide range of birds, including the fluty song of the Woodlark.

Nor is the traffic purely one-way. Starlings themselves are masters
of mimicry, able to imitate car alarms, telephone bells and even snatches of song heard on a distant radio. Parrots, mynah birds and a whole host of other species have the ability to mimic pieces of classical and popular music.

Other birds have songs which bear an uncanny, though presumably unintentional, resemblance to well-known tunes. A recent correspondent to the
Guardian
letters page recalled hearing a bird singing the theme tune to the BBC's six o'clock news bulletin. But this was no case of slavish imitation – the bird and the listener were both thousands of miles away, in South Africa.

A couple of years ago, when I was in Kenya's Masai Mara, I had a similar experience. Each morning, as the sun rose over Governors' Paradise Camp, a bird would sing the first phrase of Morecambe and Wise's famous signature tune,
Bring Me Sunshine
. Each morning I would scan the forest canopy in the hope of catching a glimpse of this elusive songster, but without success.