This Birding Life (5 page)

It was Mick Lane who suggested it. Mick Lane, the biggest boy in the fourth year, the captain of the rugby team, the undisputed British Bulldog champion. ‘Why don't we go birdwatching?' As recollections of teenage life go, this isn't quite in the same league as ‘why don't we bunk off school and go to a twenty-four-hour rave?' Then again, we didn't really go in for that sort of thing. So in the Whitsun half-term, Mick, Daniel and I packed our bags and set off for Stodmarsh, in east Kent.

It was my first real experience of birdwatching in spring, and I was, to put it bluntly, gobsmacked. Reed and Sedge Warblers were everywhere we looked. Whitethroats sang from any available perch, swaying in the breeze. And every few minutes, a Cuckoo flew past.

It's probably nostalgia that creates this rose-tinted picture of delight. But one bird will stay in my memory until I finally hang up my binoculars. A Little Bittern. Not a ‘little Bittern', but a Little Bittern: the Bittern's rare and elusive southern European relative.

The day was Sunday, 25 May, and it was a scorcher. By lunchtime, my stomach was in a state of open rebellion. Daniel and Mick seemed happy to survive on the bowl of cornflakes we'd had for breakfast, but I wasn't. They put up with my whingeing for a while, and then gave in, so we walked back to the pub. Following in that great British tradition, in those days the Red Lion stopped serving food at 1.30 on a Sunday afternoon. We made do with a couple of packets of beef and onion crisps, and a lemonade. As we wandered back, we weren't in the best of moods. Then, we met a man with the look of someone with urgent news to impart.

‘I've just seen a male Little Bittern,' he gasped. So did we. We'd just missed the bird of a lifetime. And it was my fault – or at least, my stomach's…

But the great thing about Stodmarsh is that you can only go in two directions, unless you want to get your feet wet. So we strode forward along the footpath. I was just beginning to have my doubts when I noticed a bird flying alongside, low above the reeds, with trailing legs, yellow underparts and huge, pink wing-patches.

I can't even begin to describe the feeling as I watched my first Little Bittern passing by in the afternoon sun. What a bird! It stayed another two days, during which we got another couple of fleeting views, as it briefly rose from the reeds, before plunging back out of sight.

The next afternoon our peace of mind was disturbed by a manic figure carrying a battered pair of binoculars. At first he couldn't speak, having run all the way from the car park. Fighting for breath, he managed to gasp a question: ‘Did … Did … Didn't you ring anybody? Don't you know anyone on the grapevine?'

We didn't, and hadn't. We were blissfully unaware that such a shady organisation, by which news of a rare bird was spread among Britain's twitchers, even existed. There's a word for it now – suppression – one of the deadliest sins a birdwatcher can commit. But we hadn't suppressed the Little Bittern – we just hadn't got any two-pence pieces for the phone. Eventually our interrogator calmed down, and settled down to wait for the bird's appearance. But despite sleeping out overnight, he never did get to see it.

Two decades later, part of me is sad that the Little Bittern remains a very rare bird in Britain. But less charitably, I rub my hands with glee at the thought of all those twitchers who still haven't got it on their British list.

It remains one of the greatest moments in my birdwatching life, and it probably always will. Like Cup Finals and Wimbledon, ice cream and summer holidays, some things are never quite as good as when you were 15 years old …

By the time I left Cambridge University in the summer of 1982, I'd more or less given up watching birds. Along with stamp-collecting and kicking a football about in the park, I suppose I felt it belonged with childhood pastimes and should now be left behind.

After graduating with a mediocre degree in English Literature, I felt I deserved a holiday, but everyone else was either working or broke. So I decided to give the birds one last try, and headed north to the Shetland Isles. For those of you who think that Shetland is stuck in a box somewhere off Aberdeen, let me put you straight. The island of Unst – the northernmost inhabited place in the British Isles – is as far from London as Prague, and a great deal harder to reach.

The cheapest (though certainly not the quickest) route involved taking the train to Aberdeen, followed by an overnight boat to the islands' main town of Lerwick. I chose not to pay extra for a cabin, so at 6 a.m. I awoke to a cricked neck and the sound of the ship's engine slowing down. I dragged myself up on deck to find that we were passing through a tunnel of rock, between two dark, forbidding crags. I had finally arrived.

I took the bus north, as the only passenger. For the first time I saw the beauty of Shetland: stark, windswept, treeless – and full of birding promise. Two hours later, I reached the village of Baltasound.

I don't know what I'd been expecting – perhaps an ancient croft, with Mrs McMiggins standing at the gate to welcome me with a hot toddy and an open fire. What I actually found was a three-bedroom semi, uncannily like the one I'd grown up in, but with better wind-proofing. Inside, one perfectly normal family, sitting round the gas fire (the weather can be treacherous in Shetland, even in July).

Next morning, I set off for the legendary seabird colony of Hermaness. Generally, when you visit one of Britain's best-known bird sites at the
height of the season, you come across fellow birders. But for six hours I didn't meet a soul. For someone who, having been brought up in London, used to get nervous on a half-empty bus, this was seriously remote.

As I wandered across the open country, I felt a rush of air past my head. It was a Great Skua, whose breeding territory I had inadvertently entered, engaging in behaviour quaintly known as ‘mobbing'. I now know that the best antidote is to raise a stick above your head to provide a focus for the skua's attack. But not having brought a stick or any other long, hard implement, I did the next best thing and ducked.

The bird swept past – close enough for me to feel a brief flurry of wings. I turned away, feeling remarkably calm. But coming towards me out of the sun was an Arctic Skua, whose streamlined shape and manoeuvrability are to its larger relative what a Phantom jet is to a Wellington bomber.

I did what any self-respecting birdwatcher would do. I ran. Fortunately I stopped before I got to the cliff edge, where I collapsed in a shuddering heap. Before I could get my breath back, I took in the awesome sight. The sky was filled with thousands and thousands of Gannets. As well as being one of the experiences of a lifetime, this also presented me with a problem. Somewhere among the wheeling throng was a unique bird: Albert, the only albatross in the northern hemisphere (Albert Ross – get it?).

I never did get to see Albert. He was supposed to be perched on the cliff-face, guarding a nesting-site in the hope that a passing Alberta would come by. Despite searching for an hour or more, I just couldn't see him and reluctantly turned for home.

The day didn't end quite as well as it had begun. I sat with the McMiggins clan, watching England play an uninspiring 0–0 draw with Spain, which put them out of the 1982 World Cup. The only comfort was that Scotland had been knocked out, as usual, in the first round. But despite missing out on the albatross, the combination of beautiful scenery, thousands of Gannets and a skua attack had fortunately convinced me that birding was something I still wanted to do.

1983–1997

H
aving decided that birdwatching was not just a passing phase, but something I wanted to do throughout my adult life, I spent much of the 1980s drifting aimlessly around Britain in search of new birds to add to my ‘British List'.

Looking back, it is hard to recall just how insular and parochial the pastime of watching birds was in those days. Birdwatchers (not yet transformed into ‘birders') were either solitary individuals or went around in tight cliques, rebuffing any approach from an outsider. My lack of nostalgic reminiscences from that decade reflects my sense of isolation and also that my new job as a television producer with the BBC and a young family were taking up much of my time.

I don't miss the 1980s, but as the 1990s got under way things took a turn for the better. On a rare foreign trip to Israel in 1989 I met an
amiable chap called Neil, who lived a few miles around the M25 from me. As often happens, we swapped addresses but never quite got around to getting in touch. Coincidentally, the following year we bumped into each other on a seabird-watching trip out of Penzance, and decided to team up. Since then we have enjoyed many memorable birding experiences together and have become great friends.

Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place in 1995 when, after more than a decade trying, I finally persuaded the BBC to commission a series on birdwatching, with me as the producer.
Birding with Bill Oddie
was not only a critical and ratings success, it also changed my life. From then on, my lifetime's passion was also my job, and although I initially had some misgivings about these two areas of my life converging, I was proved wrong.

Working with Bill for the past decade has been a privilege and a pleasure. As this and subsequent chapters reveal, we have been fortunate to travel all over Britain – and indeed much of the world – in search of birds. To paraphrase a recent advertising campaign: ‘If Carlsberg made jobs, mine would probably be the best in the world.'