Birds, Volume 8

I should probably come up with something a bit more imaginative for these titles, shouldn’t I?

This is the eighth of the mid-weekly posts sent to all those on the Birds list. If birds aren’t your thing, and all you want is the weekly Six Things emails, you can unsubscribe from these posts by going to the manage your subscription page. But do have a read anyway – you might find that birds are, after all, your thing. And if they are especially your thing, you can upgrade for £4 a month to access the second half of these emails.

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EVENT KLAXON

On 21st March I’ll be giving an online talk to the Central London RSPB group. The subject is one that’s long fascinated me: Birdsong and Music. It’s free for members, but non-members can join for a small donation. Tickets here.

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Crossover

It’s coming. Soon. And when it’s here, doesn’t it just like to let us know? Shouting, swaggering, showing off.

“Here I am! Season No. 1! See me, hear me, SMELL ME.”

Spring – with a capital S.

Magnificent season, Spring. Of course it is. But while we know when it’s arrived, it doesn’t just burst in from nowhere. There’s a wealth of foreshadowing in these early weeks. And for those after something subtler than the full-on extravagance of Peak Spring, this is the good time. A time of crossover, full of signs and hints that the year, as it tends to, is moving on.

The most recent one manifested subtly. Not so much a sound as a shift in the air. An almost ambient noise to make you stop and listen and frown and listen again.

Ah yes. Redwings.

Not the thin ‘tseeee’ with which they announced their arrival from Scandinavia back in October – as eagerly anticipated a sound as the first ‘squeee’ of a swift in early May.

Not that, although it is always welcome. This is a light, fluttering babble from high in the canopy. Excited chatter, as of schoolchildren on an expedition.

They’re gathering.

It’s been a sparse year for redwings in this little corner of south London. In recent years I’ve come to expect a flock of thirty or so of these little thrushes, keeping me company on my winter walks round the cemetery – a cheering presence in drab times, more often than not announcing their presence only when flying away from me, always keeping their distance.

But this year the sightings have been few, the numbers down. Four here, six there. Just a smattering. It felt at times – and this is indicative of the egotism of the birder – like a personal slight.

And now, all of a sudden, at the end of their season, here they are. Ten, twenty, thirty – I lose count.

Their flight is distinctive, once you know. Starling-like, fleet of wing, a hasty flurry from grass to tree.

I greet them.

“Hello!”

Yes I talk to birds. You do, too. Admit it. And if you don’t, you should. It’s an entirely healthy thing.

“Hello!”

“chibbawubbatsibbledoobychuggamimblefluggachub”

“Good to see you all. Where the hell have you been anyway?”

“chabbajiggywuddaribblemuddergollazibbavudden”

They’ll slip away soon enough. They won’t even say goodbye. Just gone. Rude.

And in their place, another sign, pinging from a treetop near you.

Chiff. Chaff. Chiff. Chaff. Chiff. Chaff.

Simple soul, the chiffchaff. Sings its own name and not much else. Occasionally it throws in a ‘chuff’ just to mix things up a bit.

Chiff. Chaff. Chuff. Chiff. Chaff. Chiff. Chaff. Chuff.

And if you listen really hard you can hear the little inter-chiff chirrup, “like they’re keeping their engine turning over”, as Charlie from Shriek of the Week so perceptively puts it.

Fashion is fickle. Today, the chiffchaff’s song is the glorious harbinger of spring, a sound to lift the heart and nourish the soul. But weeks and months pass and the novelty wears off.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you get to hear a redwing and a chiffchaff on the same day. A seasonal incongruity, like a cricket match in the snow. A product of the in-between. So we celebrate this narrow time, the sliver of the year – neither late winter nor early spring, but also both – when the large rhythms of Earth’s cycle, that we all too often only dimly perceive, bring us two fine and contrasting things at once.

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Migration Maps

If you’re interested, as I am, in the mysterious rhythms of migration alluded to above, there are several resources at your disposal.

For the Americas, the Bird Migration Explorer is “your guide to the heroic annual journeys made by over 450 bird species”.

The Eurasian/African equivalent is the Migration Atlas, based on decades of ringing and satellite data.

There’s also the Eurobird portal, mapping journeys in real time based on observations by birdwatchers – although just at the moment this comes with the caveat that it’s undergoing a system update, so isn’t showing the most recent data.

Rabbitholes, all of them.

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Yellow-crested Helmetshrike

They found a bird! Careless of them to lose it in the first place, I reckon. But still. They found a bird!

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War and Peace and SOME Birds

“On page 1 there were no birds. On page 2 there were no birds. On page 3 there were no birds.”

In the first post of this ‘Birds’ series I made the outrageous and only partially researched claim that “there are no birds in War & Peace”.

Further research has proved me incorrect, and I duly apologise to Lev Nikolayevich for this heinous misrepresentation.

Here are the birds so far mentioned:

Page 73: “Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!”

Page 128: “She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve.”

Page 298: “Bullets flew hissing across the regiment and across Kutuzov’s suite like a flock of little birds.”

More as it comes in.

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Thanks for reading. That might well be quite enough bird talk for you. If it isn’t, here’s a short thing about technology and birding.

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