The Year of 100 Birds – Week 4

Trio | Woodpecker | Knot | Braininess | Birdwatchers

Hello. Welcome. Thanks for being here.

Every week in 2025, as well as the regular Six Things posts, I’m writing about birds. If birds aren’t your thing, perhaps I can lure you into their evil world. And if no absolutely not, then you can always toggle your preferences so you only get what you want.

For those who stay, there will be:

– a bit about my birding activities that week

– micro-essays about two British birds

– a couple of news-y or science-y or otherwise of interest bits from elsewhere

I hope you enjoy it all.

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Trio of Tiny Excellence

I saw some birds this week. It happens.

There were the gulls, lined up on the ‘Fish & Chips’ sign like cabs at the rank. They know where the good stuff is. And they can read.

There was the cormorant, flying low low low over the water, then at the last possible moment, as if acting on impulse, spreading its wings and gliding up to its perch – no hesitation, no overshoot, every landing perfect – and just sitting there, beaky strangeness on a rocking buoy.

There were the jackdaws and rooks, tossed about by the wind, folding in on themselves as they rode the gusts, streaming up in a loose group, then turning and plummeting, the only motivation for it surely just the sheer thrill. Good time birds. If they weren’t saying ‘wheeeeee’ in their heads, I was saying it for them.

And then there were the long-tailed tits. Bumbarrels, mumruffins, floofy lollipops – whatever you like to call them – apparating by stealth in the foliage. One second you’re strolling through the little wood near the cliff, enjoying respite from the noise of the wind and allowing tranquility to settle on your shoulders, the next you’re surrounded by little noises.

Tsip. Tsip. Tsi-sip. Tschrr. Tsi-tsip.

The cutest ambush ever.

If there’s one thing better than suddenly being surrounded by long-tailed tits, it’s discovering there are goldcrests in there too. And if there’s one thing better than that, it’s when you’re trying to track the goldcrest’s constant flitting through the binoculars, and it’s evicted from view by a firecrest, its equally small, equally flitty cousin. Later in the year, their natural energy enhanced by the rising sap of spring, this encounter might turn into a furious territorial battle. But today there is solidarity, the flock collaborating in their forage, their togetherness giving protection against predators, each bird acting as a scout for the group.

Long-tailed tit, goldcrest, firecrest. A trio of tiny excellence, guaranteed to lift your day.

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Great Spotted Woodpecker

The long road to spring has many markers. Daffodils, rhubarb, chiffchaff, crocuses, celandine, wild garlic, sand martin. Each ticked off with quiet satisfaction as days lengthen and air warms.

The drumming of a woodpecker, as I mentioned last week, is a Great January Thing, often first heard on one of those bright crisp days that are positively begging you to go for a woodland walk.

The bird making the sound is – not to cast aspersions or anything – odd. Odd in the way of all birds – flying, feathered dinosaurs, three of the oddest qualities around – but also odd for a bird. The drumming is just one manifestation of this oddness.

Most birds sing; woodpeckers drum. (Karen Carpenter, of course, did both.)

Most birds have three toes pointing forwards and one backwards; woodpeckers go two-and-two, the better to grip vertical surfaces.

And don’t get me started on their tongues.

A bit of admin. There are 236 woodpecker species in the world. Of these, 11 are found in Europe, and four in Britain. Three of the four are residents: great spotted, lesser spotted, and green. (The fourth, the wryneck, is an occasional and much prized visitor – because it doesn’t excavate its own nesting hole, one field guide calls it “aberrant”, a description undeniably accurate but also, I find, slightly rude.)

Pleasingly for those who like completeness, there is also a middle spotted woodpecker, but while it can be found in several of our continental neighbours, no individual has ever been known to hop across the channel.

While its sparrow-sized cousin the lesser spotted woodpecker has suffered a disastrous decline in my lifetime – and particularly in the last ten years – the great spotted is flourishing as never before. It’s the most abundant and widespread woodpecker, the one you’re most likely to see. Black and white bird at the feeder? Great spotted woodpecker.

The dynamics of bird populations are difficult to track. Has the great spotted’s success come at the expense of its relative? Or is it a function of increased use of bird feeders from which they can supplement their diet, with reduced open woodland taking responsibility for the demise of the little one? Hard to tell. We can celebrate one while fervently hoping for a reversal of fortune for the other.

Out in the woods, that dddrrrrr pings across the canopy again. How uplifting a sound. A small bird playing percussion on a tree. A sign that spring is round the corner. It’s a long corner, for sure, with further kinks and bumps to negotiate. But for the moment we take that sound and hold it close.

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Red Knot

Not my photo. The work of J J Harrison.

I’m not much of a one for early mornings, an ingrained distaste that is, I admit, hard to square with a love of birds. My idea of a happy early morning involves snoozes, coffee and copious amounts of toast.

Birds have a different view.

When I do rouse myself, though, it’s always worth it. Particularly if Second Breakfast is involved. And never more so than when the period before Second Breakfast involves a close encounter with Calidris canutus.

The knot – or red knot, to give its proper name, although we in Britain don’t generally get to see the brick-red plumage from which it stems, that privilege being reserved for those who encounter them on their breeding grounds in the Arctic summer, whereas in Britain they’re seen either as passage migrants in spring or autumn, or most likely in large gatherings on tidal mud flats through the winter, where you might oh god this sentence has got totally out of control, hasn’t it? I’ll start again.

The knot is a stocky little bird. Short legs and short bill, all the better for scuttling around and probing in the mud for shellfish with, as is the habit of waders in the genus Calidris. That association with the water’s edge gives one common explanation for its name – knot, Cnut, Canute, geddit? Simpler and more persuasive is the idea that it’s onomatopoeic, arising from the bird’s call. Judge for yourself.

Whatever the origins of the name, these birds are the main reason I’m staring out across The Wash shortly after dawn, flexing my fingers to try and retain some feeling in them.

Extraordinary place, The Wash. On the edge of things. According to the rules of Nature Writing™, mention of The Wash must quickly be followed by use of the word ‘liminal’. A vast expanse of mud, home to hordes of squiggling invertebrates, and therefore a natural wintering home for migratory birds for whom squiggling invertebrates represent a captive all-you-can-eat buffet.

There are other birds too – the pink-footed geese rising in a sheet just after dawn are a spectacle in themselves. But throw in the knot and you have the stuff of dreams – bleary-eyed, frozen dreams.

You want to be there at the highest of tides. No room on the mud, so into the air they go. Thousands of them – in the 1990s, legend goes, the flock numbered up to 200,000 – flying round and out and up and over. A swirling, shimmering mass – “a low fumous stir” says Tim Dee – banking as one, tight knit, the sound as magical as the sight. Ssssssshhhhhhwwwwwhhhhheeeeeeeooooooosssshhhhhh.

But here I am yakking on about it, when I could just show you a film. What a sight. What a sound. What a thing.

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Braininess

Ever used the expression ‘bird brain’? Cease and desist.

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Birdwatchers

Thomas Winward, of Urban Nature Diary, made this entirely delightful film about birdwatching at his local. Walthamstow Wetlands.

The Birdwatchers