The Year of 100 Birds – Week 5

Clarence | Song Thrush | Greenfinch | Albatross | Sounds

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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Clarence

I saw some birds this week. Not many, but some.

There was a cormorant – strictly out of bounds – flying high over West Norwood cemetery. It’s the second cormorant I’ve ever seen flying over West Norwood (and it’s not for want of trying, let me tell you). The first was – and I swear this is true – exactly five years ago. Pretty much to the hour. I don’t know what to make of this.

I know I saw cormorant no. 1 five years ago because I recorded the occasion in the first chapter of Light Rains Sometimes Fall. Allow me, if you will, this brief foray into self-publicity.

Light Rains Sometimes Fall is the story of a single year on my local patch, as seen through the prism of seventy-two microseasons: five-day periods (occasionally six), each given its own name according to one of its predominant features. This current one, for example – 4th to 8th February – I called “Clear Light Shines Through Mist”. The next one, starting on 9th February, was called “Dunnock Song Defies Traffic Noise”. You get the idea.

The calendar’s year starts halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox. Right now, in fact. So – and no doubt you’re way ahead of me, acutely alive to the audacious marketing scheme being deployed right under your very noses – now would be an excellent time to start reading it. A chapter every five days – what could be simpler?

You can buy signed copies of Light Rains Sometimes Fall here. I’m afraid, because of everything, I’m no longer able to send outside the UK. I gather, however, that Blackwell’s have excellent overseas shipping options.

Right, on with the birds.

Shortly after cormorant no. 2. There was a great tit. I don’t know what number it was. faraway look comes into eyes. I’ve seen a lot of great tits in my time. After a while, you kinda start to lose count. rueful shake of head

Anyway, this great tit. Shouting, it was. Absolutely hollering, the hooligan. I told it to pipe down – of course I did – and it said you what and I said you heard and it said come here and say that and I said what do you mean come here I’m already here and then his friend, another great tit sitting on a nearby branch, said leave it Clarence he’s not worth it and I said Clarence? What kind of name is that for a great tit? And Clarence said it’s my name, want to make something of it, so I left, because honestly there are better things to do with your life than argue with great tits called Clarence.

On the way home, perched on the off-season pedalos in Crystal Palace Park, there were 71 black-headed gulls.

I didn’t stop to ask their names. Somehow I didn’t feel like it.

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Song Thrush

That's the wise thrush

Ooh good. I like wise things. Wise is good.

He sings each song twice over

Umm… not to be that guy, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me. Just annoying. And quite rude, frankly. Imagine if we all did that. Imagine if we all did that.

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

No mate. HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME. Now off you pop.

I will say this for Browning, though. While the poem itself is a bit Fotherington-Tomas for my tastes – Hullo clouds Hullo sky Hullo blossoms and dewdrops at the bent spray’s edge – “he sings each song twice over” is a decent mnemonic to help you identify the song of a song thrush. And a couple of minutes listening to one, repetitions and all, only confirm that whoever came up with the name back in the day was right on the money. It’s definitely a thrush – the 192-strong family whose scientific name, Turdidae, would be the subject of much childish glee if more people knew about it – and it undeniably sings.

It’s a fine sound. I don’t think there’s any argument about that. Confident, certain, the voice of a bird that knows what it wants to say, and isn’t afraid to repeat it to get the message across.

This confidence is mirrored in the song thrush’s feeding habits.

There are those who talk of the beauty of nature, its calming effects, its general fluffiness and cosydom. Spend a few minutes in nature and feel the benefit. Nature, we’re supposed to believe, is life’s panacea.

I am, in general, on board with this concept. Nature has, in its own quiet, beguiling way, changed my life. And I will always trumpet its ability to soothe the human soul.

And then I see a song thrush with a snail.

A snail has sensibly equipped itself with a protective exoskeleton – a hard, strong, layered formation of complex calcareous proteins, all the better to ensure the safety of its squidgy body.

The song thrush cares not one whit for the complexity of molluscal shell formation. All it knows is that snails make tasty and nutritious meals. It also has an innate appreciation for the fundamental law of physics, which – and I am, you understand, paraphrasing – states that if you hit a hard thing against a harder thing with enough force you will smash it.

It’s quite a sight. And once they get on a roll, no snail is safe. Occasionally you might come across a scene, a patch of shattered shell, the kind of thing that should have police tape round it. This is, we admit, not particularly uplifting for the squeamish molluscophile. Gardeners, on the other hand, will look on and cheer.

So that’s the song thrush. A stocky bundle of streaky excellence. Gardens and parks are their prime milieu, and now’s a good time to start listening out for them. Short phrases, repeated. I SAID SHORT PHRASES, REPEATED.

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Greenfinch

I love greenfinches.

I love their chatty song, often given from the top of a tree. A mixture of twittering trills, squeaks, tweaks and pings, rounded off with its trademark zuzzing snore.

I love their chunky bill – not the ridiculous disproportionate nut-crusher wielded by a hawfinch (although that too is marvellous in its own way), just stout and proud.

I love their… greenness. Subtler than the brash bright green of a parakeet, more nuanced than the drab olives of all those warblery types, tinged with little yellow moments to catch the eye, and definitely rewarding of closer inspection.

And I would love to be able to leave it there. Greenfinches are wonderful. THE END.

But I can’t. Because they’re an example of an all too familiar story, applicable to dozens of British birds, hundreds worldwide.

“Once abundant and widespread, [SPECIES] has suffered a serious decline in the last forty years.”

On this occasion, [SPECIES] is greenfinch.

Just to put some flesh on the words “serious decline”, the British Trust for Ornithology’s survey showed a 69% decrease in the greenfinch’s numbers in the UK between 1967 and 2022. Pretty devastating. The slightly good news is that there seems to have been a recent revival, albeit a small one.

If you’re like me, reading of any bird’s decline, the words “why though” might have sprung unbidden to your lips. As always, the answer is a mixture of straightforward (human activity, to put it bluntly), complex (some birds decline while others don’t), and “we don’t quite know”. But at least some of the blame might be apportioned to bird feeders – for many, a counterintuitive connection.

Bird feeders have come a long way since 1825, when John Freeman Millward Dovaston proposed his ornithotrophe, a modified trough (“trophe“ – “trough”, geddit?) to be filled with whatever scraps were to hand, and equipped with perches from which the birds could make their feeding forays. By the early 20th century there were new developments, including the “food bell” and “food house”, both proposed by Martin Hieseman in his 1908 book How To Attract and Protect Wild Birds, and both of which would be recognisable to modern bird lovers. The full-on commercialisation of bird feeding kicked off during the 1960s, and nowadays approximately half of UK households engage in the practice. It’s widely regarded as an act of kindness to the birds, and gives pleasure to many humans – partly because watching birds brings pleasure, and partly because it makes us feel we’re “doing our bit for wildlife.”

Unfortunately, the dread words “I think you’ll find it’s more nuanced than that” are at this moment adopting a combative posture and heaving into view. Because, well, it’s more nuanced than that. One problem is that by feeding birds we inevitably interfere with their natural lives, and this can have an impact on their communities, with complex knock-on effects. You might indeed be helping that individual great tit get through the day, but that’s just one bird – the wider impacts can be difficult to measure. One example is the suggestion that the success of blue and great tits in recent years has at least in part been at the expense of their cousins, the willow and marsh tits, with supplementary feeding potentially implicated. (NB the words “suggestion” and “potentially” – like I said, complexity and nuance, with no established link as yet).

A more provable side effect of bird feeding comes in the form of a microscopic parasite called Trichomonas gallinae, the cause of the disease Trichomonosis. Not much fun, Trichomonosis. Symptoms include lethargy, difficulty swallowing, laboured breathing and, in some cases, death. It’s commonly passed on at bird feeders, and one of the most badly affected species is the greenfinch.

This sad decline isn’t irreversible, and information campaigns highlighting the importance of regular cleaning of feeders seem to be having some effect. But the story of the greenfinch only emphasises the difficulties and complexities of modern conservation. Thousands of people – millions, perhaps –trying to do the right thing, but unwittingly contributing to the demise of a species.

Sometimes the saddest of words are these: “please bear in mind that we meant well”.

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Further reading (and the source of much of the above information): Mike Toms – Garden Birds

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Albatross chick

Please take a minute to watch this scene of wholesome floofiness – an albatross chick being returned to its father (they incubate the eggs until after hatching to protect them against infestation by fly larvae). The parents will now take it in turns to take care of the chick for the next five or six weeks, then will leave it to its own devices except for feeding visits until it fully fledges at the age of about eight months.

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Sounds

This compilation by the Cornell Lab of their favourite recent bird sounds gave me pleasure – I hope it has the same effect on you.