13th July.
A major problem with birds is that they won’t sit still. Just when you catch sight of one it flies away or hops about and pops behind a bunch of leaves while you try and focus your binoculars. I have set myself a new goal this year; to learn more about birds. Pursuing this latest nature quest I draw up in the car park of Lackford Lakes Nature Reserve and sit in my car waiting to hear an interview with Natalie Bennett against TTIP. A grey haired, suntanned man wearing a baseball cap rushes over. “ If you get out quickly we have a turtle dove in the ‘scope over there.” I can’t resist an invitation like that. Natalie can’t compete. After all I probably know what she had to say. I have been signing petitions against TTIP for some time.
The Turtle Dove is as beautiful as I could expect. Scaled brown and black wings, pink breast shading into bronze, black and white stripes across its neck, it sits preening itself on top of a dead tree. The precarious lives these birds live makes them rare now. Huge numbers are shot as they hazard the hunters of Cyprus and winter south of the Congo. Here sits a handsome male in Suffolk. I think of Passenger Pigeons which the settlers in America shot to extinction. There is a stuffed one in the museum at Norwich which I spent some time drawing for my final degree show. I hope Chris Packham’s campaign manages to save the Turtle Dove from the same fate. The bird takes off.
I join the anorak clad binocular laden attendees dribbling into the education room. Many of the group of nine know each other. The tanned man is Paul, our guide. While we enjoy our welcome cup of tea and bourbon biscuit he points out of the window. On a pale, dead branch emerging from a reed lined pond sits a kingfisher. Canoeing on the Dordogne one year , their jewel colours flashed as they skimming the surface but I have never been able to see one in Britain.
At exactly ten o’clock, Paul starts by explaining about bird moulting. Feathers are minor engineering miracles. When birds preen they are zipping up the rows of tiny hooks . They have to moult because feathers wear out but their diverse strategies are complicated. Species moult at different times and in different ways which makes bird identification even harder.
A week ago a small brown bird with a spotted breast landed on a garden chair below the bird feeder in my garden. I was puzzled. It looked like a robin but had no red breast. When I looked it up, the book said it was a juvenile robin. The next time I saw it the breast was turning orange and the speckles were disappearing. I recounted this to Paul who nodded sagely and said “Yes, it only takes them about three weeks to change. The adults are conditioned to attack everything with a red breast so the speckled plumage protects the juveniles.” I know robins are fiercely territorial. That is one of the reasons it is so easy to get to know individuals in our gardens. They might be less friendly if we wore red teeshirts.
The new feathers push out the old ones as they wear out. Swans, geese, ducks and rails shed so many feathers at the same time that they cannot fly. They lurk in groups at the edge of lakes, ready to dash into the greenery to hide if they have to avoid predators. Raptors take a different approach. They have to carry on flying to catch their food, so they lose their primary feathers symmetrically. You can’t have a wobbly hawk trying to swoop down on its dinner.
The Turtle Dove flies back and forth as we listen, distracting us from Paul’s descriptions of the intricacies of moulting. The more I hear, the more complex it sounds. Bewildered, I feebly voice my concerns “How I will ever know enough?” Paul smiles, his bronze face wrinkling “Just constant practice, that’s the only way to do it…there’s no substitute for looking acutely.” Gilbert White would have been proud of him.
We set off along the tracks into the reserve. The loud purring of the Turtle Dove follows us. Even if I see nothing else I’m happy. I have seen a Kingfisher and a Turtle Dove.