Oystercatchers at Middle Beach

A dozen birds potter on the shoreline. Their piercing calls give them away, as a group of five split off and fly over the water towards the carpark and dunes behind the beach. The others stay put. One stands upright, his rusty feet leaving impressions on a carpet of damp seaweed, cushioning the boulder that raises him up above the water. If it wasn’t for the white feathers on his belly reflecting from the sea, it would be difficult to spot his black shape in the shadows of the cliff. The waves lose their force by the time they lap at the base of the rock, but they’re enough to make him teeter backwards when the bubbles come towards him. Their feet can stand the cold water, but it’s winter and it’s chilly, even on the south coast.


More of his companions take to the air, on the same route as the first flock, but he stays behind with one other bird. He peers at her, but she pays no attention, not yet ready to depart. The rocks are sheltered at the end of the beach, where trees lean over to watch them feed from above. The high tide forms a slither of calm, cutting them off from the hubbub of half term children, the sand and the café. The oystercatcher isn’t on holiday, he’s a resident, and humans trampling his lunch spots make it harder to have a good meal. He probes at the ground with his beak, trying several places before he finds what he’s looking for. The cold morning breeze is starting to pick up causing the rockpool to ripple. His feathers react excitedly.


A cue, imperceptible to me, causes him to leave. Perhaps an offensive splash, perhaps fed up of the early chiff-chaff’s chatter, or perhaps he just has somewhere else to be. His friend follows suit, smart black and white wings cutting through the milky sky, orange beaks ‘meeping’ their way over oblivious humans.

Puffin on the Edge

Spreading his wings to stabilise himself, the persistent wind tries to prise their bold black tips from the cliff-face. Wrenching grass from the ledge on this sheer drop, the gannet collects precious nesting material.

For another, it’s time to go. Pushing off from the rock, wings spread, she seems to have no fear of falling as she slides through the snowstorm of seabirds without hitting a drop.

The puffin perches nearby. Her wings must beat 400 times per minute to fly. Goodness knows how she got up here, but here she stands in her orange wellies. Her nearest companions are two razorbills who converse loudly, seeming not to have noticed her. With no other puffins to chat with, she calmly surveys the ruckus, preening a silky black wing with her striking beak.

A less respectful razorbill flies up to land on her narrow ledge. Her five minutes of peace are over, and she launches down into the wind, as the newcomer makes himself at home.

A slightly larger puffin spots a friend on an exposed outcrop and decides to join them. Waddle, waddle, hop. Over the shrubbery. He stabilises himself above her and they both look out to sea. She leans forward, just a fraction, then springboards away from the cliff-city. Flap, flap, flapping over the waves. Unperturbed, he stays where he is. His colourful beak stands out amongst the razorbills. In a few minutes she returns, landing with her feet flat against the rock. It was a lot of effort just to land a little higher up, but her flat feet aren’t well designed for scaling a cliff face.

Happier now with her position, she begins to preen. Head nuzzling under her wing, she curves her neck impossibly back to reach her tail feathers. She raises her wings up and gives them a quick shake before resuming the plump puffin on a rock position. It suits her well, and there she stays as a squadron of gannets flies past the abandoned site of RAF Bempton.

Chiffchaff

The path is empty as I leave the village. Walking away from ‘the virus’, socially distancing myself, searching for the sanity of nature.

Great tits cover feeders, undisturbed by visitors in the carless castle carpark. Standing in the stillness, I breathe. Surrounded by branches draped in lime lichens, anxiety sinks into the mud with my boots.

“Chiff chaff, chiff chaff, chiff chaff!”

There it is! The world stops as spring completes its arrival. No matter that crinkled leaves still cling to the stubborn oak, unbothered by our increasingly mild winters. I catch a glimpse of the bird in question as its silhouette flits above. Its needlepoint beak stands out against the steamy sky. It leaves me here alone. The year is moving on.

As first published in: Writes of Spring

I will Definitely go for a Walk Tomorrow...

‘If I can just get to my days off, then I can get out and go for a walk.’

This is the lie I’ve been telling myself for several days. Each morning, rattling my way to work with an ever-increasing grumble from the driver’s side rear wheel, I’ve been one day closer to the weekend. The myth that keeps up its pretence is that once I reach these magical days off everything else on the to-do list will disappear and I can spend 48 unadulterated hours roaming in the countryside and writing the next nature writing masterpiece. I’ve always been an optimist.

This morning came without much warning. I was asleep, and then I wasn’t. The clock was ticking before my brain had caught up with my slowly focussing vision, and had a chance to re-join the real world in action. It was already starting to slip by, this precious and mysterious entity.

I thought it wouldn’t hurt to read a little before I got up. It would surely inspire me for my own work. I read for longer than I should have, and half the morning was no longer there. There was still plenty of time to go for a walk though, so I gathered up a bundle of orange, reds and black fabric and stuffed my work uniform into the washing machine. It wouldn’t hurt to clean the bathroom before I went out, so I did that too. Cleaning was thirsty work, so the kettle went on, emails were checked, and before I knew it lunchtime had arrived, expectantly.

One cheese sandwich later and rain lashed the windows, blurring my view of the outside world. It seemed like a good time to do a supermarket run. It would be sunny again by the time I got home, and I could finally put on my boots and get into nature.

As I rounded the first corner, my car reminded me it wasn’t happy. The creaking, clunky rattle from the back of the car couldn’t be heard any more. This would have been a good thing, if it wasn’t for the fact that the little Toyota was now roaring in pain as it produced a noise usually reserved for airport runways.

Having run out of cheese in the house, I insisted it got to the shop and back. Then made my jeans soggy as I knelt to inspect the damage in the rain. The exhaust pipe was now dangling in a theatrical manner and clearly needed attention from someone who knew what they were doing. The garage man said I could bring it straight over, so off we went.

As I caught a lift back home, the sun was preparing to go back to bed, as were the starlings flocking over the A351. They swirled and turned back on themselves, before lifting up and away from the roundabout, almost vanishing as they danced against the darkening sky. I’m sure that most of the rush-hour drivers in the drizzle wouldn’t have even noticed.

I will definitely go for a walk tomorrow.

Robin Stalking

Whilst standing in the centre of Gabalfa Roundabout at 01:30 am, in the freezing cold, waiting to hear if an insomniac blue tit would respond to our bird-impersonating calls, I momentarily envied humanities students. Actually, I envied anyone on the planet who was tucked up in bed, sat in a pub, drinking tea, or doing anything slightly sane or warm.

The thirteen other people, standing silently whilst listening to pre-recorded blackbird sounds, looked like they might be thinking similar things at Cosmeston Lakes two hours later.

We weren't completely bonkers though, we were testing out the perfectly reasonable idea that some birds will respond to simulated intruders in their territory, even at night-time. Some researchers (Fuller et al., 2007, spring to mind) have looked into the possibility that noise pollution in the daytime is causing robins to sing at night. There's also the possibility that street lighting in urban areas confuses their body clocks.

We tested out a few things to see if four species of songbird were more or less likely to sing at night in different areas, with various degrees of light and noise pollution. It looks like robins and blackbids are quite prepared to sing at night, whilst great tits and blue tits are somewhat reluctant to wake up from a good night's kip. The light pollution verses noise pollution debate still rumbles on and is causing one of my current coursework headaches.

Insights into animal behaviour aside, the 'moment of the evening' was at approximately half past midnight, outside The Woodville pub. Fourteen people were silently stood, dressed in woolly hats and welly boots, in a circle, with red-light head torches focussed on an enormous megaphone-shaped speaker playing bird noises at quite a loud volume. We were already feeling quite conscious of strange looks from passers-by, but it was impossible not to break the silence with a giggle when a group of students returning from the pub stopped to ask our lecturer if we were performing a ritual as part of a satanic cult.

For the record: We weren't.

30 MAY 09

We spent a week doing hardcore, statistical computerisation with our supervisor who flew out from the United Kingdom. It was a busy week at the centre, with our boss, the orangutan man and a friend from Kota Kinabalu also being present, as well as two zoo keepers from America! Despite my fear of numbers I surprised myself by surviving the intensive few days, and came away with what I hope to be an understanding of how to go about working with this orangutan data. I have to keep specifying 'orangutan data' to remind me why I'm doing it! Our supervisor is also 'a bird man', which was rather nice as we could spend two mornings netting and ringing birds. We caught several that had been ringed last year on the field course, so it was satisfying to know that at least some of our feathered friends are just as alive and well (and stupid/blind) as they were last year!

We drove the boat to deposit both our supervisor and Joao at Batu Putih. I can't begin to understand where the last three months have gone, but Joao (aka Spoonface, the Portuguese volunteer) has reached the end of his time here with us and has disappeared back to Portugal. Chloe and I had great intentions to pick up some Portuguese whilst he was here, but this sentence is all I can muster:
'Eu gosto de macacos, de vinho e de queijo'
which translates as 'I like monkeys, wine and cheese'.
Although we haven't exactly mastered the language, I feel this is a good start and am now confident that I could go to Lisbon and not go hungry or thirsty, and if I'm lucky I may find someone who also likes monkeys...