Flight Path

Last October we bought a bird feeder, one of those clear tubes you fill with tasty morsels which dispense onto a saucer at the bottom. There are four wire perches hang around the edge so the birds have somewhere to hang on while they peck away. Apart from magpies of course, they’re too big to land on the perches, and instead glare frustratedly at the seeds as a child might gaze through the window of a closed sweet shop. Except a child wouldn’t be doing that from on top of a satellite dish.

The bird feeder was a miserable failure. Nothing came, not even a boring sparrow or two. The feeder was full, swinging in plain sight, beckoning to the local London avian population and open all hours as autumn turned into winter and the daylight faded earlier and earlier each day. Despite the onset of the cold and dark the birds totally ignored it.

Well, to be honest, a magpie did discover it, and tried in vain to find a way to access the seeds in the saucer, but magpies can’t hover, and as mentioned, their size precludes them from bird feeders such as ours. I took pity and chucked some seed onto the balcony’s fake grass, for which it seemed cautiously grateful.

An upstart crow

I’m not a bird-watcher particularly, never really understood the appeal of twitching and how it excites people like Bill Oddie and Bill Bailey, and probably many other less-famous Bills. But once we’d put the feeder up I desperately wanted to see it used; the magpie didn’t count. And then I realised, maybe we don’t have many birds locally in St. Ockwell. I began to view our local environment with a critical eye, and it dawned on me with a sinking heart that there are bugger-all birds in our neighbourhood; and if they are there they're all lesser-spotted.

Oh yes, there are seagulls and pigeons, and of course crows, but none of them can deftly land on the perches of our bird feeder either. I wanted tits, for example. Yes I know, snigger, snigger. How juvenile can you get. Bird watching is a ripe field for smut and innuendo, what with great tits, shags and boobies to entertain you. But if that’s what makes you giggle then you’re a right little bustard. I’d rather be a bird watcher than a word botcher. (See what I did there?)

Great Tit  (oh behave!)

No, the thing is, we don’t exactly live in the Forest of Stockwell; there’s a paucity of trees around our little pied-à-terre. If I look out from the balcony where the bird feeder is I can count exactly two-and-a-half trees, the half being more of an overgrown shrub with tree-aspirations – a Wannabe Tree. The majority of things flying overhead are Boeings and Airbuses, being as we are on the flight path to Heathrow.  Yet if I walk literally round a couple of corners into the posh part I am in tree-lined Georgian streets, with gardens that have trees in them also. That, I’m guessing, is where the birds are. I would be if I had feathers. Or loads of money.

All I needed was one bird, just one, to discover our bird feeder, and then it could go and spread the word. They would come in their thousands, or at least maybe a handful from the classy streets, I hoped. And then one day it happened; a sparrow called, grabbed a mouthful and flew off. Some days after, an indeterminate slim thing with a grey cap perched for a few seconds, and then – hallelujah – a great tit gorged itself before taking off in a blur of black and yellow. I know it was a great tit because I had my camera to hand, ready to capture any avian visitors, plus we have the RSPB’s guide book on the bookshelf. Definitely a great tit.

Need I tell you?

Since then word has indeed got around, and now almost every morning there’s a parade of sparrows,

a robin, the great tit (it always seems to be the same one)and – still feeding off the fake grass pickings – the magpie. They each make multiple visits. I am resisting naming them for fear of becoming boring, but tentatively they’re all called Bill.

To top that off, I got up in the middle of the night recently, thinking it must be close to dawn because I could hear a bird singing. Assuming this was the overture to the dawn chorus (or, in our neighbourhood, more of a dawn squawk) I didn’t pay much attention until I discovered it was only 2am. I’ve heard the bird on other nights too, and I now believe it to be a nightingale – there was magic abroad in the air. (I know what one sounds like because I had a close encounter with a nightingale at 11 o’clock one summer’s evening on a French canal, and here’s the recording to prove it.) Anyway, if one can sing in Berkeley Square, why can’t another croon on a council housing estate?

So now every morning at breakfast I sit on the couch twitching. I’m hoping more and different birds will come, as I’m propped there with camera in one hand, RSPB book in the other. I’m still not a serious bird watcher. Honestly. I’m only doing it for a lark.