So be careful if you’re wanting this touch down to be in an unusual place – think about the other creatures that have lived there as well. I would personally recommend to anyone considering a touch down in this area that they go and have a look. They’ve got several interesting species of fish on the sandbanks around it, a couple of interesting reptiles and some interesting birds on the little offshore islands. They’ve got no less than six different species of whales and dolphins over in the Farne Islands, and the beach is one of only two places in the UK where you’ll find these incredibly beautiful Arctic Hares. They’ve got some of the same little grey snails that the Little Gannets feed on. And they’ve got an amazing variety of different insects, including many butterfly species that have rarely been seen in Britain before.
If you do decide to walk along to the lighthouse, then I hope that you find out something about the local species. And you can just have a look at the wildlife and not worry about your footprints as well.
A few days ago I was trying to explain to someone that the species of wild birds that we have in the UK are incredibly varied. They don’t all share similar habitat requirements, or similar food. There are huge numbers of birds that make their home in urban areas as well as in wild nature areas – there are quite a few species that have been around since the time of Roman occupation of these islands, and they’ve lived alongside us in Britain since long before the Common Era. This is something that people from other countries can struggle to understand, because it seems strange that we would have different bird species in our towns. Why would you have a House Sparrow and a Tree Sparrow? Why would you have all these different species of Robin? What are they doing in the city?
As an example, I was standing on the beach one morning with my colleagues. I had one bird in my hands – a Spotted Flycatcher. I turned to my colleague with this bird, and asked her if she’d been to see the Tree Sparrow in her garden. She was shocked at the suggestion that she might have seen a Tree Sparrow there. Then I told her that there were thousands of these birds in her town, and that they were called Robin Redbills – all this because of her interest in our birds of prey. What would have happened if I had told her a wild bird she would never see in her life – because it was the wrong type of bird for that habitat? It’s very sad but this is the nature of people’s lack of awareness of birds. We know that there are hundreds of different species in Britain, but we tend to know our birds of prey and our woodland birds and our urban birds and then we end up thinking we know the birds, when in fact we know nothing of their habits and their secrets.
We know that the Robin Redbills have been seen for as long as we’ve lived in Britain. They are found throughout the British Isles, and also in the southern European countries. Some of them migrate to Africa, to the Mediterranean and North Africa. That was one of the first species of bird we began to recognise, just as the Romans arrived. We know that a large number of our modern day birds came with the Romans; the blackbirds, cuckoos and woodpeckers are all associated with them. But they only stay here as long as their food is not disturbed. We saw that the Robin Redbills were becoming commoner in towns and cities as their food became scarce. We didn’t see many Tree Sparrows in town and we didn’t see many Spotted Flycatchers. But the Robin Redbills became more common than ever. And then there was the plague, in the Middle Ages, when many more people died – we think because of the plague. That’s when the Cuckoos got very common and the Robin Redbills were very common; they could survive in more towns than they could in the countryside. The Robin Redbills are still commonest today, but their food is now heavily disturbed by urban wildlife as well, and they are becoming less common in towns. If they were left alone by the humans they would probably be our most common species of birds in the towns.
As I’ve said before, you don’t have to go to the desert or the Amazon to find things you wouldn’t see on a birdwatching trip in Europe. You just have to spend time looking. You can look anywhere. As the light begins to fade around one of these islands, when the last of the summer people disappear, the winter birds begin to arrive. But there’s no such thing as a “winter bird” – even if you live in Scotland, they may well have arrived already and you could be picking up the last of the migrants on your doorstep before the next night.
You know, for instance, that in the northern hemisphere, there are three main periods when birds arrive to breed; it’s at exactly the same time in different parts of the world. And you know what they are. One is the middle of July, and they’re called the migrants. So here we would call them migrants, not migrants – it’s a word that’s now become attached to everything with wings. But it’s the word we use when a group of butterflies move here from wherever they are to breed and then go back again when their young are grown.
The third period is called “the birds”. But that doesn’t seem right to us, because they come in all types of bird, not just the ones we call “the birds”. They’re here all year round and they’re here at least five or six times in the course of the year – if you include the autumn migrants as well as the main spring.
Then there’s a long time after the birds have finished with Britain, when we begin to see more of them. Then they are called the “fowl”, after the fowl that came with us to Britain when we arrived from Europe.
And there’s a third term in the mix – “the plover” – but this doesn’t really apply to all of Britain. Only a small proportion of our birds are plovers, though I suppose you could say that the plovers are all the birds that live at your doorstep. This means that if a young person has the words “the plover” in his or her pocket as a phone or a computer dictionary, the first thing he or she will think of is the term for a bird that people would describe as a “plover”. We know there’s more than one bird that might be described as a plover, though, so you have to be careful when you come across such a name. You have to understand the context of the usage, rather than simply understand the name.
It’s all quite complicated, but it’s something to remember for when you’re out looking for birds. When you’ve got a certain question in your head, and you’ve had no success in coming up with the name you’re looking for, you’ve got to consider what your context is. If you have a book, and you know what it is that you are looking for, and you go out to look for that bird – but it’s the wrong context, or your usage is wrong – you may well see the same thing but call it something different.
If you see the young red kite in the distance with its two parents – well I shouldn’t call them parents – you can think that they must be parents of the birds you see. So you want to look at the Red Kite, and so you do that. But if you walk through the trees with your head down, you may well be able to tell that they are not the parent of those smaller birds; that would be the female. That might be a female Yellow-legged Gull, but she’s not the parent of these birds, she’s just visiting. I’ve never known anyone call them “the parents” when they see them together; I’ve never even heard anyone say “the parents” in this context. This sort of behaviour is quite common in birds. If you see a group of birds and you know they are parents, then it can be a great advantage to be able to tell the differences between them. You may well see the same thing again; when you do, you should think about what the context is.
What’s more, this sort of thing can be a great help with a lot of other things – if you want to learn a great deal about what these birds are doing, then simply watching them over a period of time is a great help. By watching them, you learn their ways, and can become a lot more comfortable with what they’re doing. This is especially the case if you watch these birds in the winter, when they tend to stay around this side of the Channel.
So be curious and be observant of what is around you, and when you see birds coming back to the area – from somewhere, somewhere else, don’t give them a name until
