I didn’t get into birdwatching until my late twenties when, shamed to realise I didn’t know the name of a small blue and yellow bird in the garden, I bought a field guide, learned much of it by heart, and took to Birdland. Over the years the zeal has worn off a bit. These days the binoculars still come with me, but I don’t keep a birdwatching diary, don’t get into the car for a rare migrant alert, and tend not to sit in a hide for more than ten minutes at a time. I’m beginning to forget the identification tics, or even the names, of some of the rarer species.
My distance from the tribe of twitchers was brought home when I got in touch with a birding group based on a reserve in the London area. A talk on the Keartons was in the offing, and a committee member gave me a date to come over to discuss it. It turned out that this was the day of the bird count, when teams traverse the reserve recording species and numbers. I was assigned to the committee member’s team, and got off to a bad start when he asked me to identify a bird from its song. Loud, clear, pure, very fast, and coming from low down… Not quite a robin… I’ve nearly got it…
“Don’t know? It’s a wren”.
Damn. After that I traipsed along a little behind the group, although things picked up when we all identified a green woodpecker (easy) more or less at the same time, and a lovely experience when we stood on a footbridge over a sunken waterway, and a kingfisher flew directly beneath our feet, bringing us together with a collective “Wow!”
But then came the moment when we were trying to pick out a whitethroat singing from a distant bush, and I looked around and saw two large, bright-white birds about the size of pillowcases, flying towards a break in the trees. I needed to alert the others, but could hardly call out “Look! A pair of whatsthenameagains!” I improvised a strategy of a too-excited-for-words bark, and a wildly pointing gesture, the delay meaning that by the time the group had swung round the lower of the birds had disappeared.
“Egret! Good one!”
“Yes”, I said, “there were two, the other just went behind the trees”.
The glee fell from the committee member’s face. “Two? But… That’s… hmm. Yes”. He didn’t seem at all pleased as he tapped his pencil on his teeth before jotting a note on his clipboard. “So… Two. Oh well”.
Just because you didn’t see it, I thought.
Back at the hut, the teams met up and reported on the day’s work, while the team leaders perused each other’s notes. Highlights were shared, numbers tabulated. Then there was a pause.
“Now”. One of the other team leaders. “About this” – pause for a deep breath – “SECOND egret”.
A murmur went round the hut.
“Yes”. The committee member looked down forlornly at his notes.
“What are we going to do about the SECOND egret?”
“Actually”, said the committee member, very quietly, as if I wouldn’t hear, “I was going to record it as one”.
And that was that. I knew I’d seen two egrets. They knew I’d seen one egret. It was the blind date moment when each party realised they’d been paired up with somebody who was never going to be any good for them. Any plans to see each other again? No. The Kearton talk was forgotten, and I slunk off home as soon as I could.