Twitching Again

The last time I went on an organised bird-watch I was around ten years old and an avid member of the RSPB's youth programme. It must have been around about 1974, certainly before the word twitching was in common parlance. I remember my father dropping me off at Sandy - the RSPB's headquarters, not far from our home in St Albans - where the day was to begin. I was clutching my RSPB membership magazine but didn't have a pair of binoculars. I can't recall much about the bird-watch itself but do remember that, shortly afterwards, enthused by some sightings of ducks at Sandy, I persuaded a relative to adopt a Shoveler for me for my eleventh birthday - a duck that was ringed and whose adoption papers came with the promise that I would be told of its migratory progress through the ensuing years. Unfortunately, I never heard another word about that Shoveler and its photograph soon languished in the bottom of a drawer alongside those rather pathetic adoption papers.

Here I am, it's over forty years later, and I've decided to book myself into a day's bird-watching, led by experts, at Lackford Lakes, a mere twenty minute drive away from the Pink Pig Farm. I book months in advance and as the day, a Sunday, looms nearer, the enthusiasm that made me book has completely disappeared. The idea of watching birds for six hours on a cold Winter's day now isn't appealing at all. I start to worry about the size of my binoculars and whether my shoes fit the brief we've been sent (sensible and warm? I don't own anything that's sensible and warm). There's also the issue of making a packed lunch. I haven't made such a thing for decades and having to make one is making me very anxious. I remember the marmite and cheese sandwiches, Kit Kats and boxes of raisins from my youth but decide to make some feta and red pepper cornbread and be damned as a ponce...

Winter Birdwatch day dawns and the only good thing is that Daniel has to take Sniff for the day whilst I'm twitching. So although I'm up early I'm not up with a dog who hates going out in the cold and resents every step you make him take. After a frantic search for the right sort of tupperware I pack up my lunch (aforementioned cornbread, some pitta bread stuffed with cheese, salad and coleslaw, and an over-large packet of crisps which I intend to share with the 'experts' in order to ingratiate myself and get special twitching tips) and zip off in my filthy car, wearing shoes but probably the wrong shoes, down the A-something-or-other to Lackford Lakes.

The reserve is owned by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, an organisation that seems to be buying up much of Suffolk in a magnificent bid to help nature thrive in these desperate times. And these are desperate times for birds. Only a few weeks ago newspapers were announcing that another four British birds are in danger of extinction - the puffin, the turtledove, the Slavonian grebe and the pochard. Apart from that grebe, these are all everyday-sounding, previously common-as-muck creatures. So the twenty five pounds I have paid to twitch with the experts will hopefully go to help buy another quarter of an inch of fenland or heath or woodland upon which puffins and grebes and turtledoves and pochards can live and breed without fear.

As soon as I arrive at the Education Centre at Lackford Lakes, ten minutes early, I know that I am booked in with a group of real enthusiasts, all of whom seem to know each other already. I can tell immediately because I have the smallest binoculars by far and, despite the fact that I am ten minutes early, I am the last to arrive - these people are itching to twitch. The start time of ten o clock, early by my standards for a Sunday, is late for any proper twitcher and as soon as the big hand on the schoolroom clock reaches the twelve we're straight out the door, half drunk cups of tea willfully abandoned on the altar of ornithology.

The two elderly experts running the day are carrying the most enormous telescopes with which to espy our prey. These gigantic bits of kit and their attendant stands look far too hefty to lug around all day, but our experts are seasoned twitchers and the 'scopes' (as they're referred to constantly) are as essential to them as an arm or a leg. Whatever discomfort they endure will be endured with pride.

Our first destination - some bushes. We are on the hunt for small songbirds as it's the right time of day and we should get the hardest twitching done first, apparently. As I walk beside Expert One, I notice that his 'scope' (I'm catching up with the lingo) has the mark Swarovski on it. Conversationally I say something along the lines of "Oh, I thought Swarovski made crystals not telescopes" and that's it, I'm immediately fingered as a complete novice and a total twat, a role in which I am cast for the rest of the day. If I now point to a blackbird and say what's that, no-one, but no-one, will be remotely surprised.

There are about ten of us signed up to the Winter Birdwatch and I am definitely the youngest. Surprisingly, there are almost as many women as men - which doesn't stop Experts One and Two making many jokes throughout the course of the day about males having all the good plumage etc. etc. This seems to be a twitching thing because none of the women take offence - indeed, they cackle away along with the others. Everyone is very, very sensibly and quite drably dressed and some have elaborate clothing with straps and extra pockets and in-built water bottle carriers all of which helps them carry their heavy equipment and, more importantly, makes them look like experts too. Fortunately, I'd dug out a coat that used to belong to my father - a Karrimor, I think it's called - and I notice with satisfaction that at least three other people are wearing Karrimor too. So I got that right. My own paltry equipment, a small pair of binoculars, is slung round my neck but I keep getting the cord caught up in my scarf and often miss the sightings of x or y "over there, at eleven o clock" whilst struggling to disentangle myself. The shoes I'm wearing are definitely wrong. They were frowned upon in the Education Centre by Expert Two and deemed unsuitable but I explained it was all I had and that they would have to do...

Bird watching often seems to be about lists. So here's mine: Goldcrest, Redwing, Redpoll, Siskin, Bullfinch, Sparrowhawk, Buzzard, Barn Owl, Widgeon, Teal, Pochard, Shoveler (do you think it was my adoptee?), Gooseander, Gadwall, Kingfisher, Cormorant, Little Egret, Heron, Lesser Black Backed Gull, Greater Black Backed Gull, Herring Gull, Common Gull, Long Tailed Duck, Reed Bunting, Long Tailed Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Treecreeper, Nuthatch, Snipe, Tufted Duck, Goldeneye, Marsh Tit.

I saw them all, folks. In one Winter Birdwatch day.

Some of these birds - the Goldcrest, Redwing, Redpoll - are fairly common but nevertheless are birds I haven't knowingly seen before. My inner twitcher trilled and thrilled to watch them properly. I was also amazed by everyone's dedication to the most ordinary of birds. Remembering that Expert One and Expert Two have been doing this twitching lark for almost fifty years; week in, week out - they travel the country chasing after rare visitors; together they visit the same local reserves time after time after time; they ring and count and watch and wait and they've led countless different expeditions and walks, in the UK and abroad, and yet when, half-way through the day, they find a solitary male bullfinch half-hidden in a bush, managing to train both their 'scopes' on it for a perfect view, they act like proud parents showing off their first child. It was most touching. Bullfinches, after all, are a common as muck garden bird. They must have seen thousands. Yet, this one still excited them and, enthusiasm being catching, us.

Their greatest enthusiasm of the day was not mine. Any expert, One, Two or otherwise, scanning the list above will know immediately that it includes one bird that is unusual for the UK, especially for Lackford Lakes and Suffolk. In fact, there is one bird in that list which hasn't been seen at Lackford Lakes for over twenty years...

It is the Long-Tailed Duck.

It was post-lunch (I'd managed to eat my cornbread without anyone making any adverse comments, chiefly because the other Winter Birdwatch participants were busy watching a kingfisher dive in and out of the pond visible through the Education Centre's windows; there's no time to eat when nature's displaying) and we were ambling alongside one of the lakes. On the other side of the path, beyond the confines of the reserve, was a golf course. Three women were lugging their clubs across the well-kept grass to resume play at the next hole. I wondered whether, if one were to draw a Venn diagram, there would ever be a cross-section between those who play golf (and therefore, in effect, help to destroy the countryside) and those who watch birds. The outfits the golfers wore looked similarly sensible to those the birders were wearing, for instance. Unfortunately, I wondered this all out loud in conversation with a fellow Winter Birdwatcher who simply couldn't disguise his face registering the fact that he thought I was mad and who pointedly got away from me as soon as possible.

My own opinion is that not many people who play golf twitch although I'm happy to be disproved.

I digress.

We stopped by the side of the afore-mentioned lake. Expert One and Two obviously had something special up their sleeves, they were almost hopping from side to side with excitement whilst setting up their scopes. After a few minutes of levering and training and focusing they stepped back from their magnificent equipment. "There it is", they said simultaneously, a few seconds later. We all, all ten of us, looked across the lake. Nothing. "Oh, it's gone," they said. Forty seconds later. "There it is. Further to the right." "Where, where?" we chorused. "No, it's gone," they said.

It was like a Christmas pantomime.

We had to virtually plead with them to tell us what we were supposed to be looking at, they seemed too excited to explain properly. But eventually, after we'd all had a quick glimpse at whatever it was, Expert One explained that what we were looking at was a Long-Tailed Duck. And Long-Tailed Ducks have not graced Lackford Lakes for over twenty years. This, in twitching terms, was an EVENT. And we, lucky amateurs, could witness it.

And sure enough, every forty seconds or so, at a place quite distant from its last appearance (making the training of scopes quite tricky), up would pop said Long Tailed Duck again. It would look about for five seconds or less and then disappear once more leaving us guessing as to its next destination. This was all happening quite a distance away, towards the furthest shore of the lake - really you would never have noticed a thing but for the guidance of Experts One and Two. To complicate matters further for anyone but Experts One and Two, this particular Long Tailed Duck was a female and therefore didn't have a long tail. In fact, as males have all the fun and the plumage and ha ha ha, cue joke, it was quite a dowdy-looking thing.

A little later, as we all trudged passed a solitary serious-looking bird-watcher (twitchers tend to move at a glacial pace when not actually twitching) - a man with the biggest binoculars yet - he kindly pointed out to us (I think this is required twitching etiquette) that the Long Tailed Duck was now preening and cleaning itself and therefore not disappearing every five seconds. Experts One and Two swung their scopes into action and, this time, we all got a good long look at rare duck event extraordinaire. In fact, if we didn't look through the scope for a sufficiently long period of time (step forward Mr Cooper) you were soundly told off for not taking full advantage of said rare duck event.

It was after Expert One told me off that I realised that I would never ever, truly, be a proper twitcher. A rare visitor from abroad (as the Long Tailed Duck is) just wasn't sending shivers down my spine in the way that a common but uncommon to me bird like the Goldcrest did earlier. I could never go chasing up and down the country simply because a Hoopoe has been blown off course and has landed in a puddle in Powys. The idea of getting up in the middle of the night in response to an alarm on my phone telling me that something unusual has been spotted two hundred miles away...well, it's simply not going to happen.

I remain defiantly dilettantish on the edges of the bird world. And I really don't care if I have to ask what anything is. I can now, after all, thanks to asking Experts One and Two, distinguish between five different gulls. Although, come next Winter, I will no doubt have forgotten exactly how to do this. I will remember that male Gadwalls have black behinds. For some reason, I think that fact is going to remain with me for ever.

Our day at Lackford Lakes was to end with a sighting of Gooseanders flying in to settle on one of the smaller lakes for the night. Promising anything in birding terms is rather foolish and, sure enough, the Gooseanders didn't appear as they were supposed to, at four o clock. Dusk was falling rapidly and visibility was decreasing minute by minute and still the Gooseanders didn't appear. Instead, we watched fifteen thousands gulls coming in to roost on another adjacent lake, something they do nightly throughout the Winter now that pig farms and rubbish tips all over Suffolk are providing enough sustenance for them to stay in the UK throughout the colder months. Occasionally something - a buzzard or sparrowhawk perhaps - would disturb the settling gulls and they would rise en masse into the air and circle each other: thousands and thousands of undulating birds over a single expanse of water, looking like a swarm of giant gnats. Slowly the gulls would all descend again and begin to settle on the water for a safe and secure good night's sleep courtesy of those excellent guardians, the  Wildlife Trust.

A call came from the bird hide overlooking the smaller lake. It was Expert Two. The Gooseanders, forty minutes behind schedule, had arrived. My cheap binoculars couldn't cope very well with the deepening gloom, but I'm fairly certain that I just managed to distinguish the dark head of a Gooseander amongst the few remaining Black Headed Gulls (stragglers all) along the far shore of the lake. At least, I assured Experts One and Two that I had and that the day, all in all, had been marvellous. Taking one last look at the thousands of snoozing gulls, I headed off down the track and off home to the Pink Pig Farm once more.

Warren Lodge

I ended the last post feeling like the only human in the world. To continue the theme of aloneness (as distinct from loneliness, an affliction I don't have - currently, at least - despite living in the middle of nowhere, far from friends) we are going to visit the warrener's world...

In Much Ado About Nothing (1598), Shakespeare has Benedick describe his friend Claudio's mood as being "as melancholy as a lodge in a warren." In the late nineteenth century illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that the husband found in some boxes of books he won at auction in Bury St Edmunds this phrase is explained thus:

"A 'lodge' was a small building or shed , erected in rabbit-warrens or fields that required watching during the season, and was abandoned afterwards; so that a 'lodge' early became a type of dreariness or desolation."

Close to the Pink Pig Farm, nestled in part of Thetford Forest, is just such a melancholy lodge, perched on top of a hill, isolated and drear. Except that this lodge is a much grander construction than usual. It was built as a permanent home for the local warrener in 1640, not long after Shakespeare wrote his play.
 
Yesterday I approached the lodge accompanied by Sniff, climbing a long constantly rising path flanked by tall pine trees banked with swathes of browning bracken, touched into gleams of gold by the rays of the sun.

Some six hundred years ago, when the lodge was first occupied, much of this forest would still have been heathland, the perfect sandy habitat for thousands of rabbits. Warreners were rabbit-catchers and lived alone in the middle of Rabbitland, enabling them to simply fling open their front door and be surrounded by their quarry. Thousands of rabbits were slaughtered monthly and carted across England to London or York or Canterbury to satisfy the growing appetites of those swelling metropolises - meat for the table, fur for the back.

After a while tall pine trees give way to gorse bushes, still bearing some yellow flowers in late October, and the landscape opens out, with sandy pits on either side of the path. It is here, in these odd lunar depressions, that an extremely rare plant lives - the Breckland Mugwort. Once found at only one site in the whole of Britain, somewhere here in the Brecks (our Pink Pig Farm is firmly in the Brecks, of which more later), the Forestry Commission and the friends of Thetford Forest are busy trying to propagate Breckland Mugwort in more places - including here in warrener's world. I couldn't spot any today but did, I think, see some during the Summer...

Towards the top of the hill the land flattens out and becomes bare of vegetation. It's easy to imagine any Watership Down moment you care to think of (and, infuriatingly, Bright Eyes starts running through my mind, Art Garfunkel's fey tenor attempting to pull at my heartstrings. The only actual sounds are those made by the wind and the distant traffic on the A11 to Norwich.)

The lodge has been renovated on the outside but remains derelict inside with an old metal bedframe in one corner and some rotting pieces of wood strewn across the floor. The windows have all been bricked up but it is not hard to see that, in its heyday, it would have commanded quite a view. From the upper floor of the warren, the rabbit-catcher could look down onto the forest and see his rivals in rabbit-catching, goshawks and sparrowhawks, circling and swooping above the trees. Indeed, Helen Macdonald of recent H is for Hawk fame, came here to Thetford Forest to train her goshawk - she talks about the Brecks quite a lot in the book - and there is a wild population in evidence which, thrillingly, I do see on most visits. On a sign near to the Lodge, newly minted, there is an illustration of how the warrener might have lived...

There is also, on the same sign, the Shakespeare quote given above but they have Benedict talking about Cassio's mood. Now, I don't purport to be an expert in Shakespeare, but it doesn't take more than a quick glance at the list of dramatis personae of Much Ado, coming straight after the rather magnificent illustrated title page in my edition (note the mustachioed gentleman resolutely ignoring the swooning ladies), to realise that there is no-one called Cassio in Much Ado About Nothing. Nope. No-one. Nowhere. Put 'Cassio Shakespeare' into Google and you find him - as a gentleman soldier in Othello...

Never trust a sign.

Walking back past the other sign about Breckland Mugwort and the Mugwort depressions (obviously all totally made up) I notice that, despite the fact that it is almost November, there are still quite a few flowers in evidence. Cob nuts spatter the ground and colourful leaves whirl through the air. Red deer, roe deer and muntjac are all here, but remain invisible, hidden in the dappled depths of the forest. Once more there is no-one in evidence. Not a single other human being. I'm startled by the sudden darting of a squirrel and, mildly spooked, Sniff and I clamber back into the car and head for the Pink Pig Farm and home.

Postscript

If anyone feels the need to know more about rabbits, warreners and their special significance for East Anglia in the past, I've found a paper on-line called The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy by one Mark Bailey. His abstract is this:

The rabbit was a rare beast in medieval England, and much sought after for both its meat
and its fur. This investigation plots the early history of commercial rabbiting in East Anglia,
and its transition from a low output concern to a growth industry in the later Middle Ages.
The development of the rabbit-warren into a highly lucrative source of income is explained in
terms of the changing economic and social conditions after the Black Death, and the more
intensive management of warrens by landlords. The occupational spin-offs from rabbiting,
and the social implications of poaching in a region where resistance to the feudal order was
endemic, are also explored. Final consideration is given to the economic impact of the rabbit
on areas of poor soil, and its ability to compensate for their inherent disadvantages in grain
production.

Sometimes, but only sometimes, I love the internet.

Heaths

There are two heaths a short drive from the Pink Pig Farm, both of which have been protected and are now classified as nature reserves – Cavenham Heath and Warren Hill. Both are closed during the Spring and Summer months so that Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus) can nest undisturbed by man and unmolested by their dogs. As these odd-looking yellow-eyed birds nest on the ground and are masters of disguise, these safety precautions prevent us from treading on them and their cleverly hidden chicks. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a Stone Curlew. Only this weekend we stared excitedly at a bird for quite a while until it metamorphosed into a log. I do see birders lugging large telescopic lenses around and suppose that if I latched onto one of them I might be led expertly to the bird itself. Now, however, it is the time of year when gates are thrown open to the hoi polloi once more and Sniff (my faithful hound) and I can bound across open spaces with glee. Subsequently, there’s no hope of seeing a Stone Curlew because they’ve all buggered off to Africa and will now be flapping their weary way somewhere over Southern Europe.

Sniff and I gambolled across Warren Hill today with gay abandon. The air smelt of burnt toast, an aroma borne through the mist hanging about the horizon. Flocks of crows passed noisily overhead, sounding like over-excited school-children on a trip to town. The crows are gathering in ever-greater numbers all over Suffolk, readying themselves for some great Winter conference or other.

A phenomenon in great abundance on the heath is the mushroom. Giant ones, fairy-tale red ones, star-shaped ones, sinister black ones, mushrooms are everywhere. The earth star looks particularly interesting – it belongs to an order of gasterocarpic basidiomycetes which are related to Cantharellales, and therefore boasts a series of extraordinarily complicated and unpronounceable scientific names. No wonder some botanist insisted on earth star as the common name – something that says what it is on the tin, as it were. Earth stars look like mush-flowers. Their ‘petals’ open up in moist conditions (such as we’re finding at the moment during these Autumn mornings) and enables the mushroom to germinate. Growing close to the ground, they cannot compete in magnificence to their neighbours on the heath, some of which today stood almost two feet tall (the first one pictured below).

The arrival of mushrooms coincides with the disappearance of butterflies, none of which are in evidence any more. I did spot two dragonflies chasing each other through the toasty air but they too will soon hibernate. One insect however was determined to uphold the promise borne by the sign at the entrance to Warren Hill, that this is ‘a wide open space alive with insects’:

Warren Hill is certainly wide and open and decidedly empty of other folk. The cattle that were grazing earlier in the year have also been moved on, the result being that Sniff and I had the whole of the Hill to ourselves. No doubt thousands of rabbits appeared the second our backs were turned but for a while I did have the strangest feeling that I was the only human left on earth.

Why the Pink Pig Farm?

Our house in F________ (in keeping with nineteenth-century novelistic traditions established by Thackeray and Trollope, the exact location shall remain a secret) was once a pig farm. In evidence, it has been pointed out to us that in the back study, a room tucked behind a large inglenook fireplace in the oldest part of the house, the stone floor (original) slopes sharply downwards at both sides of the room. Back in the day, this strange feature eased the flow of pig’s blood dripping steadily from carcases hung from black hooks embedded in the ceiling ( still extant - although the only thing hanging from them these days is a cheap plastic British flag Daniel was given when he became a British citizen some years ago now. As F______ is in a borough where UKIP have a strong presence this is probably not a good idea; but the room isn’t overlooked except by squirrels, the odd kestrel, the occasional muntjac or roe deer and our chickens). The pig butchering part of the house dates back to 1540 – an inconceivably long time ago to my mind, especially if you consider what else was happening then – Henry VIII was busy marrying and divorcing (Anne of Cleves) and marrying again (Catherine Howard) whilst taking time out to execute Thomas Cromwell; Europe was suffering a drought during which both the Rhine and the Seine dried up; the ideas of Copernicus were published for the first time by Georg Rheticus in Danzig and, disturbingly, the earth, therefore, could no longer be considered the centre of the Universe…

Our house is also undeniably pink. Suffolk pink, in fact. According to country lore the colour was first created using dried pigs blood – oh, centuries ago. But the more mundane truth is that Suffolk pink only really became popular in the early twentieth century as a concept for brightening up villages in a county where most of the buildings are made of lathe and plaster rather than brick. The local builder who was replacing some rotten French doors for us the other day told me that the top foot or so of our building is made of reeds and plaster whereas the rest is lathe and plaster. So at some point the roof was raised (Raise High The Roofbeams, Carpenter!).

So – pink and a pig farm. The Pink Pig Farm. Welcome!