Everybody on this planet who is of sound mind - with eyes to see and ears to hear - finds birds fascinating. From the Indian peasant in his loin cloth hoeing the soil to the jet setting entrepreneur in her high rise office building and from me to you, we all notice birds and they frequently give us pause for thought.
We don't need to be passionate ornithologists or amateur birdwatchers. We don't need to know the names of all the bird species we see. We can still notice birds and be rather enthralled by them. (By the way, this is a "We" paragraph). We can watch their acrobatics in the air. We can observe their feeding habits. We can pick up their feathers or watch their squabbles.
They are the most common wild creatures most of us ever see. They are part of our folklore and our social history. (This is a "They" paragraph!). They are feted in songs and poetry. They are cousins of dinosaurs and reptiles. They can be found on every continent on Earth.
There are about 10,000 species of birds in the world but only 405 species in Great Britain. The country with the greatest number of different birds is Colombia with 1,878 recorded species.
We moved into this humble Yorkshire home 34 years ago next month and ever since then I have fed the birds - supplementing their diet to help them survive. I feed them in every season and i guess I have spent a king's ransom on sacks of bird seed and buckets or boxes of fat balls. In addition, waste bread and scraps of meat or bacon rind end up on our lawn and not in the kitchen waste bin. For birds, this is "The Yorkshire Pudding Diner"and it's all free.
Currently our main visitors are hedge sparrows, house sparrows, wood pigeons, magpies and crows but we also get blue tits, long tailed tits, coal tits, rooks, jackdaws, wrens, robins, jays and an occasional sparrow hawk. Once I even spotted a pheasant out there although we are a mile from open countryside. Of course the swifts, swallows and housemartins of summer disdain our avian diner as they swoop for insects in the air.
A month ago I was walking on the moors of Staffordshire when from a nearby wooded dell i heard another summer visitor - a cuckoo with its familiar and insistent repetition of it's name in song "Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!" across the quiet heathland, calling for a mate. That precious sound - that was once heard so widely in English summers - made my heart skip a beat.
When the last cuckoo sings - that is when England will be lost for good.
That poor hedge sparrow. I love birds as well and continue to learn more about them as I age. They've always been there but I only realize how amazing they are now.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that as we grow older we see the world around us slightly differently.
DeleteWe have duck hunting season which I have never understood. The poor things end up so full of lead you couldn't eat them which is what people say they hunt for. And too many of our protected species get killed along the way. Bird song is truly nature's symphony orchestra.
ReplyDeleteOn a summer's morning in an English woodland you can still hear what is called "the dawn chorus". It is a marvellous sound to behold. Those duck murderers may have links to Malta.
DeleteThere are people who try to see all the birds in the world. I read a biography of one of there people but do not remember the title. Also the number of species keeps on changing as classifications change. I love birding but I'm not a good birder.
ReplyDelete"Not a good birder"? I cannot believe that Red. To be a good birder you must first love birds... and you do!
DeleteImagine that poor little sparrow trying to keep up with the needs of a greedy great cuckoo!
ReplyDeleteIt's a brilliant survival trick.
DeleteMy heart skips a beat for such a lot of bird song. The cuckoo, curlew and buzzard for a start. Also the loud sound of blackbirds going to roost at night. Vaughan Williams got the music just right when he wrote the Skylark Ascending.
ReplyDeleteOh yes! In that piece you can really see how it was directly inspired by birdlife.
DeleteI fully agree with your "we" and "they" paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteAs for the cuckoo, it is usually in May that we hear them around O.K.'s village. I can not remember ever having heard one in my area; it is too densely built up and there is no real woodland to speak of. Hearing them, or hearing the first woodpecker of the year or the first early morning song of a blackbird (sometimes as early as January) makes my heart skip a beat.
Humans continue to make life so hard for the birds when we should be their advocates and protectors. They have endured so much.
DeleteI have never heard a cuckoo, I don't think we have them in South Australia. I think it is very cheeky of them to lay eggs in other nests so they don't have to do the feeding of their babies. I have stopped feeding the cockatoos and magpies here, they took a while to stop screeching and move on, but it had to be done. 34 years! I have never lived anywhere that long.
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of wild cockatoos in London now. In the 1960's there were none.
DeleteAre you sure about that? I was intrigued about the possibility but online investigations only led to mentions of parakeets.
DeleteFreebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd is a classic Rock track and it expresses the freedom of a bird to fly where ever they want to go. The swallows that return to our smallholding every summer spend their winters in Africa. Oh to be able to fly south when the summer ends.
ReplyDeleteIcarus stuck feathers on to his arms with wax. Why not give it a try Dave?
DeleteWho would have thought that when we moved to the highrise we would see and experience more bird life than we ever saw at ground level.
ReplyDeleteSome will think of the kindness of YP for feeding the birds. Some will think you are interfering with nature.
Now what is it that is supposed to happen when the last raven at the Tower of London dies? It's the end of something.
Legend says it will be the end of "From The High Rise" blog.
DeleteI love this post! And, this is why it is SO important that we all make the effort to plant native plants (shrubs, trees, and other plants) in our gardens instead of the "imports" we've all been taught to accept. Native plants produce far more life sustaining insects and habitats for our local bird populations. This is one of the primary reasons we all have fewer birds that in decades past. Thanks for reminding us how wonderful and important they are to all of us. Imagine our lives without birds around.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about the plants we put in our gardens Marcia.
DeleteI so enjoyed my daily walks in the swamp during Covid, more birds than I knew existed.
ReplyDeleteBy "the swamp" do you mean Washington D.C. or a proper swamp?
DeleteWe have quite an assortment of birds around Casa Bob y Carlos, and while some [Cardinals] are stunning, others are more invisible in the trees; but their tweets and cackles and whistles can be heard almost constantly, providing a symphony of sorts.
ReplyDeleteIt's the theme music to a love story in which Carlos y Bob waltz into the next chapter of their generally happy life together.
DeleteLovely post. And so true. I think it's funny that as we age, we seem to become more and more interested in birds. I am sitting on my back porch right now where we have a feeder and I do love to watch the birds coming and going. They are such a part of my life.
ReplyDeleteWithout them our lives would be less glorious.
DeleteI enjoy watching for the birds but cannot identify many of them. You are right, tho, that it doesn't take away from the joy! This is a terrific post, Neil!
ReplyDeleteI've been feeding birds for years as well and I'm equally into birdhouses. I have seven birdhouses in the backyard and 3 are currently in use. My birdhouses have housed many generations of house sparrows which are an invasive species in Canada. I would love for a native bird to take up residence in my houses but I've had no luck that way. I love my house sparrows anyway, invasive or not.
ReplyDeleteMy youngest grandson just celebrated his 4th birthday. I got him two age-appropriate books about birds and a small pair of binoculars. I want him to share my love of birds.
ReplyDeleteOur most common avian visitors these days are woodpeckers (Downy and Red Bellied) because they love our suet feeders, and Eastern Bluebirds because they're nesting in our box for the second time this year. And speaking of nesting! For several nights we heard fledgling Barred Owls calling for food at night, and even saw them a couple of times, perching on power lines near streetlights across the street from our house.
ReplyDeleteI heard a cuckoo once on Hampstead Heath, a couple of years ago, and it made my heart jump. I haven't heard one since. (Granted, I'm on the Heath less these days, as my dog is too geriatric to make that walk regularly!)
ReplyDelete