London’s for the Birds
London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks. Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
Here’s a question for you.
What’s the commonest wild animal in London?
Not foxes.
Not squirrels.
Not hedgehogs.
Birds.
Millions of them.
They’re everywhere you look.
Above your head.
In the trees.
On the water.
On the rooftops.
In the churchyards.
Along the canals.
In the parks.
On the commons.
In your garden.
Even, in some cases, on the ledges of Canary Wharf skyscrapers.
Which is why I keep coming back to that sentence.
London is one of Europe’s great bird cities.
Now then…
Let’s prove it.
Take survey.
Not of Trafalgar Square.
Not of the Tower.
Not of Buckingham Palace.
Take survey of London’s skies.
Its woods.
Its rivers.
Its parks.
Its gardens.
Its cemeteries.
Its heaths.
Its marshes.
Its reed beds.
Its ancient oaks.
Its suburban hedgerows.
Its rooftops.
Its window ledges.
Its church spires.
They’re alive.
More than two hundred bird species have been recorded in Greater London.
Think about that.
More than two hundred.
That’s not just remarkable.
It’s one of London’s best-kept secrets.
Some live here all year.
Some merely call in.
Some spend the winter.
Others arrive every spring from Africa.
London isn’t just a city.
It’s a staging post on one of nature’s great flyways.
And now…
Let’s meet a few of the locals.
First up…
The little bruiser.
The wren.
He’s tiny.
He weighs little more than a £1 coin.
Yet, pound for pound, he possesses one of the loudest voices in the bird world.
He’s six inches of attitude.
The next time Merlin tells you there’s a wren nearby, don’t expect to see him immediately.
You’ll almost certainly hear him first.
He’s got a voice about twenty times bigger than he is.
Now look up.
High above the City.
Above the Shard.
Above Canary Wharf.
Above office blocks.
There may be a peregrine falcon.
For centuries peregrines nested on sea cliffs.
London’s skyscrapers have turned out to be just as good.
Perhaps better.
A peregrine in a hunting dive can cross the length of a football pitch in about a second.
Read that again.
A football pitch.
One second.
The fastest creature on Earth.
Living in London.
Helping itself to pigeons.
No wonder pigeons look nervous.
Now listen.
Hear that machine-gun burst?
Drdrdrdrdrdrdr…
That’s not a pneumatic drill.
It’s a great spotted woodpecker.
Woodpeckers don’t really sing.
They drum.
They take a dead branch and turn it into a loudspeaker.
It’s their way of saying,
“This bit of woodland belongs to me.”
Meanwhile, over there…
That flash of impossible blue.
Not blue.
Electric blue.
Like somebody’s thrown a sapphire through the air.
Kingfisher.
You don’t usually see one.
You glimpse one.
And the glimpse lasts about as long as a good idea.
Then it’s gone.
If there’s a comedian among London’s birds, surely it’s the green woodpecker.
It doesn’t sound dignified.
It sounds as though it’s laughing.
Loudly.
Birdwatchers call it the “yaffle.”
Once you’ve heard it…
You’ll never mistake it.
And then there are the parakeets.
London’s noisiest immigrants.
Nobody is entirely certain how they got here.
There are stories about escaped birds.
Stories involving films.
Stories involving Jimi Hendrix.
Choose your favourite.
Whatever the truth…
They’re here.
In their tens of thousands.
Bright green.
Long-tailed.
Utterly impossible to ignore.
And they chatter.
Good heavens, how they chatter.
They’re the avian equivalent of a bunch of exuberant teenagers who’ve just discovered coffee.
But birds don’t merely decorate London.
They help make London.
Jays plant tomorrow’s oak woods.
Thrushes disperse seeds.
Birds keep insect populations in check.
They were Londoners long before we were.
And Shakespeare?
He was listening too.
In Macbeth he gives us one of the loveliest descriptions of a bird you’re ever likely to hear.
Banquo looks at Macbeth’s castle and says:
“The temple-haunting martlet…”
The martlet is the house martin.
Its presence told Shakespeare’s audience that this was a wholesome place.
A lucky place.
A place fit to live in.
Which of course is richly ironic. Duncan couldn’t be more wrong about where he’s about to spend the night. His last night. Ever. Macbeth is going to murder him there. Knife him to death when he’s asleep.
So, yes, bottom line,
birds have been helping us read the landscape for centuries. But misread it –fatally misread it – in Duncan’s case.
Which is one reason they matter.
Not just because they’re beautiful.
Because they tell us things.
About clean rivers.
Healthy woods.
Rich meadows.
Living cities.
And London?
London has plenty to say.
We just have to listen.
And wonder.
Wonder at the acrobats. The aerialists. The feathered gladiators. The absent-minded gardeners.
The birds that sleep on the wing.
The birds that make tomorrow’s oak woods.
And perhaps the greatest singer London has ever produced.
No.
Not Adele.
A blackbird.
There they are, in the wings. Here they come.
Let’s start with the one you think you know best.
The robin.
Sweet.
Friendly.
The bird on the Christmas card.
Don’t be fooled.
Robins are the hooligans of the bird world.
Tiny.
Beautiful.
And fiercely territorial.
A robin will think nothing of taking on another robin.
Or attacking its own reflection in a window.
It’s the feathered equivalent of the pub landlord who says, “You’re not from round here, are you?”
Now…
Eyes to the sky.
Very high.
You might just catch sight of a swift.
If ever a bird deserved its name, it’s the swift.
It eats on the wing.
It drinks on the wing.
It gathers nesting material on the wing.
It even sleeps on the wing.
And, yes…
It mates on the wing.
The feathered equivalent of the Mile High Club.
A swift may spend months without touching the ground.
It belongs to the air.
Then there’s the blackbird.
Not merely black.
The male, yes.
The female is a rich chocolate brown.
But it’s not their appearance that matters.
It’s the music.
Many people reckon the blackbird is Britain’s greatest singer.
Liquid.
Fluting.
Mellow.
If London has a soundtrack at dawn, there’s every chance a blackbird is leading the orchestra.
His near relation, the song thrush, has a different trick.
Listen carefully.
It repeats phrases.
Two times.
Sometimes three.
Almost as though it’s practising.
Or improvising.
The jazz musician of the bird world.
And if you ever come across a flat stone littered with broken snail shells…
You’ve probably found a song thrush’s dining table.
Birdwatchers call it an anvil.
Now look over a rough meadow.
Or a patch of common.
See that bird apparently hanging motionless in the air?
Not hanging.
Hovering.
A kestrel. Also known as a windhover. Even better was its old English folk name: windfucker. Vivid enough, colourful enough for you? Anyway, there it is, at wing in the wind,
holding itself perfectly still while searching the ground below for lunch.
One of nature’s great demonstrations of precision flying.
Down by the Thames, another familiar figure.
The heron.
Tall.
Grey.
Unhurried.
Standing absolutely motionless.
Like an elderly fisherman with all the time in the world.
Until…
Flash!
The spear-like bill strikes.
Lunch is served.
And speaking of the Thames…
Keep an eye open for cormorants.
People often think of them as seabirds.
London knows better.
You’ll see them perched on posts or moorings with their wings stretched wide.
Drying them.
Unlike ducks, their feathers aren’t completely waterproof.
That helps them dive deeper.
But afterwards…
Everything has to be hung out to dry.
Nature’s washing line.
Here’s another success story.
Little egrets.
Elegant.
Snow white.
Long black legs.
A generation ago they were a rarity.
Today they’re becoming a familiar sight along London’s waterways.
Sometimes nature gives us good news.
And then there are the red kites.
Magnificent birds of prey with deeply forked tails.
Once they were almost gone from England.
Now, thanks to one of the most successful conservation programmes anywhere in the world, they’re becoming increasingly familiar over the capital’s outer suburbs.
A reminder that sometimes we really can put things right.
And finally…
Back to that blackbird.
Tomorrow morning…
Before you look at your phone.
Before you switch on the radio.
Before the day gets properly under way.
Open a window.
Stand still.
Listen.
Somewhere nearby a blackbird will probably begin singing.
Not because it knows you’re listening.
Not because it’s giving a concert.
Simply because that’s what blackbirds do.
And suddenly that sentence I began with won’t seem quite so surprising.
London is one of Europe’s great bird cities.
It always has been.
We just needed reminding.
And perhaps that’s the greatest gift birds give us.
They remind us that London isn’t only built of brick and stone.
It’s built of birdsong as well.
And once you hear that…
You’ll never quite hear London in the same way again.
See you tomorrow.