COVID 19 caused the cancellation of this year’s overseas birding adventure, a trip to the Lesser Antilles to try to find its endemics. Not only could I not travel overseas or inter-state, but lockdown also confined me to my house and garden, other than home visits within my local family bubble, plus solitary birding excursions to the local nature reserve. Here in Australia, we took it all very seriously and listened to the experts. A last-minute search for a substitute long-distance birding quest – maybe another Grasswren expedition to Australia’s Red Centre? – was, in the end, fruitless. Flights were cancelled, state borders closed.
So, I hung up a bird-feeding table on a tree in front of my bedroom window, and sat, and watched. Of course, I now have a feeding-table list in my head. But I have not written it down, because it is irrelevant. Only a birder would feel the urge to make such a list. But I just want to watch.
The term ‘birding’ is a fairly recent coinage. No need to go into the minutiae of when and where, but it has emerged gradually as the preferred descriptor for a particular type of bird-lover or enthusiast. For a birder, the pastime is a serious business, not just a leisure pursuit. It requires skill and knowledge, which is hard-won and proudly worn, like the badge of a profession. It often involves competition and it always spurs ambition – to see a new bird, to get a better view, to add to the list. I recall that famous ABA (American Birding Association) editorial, when they set out to describe how ‘birders’ are different from ‘birdwatchers’. The latter term is used to ‘describe the person who watches birds for any reason at all, and should not be used to refer to the serious birder.’ (Birding, Volume 1 No 2 (1969)).
Binoculars made birding possible. You can watch and enjoy birds without them, but you can’t do the main thing for a birder, which is to try to identify most of the ones you see in the hope there’s something new or unusual. Birding is in large part about targeting and collecting the rare and the new. Before binoculars, this required a gun. The 19th Century precursor of the birder was not the amateur naturalist who contemplatively studied the local patch and recorded their everyday observations, but the avid shooter-collector of new ornithological specimens.
When I sit behind the glass of my front window and look out on my bird-feeder, I don’t need binoculars – it’s only five metres away. And the ID part of it all is incidental. It’s the other things I have now learnt to look for that keep me watching.
Birds at a feeding table are a constant entertainment. To begin with, let me say I am blessed with some pretty spectacular visitors – Rosellas, Galahs and Cockatoos, most notably. I could gaze all afternoon on the beauty of Crimson Rosellas glowing in the late sun, munching through my seeds and spitting out the husks. Cockatoos are less restful. Their lumbering antics set in motion a giddying bucking and swaying of the hanging table, making me feel queasy even as the Cockatoo seems to relish the ride. I say ‘their’, but in fact there is hardly room for just one of them at a time.
Other visitors are more mundane, but fun to watch for other reasons. The House Sparrows come in troops, called in by the first passer-by who notices the availability of the feast. They gather and wait, deep within a nearby bush, and venture out when the coast is clear, occupying the tree by ranks. A lookout perches at the top, hangers-on lurk at mid-level. The bold ones head straight for the table until chased off by the boss, who has been biding his time. I was not particularly welcoming to the sparrows at first: they are, after all, interlopers here down under. But I found that I could keep them at bay by modifying the feedstock – they prize the smaller seeds, whereas Rosellas and Cockatoos like the bigger and fatter ones.
Common Blackbirds are in a somewhat similar category to sparrows as antipodean invaders, but their Spring melodies at dawn and in the late evening just about save their bacon. Thankfully, the invasive Common Mynas and Starlings do not like my table – perhaps it’s the menu on offer – otherwise I would have a real dilemma on my hands. I am amazed, actually, that the Blackbirds are so taken by the fare, I always thought they went for worms, not seeds. I have learnt something.
Education and entertainment come in equal portions. Observing my customers raises many questions and provides lots of entertainingly trivial answers: in the species pecking order, which is dominant, a Galah or a Crimson Rosella? (The image below contains a clue). How bold (or cunning, or patient) is a House Sparrow, confronted with a table full of seed currently occupied by a Crested Pigeon? Just how do those Rosellas manage to eject the husks from their beaks while swallowing the kernel? And so on.
It’s 4 pm as I write this. The table has not been restocked today, and I can hear the customers beginning to complain. The sparrows, of course, are the loudest and most insistent. When the Rosellas start fluting and peeping up in the tree, I will stir myself and ladle out a serving of seed. As they’ve come to know me, and I them, they have imposed their own routine. They like a pre-roost, late snack and now, when I appear out of the front door with it, they begin clambering down the branches even before I get to the table.
The many close-ups I have had of the visitors at my table are food for the soul, as are all close encounters with birds. I knew this before my COVID lockdown and my installation of a bird table, but now I see that I didn’t really think it through. Watching the delights of the familiar at my feeding table is an experience of birds so much more rewarding than my birding encounters with one-new-tick-after-another, the frustrating toil of straining to ID a distant Warbler, even that zoomed-in look at a speck of a Spoon-billed Sandpiper on a distant mudflat, that I have lost some of my enthusiasm for getting out of my COVID bubble and into the world of birding once again.
Maybe I’ll gladly move on from just watching, when the borders open and the planes start to fly again. I am still a mad birder, after all. Although, I can see that I missed a lot all those years when I didn’t just sit and watch but instead, pressed on in pursuit of the next bird and the next tick. Time to slow down? Perhaps it’s better for the birds as well if I charge around a bit less adding to my air-miles.
I must stop here. The Rosellas are calling.
