In keeping with this week's outdoor theme we're going all ornithological today, and just look at me the socialising party girl, out on another blog tour, and this time I'm with the twitchers and the real tweeters to celebrate the publication of Bird Watching With Your Eyes Closed by Simon Barnes. Honestly, don't anyone say we don't do variety here, and this week I'm in the esteemed company of an ex Conservation Director of the RSPB , an author , a reviewer of natural history books and grrl scientist (no I don't know either) so I feel a bit like the cuckoo in the nest...definitely no slacking today. You might want to have this playing in the background while you read because by the miracles of techno-wizardry you can listen to Simon Barnes and sixty-six birds (not all at the same time) on the podcast here...
Just to establish our credentials, we do love our birds here in the Tamar Valley. We waved off our two annual broods of veranda swallows ages ago...
... and then we get the bird tables out (planks on top of the hedge) and fill the feeders and melt fat and mix it with seeds for the half coconuts, all to welcome back the winter residents and I know a lot of you do likewise.
We do plain...
and we do show offs...
The fifteen wrens that squat in that vacant swallow's nest cause mayhem every time we open the front door to bring in the logs, and a wonderfully eclectic mix of robins, blackbirds and tits various, blue, coal and long tailed, along with chaffinches et al muster each day. We are currently spending more on our bird feeders than we might be on feeding ourselves because we get so much pleasure from just leaning, and staring at them outside the kitchen window...
And of course we are still waiting for the barn owls, who circle around every evening, to realise that they hate where they are living now and that this des res is indeed the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and can be theirs for the taking...
And you can read how this Pole Box arrived chez dovegrey (with pictures) as part of the Westmoor Barn Owl Scheme in The Barn Owl Trust newsletter here
....but put a blindfold on me and I doubt I would know many of our birds from their songs.
Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed is the sort of book I love because I open it thinking I know so very little and really can I discern one bird call from another, do I know a raven from a jackdaw, would I know my dunnock from my great tit, and am I going to be made to feel a bit stupid for not knowing when really I should. Well the answer is a resounding 'no' to everything because Simon Barnes does that really sensible thing of encouraging his reader rather than excluding them, so within a few pages it has become clear that, if I sat and thought about it carefully I, and most of us, do know more bird song than we realise.
Cuckoo, seagull, owl, wood pigeon, pheasant, buzzard, woodpecker might be my definites, your list would be different but equally populated I expect,(knowing how far flung you all are someone somewhere's bound to have a vulture or a bald eagle or something on theirs) and as I write them out I have that wonderful podcast from Short Books, playing in the background. If you are listening you will already know that Simon Barnes has a very soothing voice, gentle dulcet tones.
In fact to try and learn these I have been listening on the headphones during my walk each day, which seems a bit daft along the deserted lanes of the Tamar Valley where, if I did but listen, I would hear them all for real. Except I don't instinctively know my blackbird from my song thrush, or my robin from my wren...not really or with any accuracy.
So how have I got this far in life without really paying proper attention to birdsong??
Actually I am getting better by the day and by jove do you know, the man's right. This time of year, according to Simon Barnes, the bird I am most likely to hear singing a territorial solo will be the robin, even if I can't see it. So I have listened and heard and with some careful looking spotted the songster...and yes, each time it's a robin.
The book is about much more than birdsong though as Simon Barnes explores our relationship with our bird population, the ecology and how fragile that can become, whilst also exploding many of the preconceptions we may have about some birds. I'm warming to rooks now I know that they mate for life and seem to love each other dearly, so I'm currently focusing on identifying my corvids, which all sounded the same to me until Simon explained otherwise. Crows caw in triplets, rooks usually once and jackdaws, not surprisingly say 'Jack', so now you know.
And it's a book about the art of listening too and about silence and paying attention and not in a preachy way. This is about the pleasure of noticing, and for free, and noticing so much that I know I have been taking for granted.
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