Feathers...

For incouraging my interest in birds, I can thank my dad: a down-to-earth patrician not normally given to flights of fancy. As far back as I can remember, I used to grub around in the garden for whatever treasures I could find: stones, snails, worms, dung and the like. Amongst the more salubrious items were birds' feathers. With the optimism of youth, I would present them to my dad for identification. Hoping to maintain his facade of all-knowing omnipotence, he would put down his Yorkshire Post at every time of asking and give me his undivided attention. Not bad for a man who, to avoid joining in a conversation at meal-times, would concentrate intently on reading the label on the back of a Worcester Sauce bottle.

Knowing I would caption the feathers for my collection, he tried to ascribe a different bird's name to each one. After the roster of sparrows and finches, however, he found it an increasingly difficult task. Which is why my little museum featured feathers that had come from such unlikely species as the Scarlet Ibis and Wandering Albatross. No matter. His feats of inspired guesswork left me with a lifelong interest in birds. If my dad hadn't taken the time to humour a gullible young lad, I could have grown up to be a dung collector.

PG Tips...

It’s not about names and it’s not about numbers. Not that you’d notice: the hobby of bird-watching (or birding... or twitching... whatever) seems to be about little else. Twitchers travel hundreds of miles – at the drop of a hat or, more likely, responding to a terse text message on a mobile phone – to spot a rare bird they haven’t seen before. It’s a ‘tick’: one more species to add to their ‘life list’.

This is bird-watching reduced to the level of collecting; instead of birds it could just as easily be stamps, old bottles or the picture cards I used to collect when I was a kid. I’d badger my mum to buy Brooke Bond Tea rather than any of the other brands. Ours was not a Typhoo household. Inside every packet of PG Tips there were cards – featuring Freshwater Fish, Wild Flowers or, more exotically, Tropical Birds and Wildlife in Danger. The Wildlife in Danger cards featured creatures I didn’t even know existed... so I certainly had no idea they were endangered...

I’d send off for the appropriate album. Every ‘new’ card was stuck into it with glue. I can’t remember the name of the glue, but, if I ever smell it today, I am transported back – immediately, in a way that Gustave Flaubert would recognise – to when I was six years old.

Despite all those exotic cards (Crested Hornbill, Bateleur Eagle, White-Faced Whistling Duck, etc) what really captured my imagination was a set of British Birds, issued in 1957, under the title of Bird Portraits. They were painted by C F Tunnicliffe RA. Years later I recall reading that he painted these miniature masterpieces to the same dimsions as the finished cards: that is 36.5 x 68.5mm. Amazing.

These 50 cards were the definitive portraits of the birds I already saw in the garden, or would come to see in due course. Except one: of the 50 cards in the series, there’s just one that’s eluded me. I’ve yet to see a Golden Eagle in Britain.

First post...

Surrounded by broadleafed trees, the bird-table has Lake Windermere as a backdrop. So far a total of 26 species have come here to feed:

Blue tit
Great tit
Cole tit
Marsh tit
Long tailed tit
Chaffinch
Greenfinch
Siskin
Dunnock
Nuthatch
Greater spotted woodpecker
Jackdaw
Jay
Magpie
Blackbird
Song thrush
Mistle thrush
Robin
Pheasant
Mallard
Wood pigeon
Black headed gull
Wren
Goldfinch
Bullfinch
Sparrowhawk

But, of course, there's more to it than that...