This article first appeared in Birdwatching Magazine in December 2024
I was watering our roof terrace containers… (I’ll stop swanking, we live on a hill and our sunken garage roof is fenced in and tiled.)
As I turned back toward our mini-yard the sentinel arrived. You may recall that this year’s Blackbird has been tipping the wink when urban tigers threaten the peace of our oasis. He’s becoming quite tame, when Hawkeye scatters meal worms under the bushes he runs past her feet to binge. Tame enough to watch her from four feet away, but he flies off if she throws him a titbit. Lately, he’s been followed by his lad, who dad is still feeding despite him being be a well grown teenager.
Dad flew past me to the foot of the feeders where he generally picks up the suet thrown every which way by the Starling vandals. Teenage lad hopped around behind him just below the step up to where I was watering. Dad was busying himself gathering dinner, so the lad just idled, then backed up a bit to see what I was doing. By this time, I was a yard from the step watering the last of the plants. Water was splashing on the slabs below lightly spraying where the boy had backed up to. He shook his wet wings, cocked an eye at me and hopped closer into the spray. As I chatted away to him, he took a long luxurious shower, unlike any teenage boy of my acquaintance! When I shifted the hose and his shower stopped he jumped up a foot in the air and settled back with an accusing eye. I moved the spray back to the tiles and he continued to shower until dad piped a warning call and led the lad off to a quieter spot for dinner.
Now, when I water the patio, boyo runs through the spray from one side of the ‘patio’ to the other like a toddler at a paddling pool. I chat to him, just like I talk to his dad and the cock Robin who flies straight in if I move a pot revealing the tiny earthworms beneath.
My conversations with critters is not the first sign of madness, because I’ve been doing it since knee-high and dad did it before me. Communing with nature I suppose. It almost always has a reassuring effect if you chat quietly and calmly.
It did backfire once. Many years ago, I was at a Serbian mountain resort devoid of snow and skiers in summer. The great big chalet hotel was the only building for miles and I wandered about in the adjacent meadows clutching my old Collins Fieldguide and rubbish bins. Despite my lack of skill and sub-optimal optics I had a great time seeing Tawny Pipits at every turn, and the only Scrub-robin I’ve ever been lucky enough to see. A few local farmers chatted Serbian with me while leafing through the guide to show me where shrikes were. I chatted back in English and the lack of translation didn’t both either of us. Around me feet in the outdoor diner, Black Redstarts vacuumed up the last night’s moth fatalities.
My holiday companion was into hikes. We walked up the valley to the limpid lake and pines and she kept going up the mountains as I lazed by the lake, my back against a tree, down which skittered a chocolate coloured squirrel. “Hello mate” I said, at which the beast reared up and hissed leaping past my ear and scaring the living daylights out of me! Just not the chatty sort I guess
