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£1 is not a bad price to pay for a hard-backed book. Even if it is an ex library book withdrawn from stock. Bought from the flea market in South Shields. The late Dr David Lack (the first real field Ornithologist, one-time Director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and author of the book “The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers”) carried out the classic work on Robin territories in a book called “The Life of the Robin.” The Robin has long been known to be a very territorial bird. 2,200 years ago the Greek Zenodotos wrote “a single bush cannot harbour two Robins.” And he was right!
Worldwide a large number of birds are called Robins but an awful lot of them aren’t Robins at all! Cage bird men will know the Peking Robin well. It’s a very popular bird. Tame and confiding it might be but a Robin it is not. It’s a Babbler! The American Robin is as big as a Blackbird but it’s not a Robin either. It’s a Thrush. Give a bird a red breast and “it’s a Robin.” On the other hand young Robins look more like a Thrush. Spotted front and all. They don’t develop the red breast until they get older. Confused? Some Flycatchers get called Robins, lots of Thrushes do, Bluethroats (I once spent a whole afternoon in Whitley Bay Cemetery looking for one lost on migration, before years later, trapping them by the handful on the island of Oland in the Baltic Sea) Rubythroats and Bluetails, but guess where the closest relative to our common or garden Robin lives? Japan. And I kid you not!
Incidentally the average annual adult mortality rate for Robins is 62% and the life expectancy for those left alive is only 1.1 years. As the comedian Eric Morecombe (at least I think it was him) was fond of saying, “not a lot of people know that!”
I visited the Swedish Ringing Station of Ottenby twice. In 1969 and ten years after that. It is situated on the Southernmost tip of the island of Oland, reachable only by ferry the first time I went there though by the time I returned a bridge had been built. Progress I guess. In those days I kept handwritten logs of all my bird watching wanderings which I still have. I dug them out this morning. Fair Isle twice, France, Spain, Portugal, Sutherland and Caithness, Belgium, Holland, the Outer Hebrides, Sweden twice and so on. Reading them now doesn’t half bring things back to me. Of rare birds. Mosquitoes. And lunch with a glorious Swedish girl dressed only in damp bra and panties. Let me tell you about it all. Her I mean!
Ottenby Bird Observatory. Peter and I were sleeping in our van parked in a nearby wood emerging at 4am. every day to drive the fixed Heligoland traps with the residents of the Observatory catching early morning migrant birds . Breakfast after 10am., some sea-watching for a couple of hours then off watching migrating birds of prey in the afternoon before returning to the Observatory grounds in the evening to hash some food up and settle into our sleeping bags for the night. The people at the Observatory must have felt sorry for us and invited us to stay with them as they had a spare room and we jumped at the chance. They had hot water, showers and proper food!
After about a week of living it up for free we were asked if we’d mind giving up the room as a ringer (who handmade his own mist-nets during the long northern winter nights) had arrived from Finland with his girlfriend, but, they stressed, we were still welcome to eat with them. It was a memorable first meal. As we sat down the couple emerged. This Finnish lad and his Swedish girlfriend. Both fresh from the shower. Him in his boxer shorts and her in her underwear. After all this was Sweden. Such sights (and even better ones) were commonplace. Nobody batted an eyelid except Peter and I. You try not looking at a half-naked woman just across the table from you! I tried. I did. Honest! I tried so hard that I was forking my spuds into my right ear! But I digress. There is bird watching and there is bird watching. Back to pigeons Adams!
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What we were discussing at the club, was the number of birds per basket and how these numbers exert their own pressures, especially on holdovers. The temptation to save money by overcrowding the baskets is hard to resist and some clubs, usually the same ones every time, don’t even try. So fine them you say, and we do, but back they come. The welfare of the birds is paramount, especially on long holdovers, but those caring for them are flogging a dead horse if there are too many birds per basket in the first place. Next time you look at a race pannier count the number of apertures available for the birds to use to get a drink through and you will be surprised at how few they are. The flaps obviously have to face outwards and the sides are of no use in a stacking arrangement which leaves only the backs of the panniers available for the drinkers to be fitted to. On the inside of the transporter of course. You might get two drinkers on or only one and in any case there is a dead space in the middle where the strengthener is.
All our watering is done manually. There is no continually operating automatic watering systems and even if there were it wouldn’t solve the problem of giving all the birds equal access to a place to drink. They have to get past those birds which have claimed as their own a piece of the basket in front of the drinkers and who will defend it against others seeking to get past them. More birds per basket means more birds holding smaller territories hence there will be more of them standing in front of the drinkers.
The concept of individual distance is an easy one to understand and operates at all levels. In all kinds of different situations. And in all species. Even in man. It depends on many variables but it is a particularly easy thing to see in wild birds. It boils down to how close you are prepared to tolerate others of your own kind when in a crowd. Of course the exact proximity to others varies, according to whether the crowd is composed of strangers, family groups, of one sex or both. Think about it. And don’t try and tell me you wouldn’t let a strange woman stand closer to you than a strange man!
Next time you see a flock of the same species seagull resting in a field together, take a look at how evenly spaced out they are. Next time you are at a party take notice of the personal space being defended or surrendered by those present and the general spacing-out going on in the room. Watch how strangers keep their distance when first introduced to each other and maintain their individual space by turning sideways on to the person they are addressing and so on.
When I was in my serious birdwatching days I used to look out for Glaucous Gulls (a far Northern relative of the Herring Gull) in the winter. My method was to scan all the resting flocks of gulls. It was far more effective than checking out every gull that flew past. The Glaucous Gulls, immature or adults, were always on the outside of the flock and always farther away from the members of that flock than they were from their neighbours. It was easy. Look for a lone gull that isn’t part of a flock.
The point I am getting at is that regardless of the number of birds in a basket they will always attempt to maintain an individual distance from each other and with them all being strangers so to speak, and of the same sex, this will be pretty uniform. Less birds means more distance per bird. Thus bigger gaps between them and hence bigger gaps and better access to the drinkers. Few is better. Few is healthy. Health and fitness gets them home. In good condition. In one piece.
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The owl came straight at me. Head height. For a brief moment we were looking each other right in the eye. Without thinking I raised my arm to shield my face. It lifted over my head and disappeared silently into the park. Eric Hoskings, the late great bird photographer, lost an eye through an encounter with a Tawny Owl. And still he retained his love of owls, calling his biography “An Eye For A Bird!” I should have known better than to shield my face because Tawny Owls are only aggressive in defence of their young and we are well outside their breeding season now. I was on my way to the pub when I first heard it. Shrieking in some trees across the road. So I stood there. Stock still. With my back to the park. Trying to locate it. It’s a noise that makes your hair stand on end.
Margaret Craven wrote a work of fiction whose title “I Heard An Owl Call my name.” was based on old superstitions about death and owls, lost souls and the spirits of the dead. I nearly bought it but I wasn’t ready for that kind of book at the time so I left it on the shelf. There is something about those owls that scream and hunt in the night (others hunt during the day or at dusk) that is both primeval and sinister. They are fascinating birds. From their large eyes and facial discs to their off-set ears and silent flight. Essential and well-developed for locating their prey in the dark by sound and by sight. Death comes out of this darkness on downy wings, feathered legs and crushing talons. Soundlessly. Suddenly. Superb birds owls. And they don’t kill pigeons!
Fortune favours the brave. And also the persistent! The most successful pigeon men I know never give up. They just keep at it. Non stop. Even when things are not going their way they keep on pushing the envelope. But there is another point of view. I once worked with an American Professor. A very tall, laid-back, elegant, drawling, James Stewart of a man. He had one motto and one motto only. If at first you don’t succeed - quit. And he used to do just that. Often. He ran his life by it.
I also worked with a little fat man, a paediatric cardiologist, who, very early on in what is still a highly successful career, told me that what you need to succeed in this life Rod is not brilliance in whatever field you choose to be in, but staying power. You just have to keep at it and the others will fall by the wayside. Now I know that the world of academia is light years away from the world of pigeon racing but there is something to be said for both points of view. And it is this.
You can persist for too long with the wrong pigeons. The wrong methods. The wrong feeding. And so on. Living in the past when the present is passing you by. But, if you are where you think you are with your pigeons, in the place where you want to be, yet not temporarily doing the business that is where staying power comes into it’s own. Where stubbornness and tunnel vision are assets not failings. Men with these characteristics are hard to beat and always will be. They know when to quit. And when not to.
Did you know that in Manchester, in the time of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) over sixty babies out of every hundred born died before the age of five? That children took full-time jobs as young as six or seven? That the 1833 Factory Act barred all children under nine from textile factories and “limited” the hours of older children to forty eight a week for those under thirteen and sixty nine for “young persons” of thirteen to eighteen? And stipulated that every factory child was to receive two hours schooling a day? And that this act was regarded as a real success? And that it wasn’t until 1842 that a Mines Act prohibited the employment of women and girls underground. Young girls, naked to the waist, who were chained to coal tubs which they dragged on all fours, along underground passages for over twelve hours a day! And that this Act also fixed the minimum age for the employment of boys at ten? If your answer to some or all of these questions is no then I suggest you read a book called “The Making of the Welfare State” by R. J. Cootes. A book that I have just finished.
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It shook me. I’ve read Dickens and I know about “Oliver Twist” the Poor Law Act of 1834 and child labour, but I never really got down to the nitty-gritty before. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t until July5th 1948 that the Welfare State came into being. It took social reformers and visionaries like Ashley Cooper, Edwin Chadwick, Benjamin Disraeli, Joseph Chamberlain the great Mayor of Birmingham, David Lloyd George, Seebohm Rowntree, Sir William Beveridge and Anuerin Bevan all those years to effect change. In early July 1948 The Daily Mail told it’s readers, “On Monday morning you will wake in a new Britain, in a state which “takes over” it’s citizens six months before they are born, providing care and free services for their birth, for their early years, their schooling, sickness, workless days, widowhood and retirement. All this with free doctoring, dentistry and medicine – free bath-chairs too, if needed – for 4s 11d out of your weekly pay packet. You begin paying next Friday.”
It was Harold Macmillan who said, in July 1957 in a speech given at, of all places, Bradford Football Ground, that most of our people have never had it so good! Maybe he was right. Then. But, a look back in time puts things into perspective. England really was composed of two nations in the Victorian era. The rich and the poor. The haves and the have-nots. There is a lot of it still about you know. Pigeons were for eating not racing. What I am really getting at is this. If you know where you were in the past and exactly where you came from, it gives you the sense of purpose to know where you want to be in the future. History isn’t bunk as Henry Ford claimed in 1919. And pigeon racing is just pigeon racing. But you wouldn’t think so at times. You’d think it was life and death! As for the Welfare State of today, what would those early reformers think?
ROD ADAMS.