91Èȱ¬

Some of you may recall that I had a boyfriend at University who was a bit of a layabout. This story concerns him, his brother, his brother’s girlfriend and a small bird. The names have been changed.

The relationship I had with Eddie was a volatile on-off affair, full of fireworks and emotionally demanding scenes. During one comparatively stable month, we spent some fine spring days together; I was at University studying history and working part-time - Eddie was doing very little, an activity in which he excelled.

We had plans one weekend, involving something intimate and couply probably, but I forget what; it all came to nought due to untimely intervention by Birdline. For those of a certain age, long long ago in the pre-internet days, members of the bird watching world would submit sightings of birds to a phone information service which was then accessible to all by calling a number. This, as you will have gathered by now, was, and for all I know still is, Birdline. You ring them and a recorded message tells you all the rare birds sighted throughout the British Isles.

The call came via Eddie’s brother, Steve. Throughout his whole life, Steve had been fascinated by birds, some would say obsessed. He spent all his holidays as a child volunteering for the RSPB, and studied whatever it would take to get a job working with his beloved birds. Steve as an adult was duly rewarded with a permanent position working for the RSPB and he spent his working days tramping the moors, glens and mountains of Scotland observing, recording and who knows what else. A man happy in his work, with a very relaxed attitude to laundry and the only individual known to me personally who has climbed all of Scotland’s Munros.

Steve called on the Friday morning, breathless with excitement. The Holkham Estate in Norfolk, a well-known birding stomping ground, was at that very moment home to a red-breasted nuthatch. Hold that front page. This bird, whilst common as anything in the Americas, was as yet unknown this side of the Atlantic. This was its first European sighting EVER and we were going to see it. We? Who’s this we? Steve, Steve’s girlfriend Bonny, Eddie and me.

Eddie and I drove to Edinburgh that afternoon. All thoughts of couply activity had disappeared in a puff of reddish-brown feathers – we were going to Norfolk! At Steve and Bonny’s house we packed the essentials: boots, map and binoculars, and as the sun set over Auld Reekie we headed south for the shires. Steve drove all night, whilst the rest of us tried to sleep. Cramped in the back seat I spent most of the night with Eddie’s none-too-clean feet in my face. At daft o’clock we stopped at a service station and bought snacks for the day ahead –no shops on the Holkham Estate, and certainly no time for girly sightseeing in Norfolk. We arrived at the estate at 7 o’clock in the morning. Guided by hand-written signs through country lanes and woodland policy we pulled up at a car-parking area, in which I was astounded to see a collection of at least 50 cars.

On foot we headed for the woods and pretty soon encountered others on a similar quest, lured by the promise of a rare sighting. Tales abounded of nuthatch activity. It was hanging around in a flock of long-tailed tits. It had spent most of the previous day perched on the rangers’ shed. It had flown away. And so on. In a soft wooded glade carpeted by pine needles, we found ourselves a spot and I proceeded to lay out our picnic breakfast. So, how did we get to see the bird? I asked Eddie, keen to show an interest. There were scouts, he explained, all over the forest. If anyone saw the bird they gave a sharp, fast couple of claps, and that was the signal for everyone to investigate. I buttered a roll thoughtfully and started to cut cheese. The air was muffled and womblike under the trees and strangely somnolent. A toddler played cherubically with some pine cones and a friendly air prevailed. A rhythmic clap from deep in the trees started me out of my daze. Within seconds the seemingly benign binocular-wielding birders were transformed into a herd of elephants at a half-price sale in a bun shop. With a great trumpeting and stampeding they went crashing off through the undergrowth. The small child was saved from a bizarre death (‘Toddler Twitcher Tragedy’) when a pair of hands snatched it to safety and threw it into a bush. The chase was on!

Twenty minutes later, chest heaving, heart pounding, legs shaking, the thought struck me. If the bird had been in that tree, it was not likely to hang around with 100-odd people pursuing it like hounds in full cry. We returned to the wreckage of snacks and picked pine needles out of the yoghurt. Repeat ad infinitum.

After 8 hours we called it a day. The poxy bird (by now referred to uncharitably by me as the dry-roasted nut-rash) was nowhere to be seen. Steve had not slept for 36 hours, our clothes were starting to smell, food was a distant memory, and we had failed in our quest. A footsore and disconsolate group, we trudged back to the car. On the path we passed half a dozen people gazing nonchalantly into a bush and we stopped to chat and to console. What were they looking at, we wondered? That green woodpecker we saw earlier? A great grey something? No, they giggled. They were looking at a red-breasted nuthatch. We gawped. The smallish, greyish, reddish bird stared back as if wondering what all the fuss was about. Then it flew away.

Since moving to Orkney I have become interested in birds - it’s hard not to be when on any given day I can look out of my bedroom window and see guillemots, cormorants, shags, fulmars, red-breasted mergansers and occasionally great northern divers. Every time we visit the house of a new friend, I cast an eye around their bookshelves to see if they keep a decent bird book. If so, I take it down and flip to the section at the back marked ‘Accidentals’, wherein are listed rare sightings. I point proudly. 1989-1990. Norfolk. Red-breasted nuthatch. I was there. I saw it. My friends make polite murmuring noises. The boyfriend, I tell them, did not last long, and is currently on his third wife. This I know because after nearly 20 years he contacted me through Friends Reunited - but that, as they say, is another story.