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.‘For God’s sake, Danny, we’re going to end up in jail at this rate!’After that little shock we passed the time pleasantly, and within a few hours Danny could confidently identify dunlin, redshank, oystercatcher, avocet, ruff, knot, lapwing, golden plover, grey plover, curlew, little stint and a shelduck.The other ducks were still those quacky things and the seagulls remained seagulls.But his knowledge had grown admirably and there were some superb-looking photographs on the way.We got back to the car.Loaded it up and drove out of the reserve in search of an old·fashioned pub for a pint and an ornithological debrief.As we drove away from the coast we travelled up a slight hill and I looked in the mirror at the expanse of reed beds and marshes.To my horror, roughly in the direction of where we’d been, a large dark plume of smoke was arising.Something was on fire.DULL AND DRAB FEMALESA summer’s evening.A river.Ducks, geese, swans and that ubiquitous pair of wild water chickens: the moorhen and the coot.Coot with its signature matt black plumage and spotlessly white bill and facial shield.Bald as a coot.The coot, of course, is not bald in the human sense of hairless.Neither is the United States’ sacred bald eagle.But then bald originally meant ‘white’.A bald person’s head was white, that is, pale, compared to a person with hair.I was musing on these things as Tori and I sat at a quayside bar.It was also a great place for other, non-avian, animate objects.Look at those delicious creatures.Girls out on the town.Rolling, wiggling and bouncing firmly and sweetly.Their scant clothes hanging on to their bodies as if mostly by accident.A single man’s dream.And I was sitting there with my wife sipping a flat lager.‘Isn’t this lovely?’ Tori asked.‘Perfect,’ I assented.‘Then why are you looking so damned miserable, then?’Before I had time to make up my answer, I noticed that walking towards us were two generously proportioned girls so scantily clad they seemed to be wearing their bodies on the outside of the clothes.Tori, who had noticed the target of my intent stare, turned to me and said, ‘I know what you’re thinking: whatever possesses some girls to come out dressed like that? Who’s going to look at them? The state of them! Appalling.’‘Yes, you’re right, sweetheart; my thoughts entirely.’It certainly does not happen in bird world.It’s a truth universally acknowledged among birders, though probably denied by a lot of them, that the bird they really want to see is the adult male.The adult male in full breeding plumage.Not the duller, drabber female.These words are not mine.Look in any bird book and the language is the same:‘Next to the brilliant male, the female is rather plain.’‘The female is smaller and duller.’‘Female is a rather drab version of the male.’‘The female is similar to the male but the colours and marking are weak and washed-out looking.’‘Female drab.’‘Female plainer with fewer streaks.’‘Female plainer with more streaks.’‘Female browner all over, with less pronounced markings and a generally drab look.’The point can be illustrated by several common species that even the bird-not-watcher will recognize.The mallard duck: every pond, lake, river estuary, harbour or puddle will have a mallard.The male with his shimmering bottle-green head, white neck ring, clean yellow bill and flashy purple-blue wing-bar, and a dull brown female paddling behind.The blackbird; female a brown bird.The greenfinch; female not green.The chaffinch; female a dull version of the male.The sparrowhawk: male slate-bluey-grey above and barred orange beneath; female greyish bars beneath and dull, dark brown above.The golden oriole: male truly fabulous, startling yellow; the dullish green female doesn’t stand a chance against a stud coloured like that.And as for the ruff…In spring, the male doesn’t bear thinking about.A bizarre, broad feathery collar that can be black, white or reddish-orange.Forgive me, but it’s bordering on the ludicrous.Especially for a British bird.No competition from the duller, drabber, plainer, dingier, mousier, more washed-out, lacklustre female.‘Woah, wait a minute now, Rory,’ I hear you cry.‘What about the grey phalarope?’Alright, yes, I’ll let you have that one.The grey phalarope male is duller and drabber than the female, which is, in the summer, a rather fetching brick-orange.And the dreary male of this species is the one that incubates the eggs and rears the chicks.Come on, male grey phalarope memo to self: ‘Must be more brightly coloured.’But the rule of thumb is largely true, and in species that have drab males, the man-birds make up for it by having louder or more intricate songs.It didn’t seem fair somehow, back in human-world, on a summer’s Friday evening in Mojo’s cocktail bar.Surrounded by sublime and exotic beauty, there was I, the dullest and drabbest of dull, drab males, drably and vainly leering over the dreary rim of his dull beer glass.And I don’t think standing up and delivering a loud, intricate song was going to help.A punt full of hen-party-goers had pulled up alongside the quay.Most of them in T·shirts and bikini bottoms.They climbed on to the quayside and started cavorting, free from care and sobriety.I couldn’t take my eyes off them.Tori nudged me and pointed towards the river.‘Moorhens are quite nicely marked when you see them close up, aren’t they?’ she said.I nodded.‘You took the words out of my mouth!’DANNY PUTS ONE OUTAfter some reprehensibly bad driving round single-track country lanes, Danny arrived at a pub so inhospitable looking it would be guaranteed to be free of twitchers.There were two cars in the car park.One without wheels and one without doors.‘This is our kind of place!’ said Danny, lighting up a cigarette.‘I can’t imagine any birdwatchers come here.’‘I can’t imagine any humans come here.Listen, why don’t you just not smoke for a bit.You’ve done enough damage already today.’We walked into the tiny public bar.It was packed with birdwatchers who stopped talking as one and turned towards us.It was so unwelcoming, I thought one of them might come up and tie the dartboard round my neck.I’ve never really done ‘jauntily’ that well, but I took a deep breath and made an attempt, starting with, ‘Evenin’ all.’Much to our relief they nodded non-committally and got back to their conversations [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]