My grandmother was deeply connected to nature. She could identify trees from the shape of their bare crowns in winter, she knew wildlife by sight and sound, she told stories of the land and its animals and plants. But I am a city dweller, and I’ve lost this knowledge, these arts.
But during the pandemic’s first spring and summer, I suddenly became aware of birds. Their voices were everywhere. Sometimes I even heard their wings. Against each morning’s silence of a thousand grounded planes, the dawn chorus was deafening.
Once I began noticing them, I couldn’t stop. Maybe I just missed my family, but I wanted to be like my grandmother. I wanted to find beauty in my more tightly circumscribed place and to better know the creatures in it. If I could do that, if I never went anywhere again, perhaps I might manage to be happy.
So I downloaded an app to learn the songs of the birds. Listening to the audio clips and choosing from amongst four options, I matched each bird to its sound. I rapidly rose to become the United Kingdom’s second-best identifier of birdsong - a place I still hold, as far as I know. That’s only on the app, because of course, I remain persistently unable to identify birds in the wild. Things vary in the real world, it turns out, and nature offers no multiple choice.
But I was preoccupied with this birdsong app, and people began to mock me, calling me a ‘twitcher’. I recoiled at this. I’m not a twitcher, I protested. Twitchers are the trainspotters of the fields, the nerds of the forest. I’m not a twitcher. I was interested in birds in their socio-historio-cultural context. I was interested in the psychological reasons we were noticing birds in the pandemic. I was noticing birds as a mindfulness exercise. I was learning about the myths and legends that surround them. During a time when everyone was scared about the future, perhaps there was some wisdom to be gained from all the millennia in which humans have used birds to divine their fate.
But still, people snickered. I received binoculars for Christmas.
As pandemic life wore on, I felt worse, more isolated, less inspired. I tried to shake it off in early-morning walks into the frosted fields, alone but for the crows, who were punching holes in iced-over puddles with their beaks, looking for water. They’re symbols of transformation and change, apparently, but nothing was changing for me. I could not write. I told my family that I was going to a distant AirBnB as soon as restrictions were lifted, hoping to get my creative juices flowing again. My daughter was sceptical. You’re just hoping to see some different birds, aren’t you? she said.
My retreat was incredibly rural – there was nothing and nobody around. I was more productive in two days than I’d been in the whole pandemic, and I was elated. Maybe I would reward myself with a late afternoon bike ride, I thought, to a place where I’d been told I might see barn owls hunting, swooping low over the fields in the dusk. They’re powerful symbols of productivity and intuition, and I needed all I could get. But the route to this place was on the road, which seemed dangerous on this ancient borrowed bike. Instead, I pedalled along a sandy-dirt tractor track running between ploughed field and blossoming orchard.
I was alone, as though there were not another human soul in that deserted world. But then I saw him, a lone figure standing on a wooden footbridge. He had large, fancy binoculars trained on the river, and there was not enough room to pass without disturbing him. He was a large man, with a knitted cap pulled low on his head. A little nervous, I apologised and asked if he was looking for something.
I haven’t seen it, he said. I was told there was a kingfisher here yesterday.
Oh, a kingfisher! I said. The colours, that blue and orange – it doesn’t seem like they can be real.
Have you seen one? he asked.
No, never, I said. He seemed to relax, as though he were relieved I wasn’t competition, like at least he hadn’t encountered two people in as many days that had seen a kingfisher, when he hadn’t yet.
If I were a twitcher, I’d have said are those the Opticron Traveller ED 5200s you’ve got there? or similar, but I’m not a twitcher, so this wasn’t going to be a twitcher’s conversation. Instead I said, I love the legend of the kingfisher, from ancient Greece.
And he fiddled with his binoculars and repeated himself as exactly as if the tape had been rewound and played again. I was told there was a kingfisher here yesterday.
I said farewell and rode away. Clearly, we were not the same tribe. This twitcher wouldn’t care about the legend of Halcyone and her husband, who called each other Zeus and Hera as nicknames, angering the gods so much that the real Zeus drowned Halcyone’s husband at sea. The gods took pity and transformed her into a kingfisher, so she could fly back and forth at the water’s edge looking for her lost husband. In a further act of compassion, the gods calmed the seas so she could lay her eggs in peace. If the twitcher wasn’t interested in that, we had nothing further to say.
My ride was strange and magical, taking me through an ancient landscape of mossy forests and bogs full of cypress knees. I saw houses but no other humans, only an inexplicable number of peacocks. One was pure white, like something out of the Arabian Nights or Arthurian legend. Thinking the creature must be a good omen, I paused to take a photo. After regarding me cooly for a moment, the bird swivelled its head on its elegant neck and paced away like a silent-film star at a movie premiere, trailing its extraordinary train.
I saw him again on the way back, the twitcher, and this time I didn’t stop, only called out to him as I passed. Did you see the kingfisher? I asked. He shook his head, wordless. Better luck another day, I said.
It was a beautiful evening, a halcyon evening, balmy, with no wind. Maybe the kingfisher, protected by the gods, was on her nest. I heard wrens singing in the hedgerow. Never disturb a wren’s nest, by the way, or someone you love will die – and don’t mess with their eggs either, or your house will be struck by lightning. Turning towards the hedge to hear them better, a bramble caught my hand, tore at my down jacket. Just shy of the river the bike wobbled, veered, and slid on the sandy soil. I crashed to the ground.
I’d never felt a pain like it. If there hadn’t been so much noise from the sliding tyres, I would have heard the ligament in my knee pop. I writhed and flailed under the bike, my leg full of exploding sensation. With all I could muster – the pain had knocked the air out of my lungs – I called for help. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. I’d crashed, yes, but I’d crashed within sight of the only human I’d seen for miles.
And yes! He heard me and turned around, and god, the pain I was in, but the relief that he was there, my saving grace, god love this twitcher. As our eyes met and we silently acknowledged one another, I was flooded with gratitude.
He paused. Then, ever so slowly, he turned again, his pace unhurried as he resumed his stroll into the sunset. As his receding figure disappeared down the tractor track away from me, his expensive binoculars, slung from his shoulder on a strap, bumped along at his hip.
I lay on a tractor track in Norfolk on a Sunday evening. I had no phone signal, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, a mess of torn cartilage, and a bicycle on top of me.
But for the birds, I was alone. Lying in the dirt and staring at the darkening sky, I wondered how long it would be before I was rescued. I wondered whether I’d spend the night there. I wondered if the next bird I saw would tell me my fate. A robin is meant to be the spirit of a dead loved one - might my grandmother visit me in that form, encouraging me to persist and be patient? Perhaps I’d see a goldfinch, said to appear at the moment a soul leaves its body. As much as I love a goldfinch, I rather hoped not. Or even a kingfisher, bearing its message of peace and protection, forgiveness and hope.
By myself in this unfamiliar place, I was afraid and nearly hallucinating with the pain. But I’m sure I saw her, I’m sure. Low and fast and close to the water she flew – azure blue wings, and brilliant orange beneath.