theearlybirder
first thing...
theearlybirder in early days. This photo was taken at Kew Gardens in 1967. I love the mild concern in the body language of the bird and the focus of my concentration demonstrated by the hands held behind my back. And of course the hair, remarkably coordinated with the shoes, which sets this out as a rare image indeed.
I was born on the 10th of July 1965 at Charing Cross Hospital in Agar Street - not its later reincarnation in Hammersmith - opposite the station of the same name. Whether that qualifies me as a ‘cockney sparra’, I’m not sure. Geographically, I suspect the sound of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, a distance of approximately two miles away, might just be audible from that stretch of the Strand under the right circumstances. Appropriately, in the morning on a still day perhaps. But what I do know is that I was born into a London full of sparrows. They filled the first three years of my life. My parents lived in a small flat in Herbrand Street opposite Russell Square Station, which was a lot less salubrious than it might sound nowadays. Dickens buildings were part of the Peabody estate, built originally in the late nineteenth century to house ‘the respectable poor’, whatever that means. In their time they had certainly raised the standard of social housing but in 1960s London they were not anywhere near as glamorous as their location would suggest. It was a dark, cramped place for a toddler. Instead, the green spaces of Bloomsbury, Euston and Camden became our garden: Russell Square, Regent’s Park and London Zoo. Further afield in central London, the lake at St James’s Park, wooded glades in Kew Gardens and Battersea Park, with its fading funfair, were also regular haunts.
I sometimes wonder, and I’m often asked, how my interest in birds came about. The honest answer is that I don’t really know, certainly not in terms of a precise moment. However, I recently found some ancient cine footage of me sat in a high chair, all chubby cheeks and sun-burnished red hair (that my mother insisted was auburn). There are sparrows lined up along the edge of the tray table before me, eyeing up the lump of crusty French stick held tightly in my plump, dimpled fist. Opportunists as always. But what’s fascinating about the footage is that I clearly can’t avert my gaze from them. It's a study in childhood wonder. Throughout my early life there were birds. Everywhere. They filled every void like some avian matrix. Beyond the window, pigeons sat on every ledge, bowing and purring and moving in roving flocks as news of the latest human handout spread, birds parachuting from the rooftops at the merest hint of a handout. And of course Sparrows, in every gutter and between and under every tile. They dust bathed in the dried dirt. And chirped, incessantly. Sometimes they would bicker and fight but, most importantly, they were just there, an audible backdrop to central London life. Privet hedges, the more tightly clipped the better, chattered with invisible gangs of sparrows concealed within. I remember going to London zoo and watching recently-fledged house sparrows being fed around the feet of the giraffes. Towering and magnificent as they were, especially to a small boy, I was far more interested in the little begging mouths of the fledgling sparrows and the industry and agility of their parents as they caught beakfulls of flies and successfully avoided being trodden on as they foraged. Some even seemed to live in the raised mangers of hay intended for their lofty hosts. On the blue bridge across the lake in St James’s Park they would fly from the overhanging trees to take bread and seed from my outstretched hand, their tiny claws gripping my fingers to seal a connection that has lasted a lifetime.
"Throughout my early life there were birds. Everywhere. They filled every void like some avian matrix"
"My bedroom overlooked the surrounding gardens and it was almost like looking out over a woodland canopy"
By 1969 my parents had moved, after a short spell in a flat in Dalston off the Balls Pond Road, to suburban Harrow in north west London and our new home was an Edwardian house with a mature garden full of old, convoluted apple trees and an enormous, statuesque pear tree. For a toddler who had finally found his feet, this was a place of discovery. My bedroom overlooked the surrounding gardens and it was almost like looking out over a woodland canopy. Certainly for a child who had started life surrounded by imposing buildings, this was a new and very different world. In the height of summer the leaves almost completely obscured the view of nearby houses. From my bedroom window it was possible to see the tree-covered slopes of Harrow on the Hill, a scene reminiscent of those wonderful inter-war posters advertising the virtues of Metroland, where you could live a semi detached existence in your own little slice of rural idyll whilst at the same time enjoying all the benefits of urban living.
I slept with the curtains open, looking out at a sky unencumbered by the rooftops and chimney pots I had hitherto known. Swifts screamed in low level pursuit of each other as house martins pirouetted and swirled in the clouds above them. Monosyllabic chirps emanated from the sparrows nesting beneath the loose tiles next door. Enthralled as I was by all things associated with the natural world, this was perhaps not a situation entirely conducive to nodding off. In terms of sleeping habits, people are often regarded either as larks or owls: the former early to bed and similarly to rise, the latter very much the opposite. A complex cocktail of chemicals and hormones influences the way our bodies respond to seasonality and the circadian rhythms of night and day. And there is no doubt that our internal clocks do tick along at different rates. The bird song of summer evenings was my lullaby: I drifted off swiftly and slept deeply, but it was not prolonged. As soon as sunlight kissed the new day, and the dawn chorus began, I was ready to get up. I was most definitely a lark.
"As soon as sunlight kissed the new day, and the dawn chorus began, I was ready to get up. I was most definitely a lark."
"As the 1970s progressed, I became a teenager and acquired an old, heavy pair of binoculars"
So, as the 1970s progressed, I became a teenager and acquired an old, heavy pair of binoculars and an older and heavier bicycle. I would slip silently out of the house at first light with the aim of cycling to one of the places I had read about the night before. I would pour over the A-Z Street atlas of London and cross reference it with passages from Eric Simm’s wonderful book ‘The Birds of Town and Suburb’, published in 1975. The Welsh Harp in Hendon and Cassiobury Park in Watford achieved mythical status in my youthful mind as places to find tree sparrows and smew, little owls and lesser spotted woodpeckers. Birds that had until that point existed only in my imagination and the wonderful paintings by Raymond Ching on the pages of the AA Book of British Birds that lived at my bedside. I think it very likely that my love affair with maps also took hold during this chapter in my life.
There is just something about the start of a new day that I find enduringly irresistible.. that it’s the best part of the day may seem like a throwaway cliché, but that does seem to hold true on so many occasions. The clear, azure sky of dawn has filled with clouds by the time most people have woken to look at it. The air can be still and refreshingly cool and the birdsong is not forced to compete with the background hum of everyday life - traffic and trains, construction noise, lawnmowers, the collective commute. The sun of a new day illuminates at an angle which gives everything, from flowers to feathers, a warm lustre that is bleached away by the less-forgiving light later in the day.
"The clear, azure sky of dawn has filled with clouds by the time most people have woken to look at it."
"I love the exclusivity of first thing. The world belongs to you and you to it. While others sleep, the nocturnal and diurnal swap places."
If I’m honest, I also love the exclusivity of first thing. The world belongs to you and you to it. While others sleep, the nocturnal and diurnal swap places. Creatures of the night melt away to their hiding places while others wake to celebrate survival to see another daytime. Sunrise. The dawn chorus: to focus on the incredible descending notes of a willow warbler or watch a newly-hatched mandarin duckling dry in the warmth of a pool of morning sun is to experience nature almost at its most exquisite and pure. And yes, of course I’ll admit there are some mornings when the appeal of staying in bed just that little bit longer is strong, and I suspect that urge may get stronger the older I get. But while my body clock ticks along in the way that it does and the fear of missing out is greater than the lure of a cosy duvet, I shall continue to enjoy the half light of the blue hour and the promise each new dawn brings.
theearlybirder,
October 2023
