Twitching

The RSPB's annual Big Garden Birdwatch week-end has rolled around again and as I prepare to stare into the depths of my small back garden for the allotted hour, I can almost guarantee what I am going to see - the same as every day. To wit: one jocular robin, one diminutive wren, two raggety blackbirds, a pair of dainty collared doves and my noisy tribe of three (possibly four) great tits. Anything else would be a huge surprise.

I am indebted to my elder daughter (who works for the Zoological Society of London) for news of a rare sighting that has got birders in the south of England twitching. Early in December a solitary male black-throated thrush (turdus atrogularis) was spotted in the grounds of ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire - not a recent acquisition but an accidental visitor and an extremely rare one in the UK. The black-throated thrush inhabits north-eastern Europe and Asia, principally the pine forests of Siberia in summer before migrating down to the warmer climes of the middle east and India in the winter. Whipsnade's surprise visitor therefore finds himself a couple of thousand  miles off course and the supposition is that he has been diverted westwards by unusually strong winds.

A ZSL spokesperson said "Whipsnade Zoo is home to many amazing animals and it's wonderful that this bird has chosen us as a place to stay for the holidays! It's been amazing to see the interest in this beautiful bird. We've welcomed 40 photographers (see below) and birders have been flocking to us each day after the sighting was posted online. Although the species has been seen in the UK before, it is an extremely rare sighting."

Good extra business for the zoo, then. One supposes the black-throated thrush will overwinter at Whipsnade and then go back to Sibera once the thaw sets in there, driven by the urge to find a mate, and full of stories of his strange sojourn on western shores among the tribe of the paparazzi!


The handsome fellow himself - turdus atrogularis

For a poem on theme this week, the magpie in me has stolen a conceptual idea and the odd phrase to boot from that master of coincidental fictions, Italo Calvino (the greatest Italian writer of the 20th century). If you've not read his novel If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, it's a tour de force, a breathtakingly inventive narrative concerning the interdependence of fiction and reality.

Not The Best Christmas Then
If on a winter's night, a poet were to write
about the plight of a swarthy migrant traveller,
who from the whitening wilds of far Siberia
by hapless fate was blown all unbeknown
way off his course, intended destination overflown,

slingshot out west across the stormy channel
at the mercy of a headlong rushing wind,
to alight quite alone, one of a kind,
in mildest Anglia for the season,
what might he say of this black-throated thrush?

At rest in a laurel bush after his transitory fright,
thrush would know he's in a strange longitude;
his mental compass flags the wrong location.
Still, what to do except to make the best of it?
Brave bird, pragmatic thrush, our poet might opine.

As for that handsome bright-beaked vagrant, in time
he surely starts to wonder if this is not some cosmic joke
being played upon him by the avian Gods who mock
birds for their sport. For here upon the rolling hills
stroll bison, rhinos, elephants, some camels and a yak!

His plaint though - yes, he has one - he would see set down
in verse thus: thrush struggles to obtain a moment's peace
from dawn to dusk, pursued as he is by the ceaseless
flashing of the cameras of the twitching throng, who gather
daily in delight to catch a sight of this rare, random passerine.

For Whipsnade's dark December visitor, life is now a zoo;
and though he bears the crushing knowledge philosophically,
even his attempt to find respite in dreams is haunted
by the nightly mocking cackle of a Sumatran Laughing Thrush.
Not the best Christmas then - poem's end can't come too soon.


PS. By the way, the final tally from today's Big Garden Birdwatch was as follows: Robin - 2, Wren - 1, Blackbird - 2, Collared Dove - 2, Great Tit - 3, Goldfinch - 3 (that was the surprise) and Black-Throated Thrush - 0.

Thanks, as ever, for reading. Happy twitching, S ;-)