THE LATERAL HISTORY OF BIRDS

As related by Sid Kipper

I'd like to focus on birds.  Which is not as easy as it sounds, actually, because, just as you get your binoculars zoomed in, the birds usually fly off.

Now birds come in all shapes and sizes.  Well, not all shapes and sizes, obviously.  I mean, a bird the shape and size of a hayrick would never get off the ground.  And anyhow, it would probably die out, due to it going round trying to mate with real hayricks all the time.  But suffice it to say that there's big ones, there's small ones, and there's some as big as your head.

Of course the very best time to hear birds is during the dawn chorus, which is what you'll hear if you get up early of a morning, looking for worms.  Or, in my case, it's what you hear if you stay up late of a night, looking for pheasants.

"The word 'bird' comes from the old English word 'byrd', meaning a young woman - specifically a young woman not yet in adult plumage.  Later it came to mean a fledgling, and eventually any sort of bird, for which there was previously no proper word."

Which is why, years ago, they couldn't tell a hawk from a harnser, which is a Norfolk word for a heron, and nothing like a hawk at all.  Anyhow, let's go back before the dawn of chorus, and start with the birds you get at night-time.

Apart from owls and the like, the birds you get most at night are nightingales.  At one time, long ago, people used to catch them and keep them in nightjars, but nowadays you can't get the parts.  My great aunt Sarah used to play her cello to the nightingales.  That got rid of them, I can tell you.  She was so good at it that the farmer promoted her to a day-job, scaring crows.  But it didn't work out, because the crows just loved her playing.  They used to perch all over her to listen.  Now, for tax reasons she used to disguise herself as a real scare-crow.  It didn't half put the wind up people, seeing a scare-crow in the middle of the field, all covered in crows, and playing a blooming great cello!  But as she didn't actually scare any crows she lost her job, and had to flog the cello to keep going.  The crows were so disappointed they all left the area, and after that the farmer paid her not to play.

Anyhow, to signal that the night is over, we have the cocks.

"According to T Sharper Knowlson, in the book Popular Superstitions, "Shrove Tuesday seems in olden times to have been a season of merriment, horseplay, and cruelty.  'Cock throwing' was indulged in, a cock being tied to a stake and pelted by the onlookers"."

Now cocks are very handy if you happen to want to get up of a morning.  Personally I don't.  And personally, if I did, then I'd get an alarm clock, because you can't really trust the feathered sort.  And, if you could, you'd be forever putting them forward in spring and back in the autumn, which is not easy.  I don't know if you've ever tried to put a cock back?  Neither have I.  I tried to put a pheasant back once, when I heard a keeper coming, but even then I had to nail it onto the branch.

Anyhow, along with cocks go hens, which are named after the parties.  Which raises a question; if women have hen parties, then why don't men have cock parties?  Or, contrariwise, if men have stag parties, why don't women have doe parties?  Not that it's any of my business, because I'm not having any of them.  So, to keep it simple, let's just call them chickens.  Chickens are much more straight-forward.  Chickens lead to eggs, which lead to more chickens, which cross the road.  And related to chickens are turkeys.

"Mr D Burland of Barnsley claims that it was Yorkshire that first gave England the turkey.  William Strickland, a Yorkshire man, set out on a voyage of exploration with a man called Sebastion Cabot, and brought back from Mexico several 'most strange and marvellous birds', and started a turkey farm in Bridlington!"

You don't know what you're talking about!  The turkey was discovered by a nun from Norfolk, called Brenda.  Now, I don't know where you keep your nuns, but in Norfolk we keep them all in a place called Walsingham.  That way if you ever want a nun you know where to get one, and if you don't them you aren't tripping up over them all the time.  Anyhow, Brenda accidentally discovered America whilst sailing her little raft, made only of thatching reeds and Norfolk lavender.  She got blown off course, and went on what was known as the Brenda Voyage.  Well, she thought she must have been sent to America to preach the word, so that's exactly what she did.  Of course, the word she preached was in English, so the people there couldn't understand her, and eventually she give up.  But before she set off for home they gave her a pair of breeding turkeys, which lived up to their name on the way journey.  So, what with them using the lavender and the reed to make nests, she was pretty waterlogged by the time she got back.

When she finally got back to Stiffkey, on a Tuesday afternoon, she had loads of turkeys.  First off people used to keep them as pets, but you'll find that if you keep feeding a turkey it just keeps growing, and people only had small little cottages in those days, so they were a blooming nuisance.  Especially if you had visitors.  They used to shove their beaks up people's skirts and gobble.  So people took to eating them instead.

"According to author Christina Hole; "The notion that the dead sometimes reappear in bird form was formerly very common.  Seabirds of various kinds were thought to embody the souls of drowned sailors"."

Which may explain why we get more and more seagulls all the time, due to there being more and more sailors drowned.  I don't see how you can stop it.  Anyhow, I wasn't going to do seagulls.  I was going to move on to swans.

Swans are all Royal birds, which is not, before you say anything, an old term for princesses.  The thing they used to do with swans was swan-upping, or, in some places, swan-hopping.  Now swan-upping is easy.  You just chase after them in a boat, and up they go.  Swan-hopping is much more difficult, because for that you have to get close enough to find somewhere to stuff the hops, and if you think the swan is just going to hold still while you do that you've got another think coming.

So, we've done domestic birds, but they aren't the only sorts of birds.  Not by a long stalk.  In particular there are all the sorts you get on the bird table.  Now, before you say anything, you may well get swans and turkeys on your bird table for all I know or care, but most people don't, alright?  What I'm talking about are all the things that occur a lot in the old songs, like blackbirds, and thrushes, and larks.

Now, most birds go from side to side, or rather from back to front, but the skylark mainly goes up and down, which makes it more like a Hawker-Harrier Jump Jet, which should really have been called the Hawker-Lark Jump Jet, only that doesn't sound so butch.  This means that to sing like a lark you should really leave the ground and ascend to a great height while performing.

"'Larking about' comes from a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon lac (play, fun), and has nothing whatever to do with larks."

Which is why I didn't mention it.

"'Larkspur', however, is named after the long hind-claws of the bird."

Which I would have mentioned, only I've got nothing to say about it.  You should have tried 'Up with the lark', which refers to the fact that they're early birds.  'Down with the lark', on the other hand, is what incomers say, when they can't sleep for unclear consciences, and should never have moved to the country in first place.

But in those old songs the larks they sing melodious, they're on the wing, they're ascending in the clear air.  To listen to them you'd think that you just couldn't move for larks in the old days.  But, of course, you could.  I mean, otherwise there wouldn't have been any room for all the blackbirds and thrushes, would there?

"The authors of Hamlyn's book, Spotting Birds, have the following to say;   "The thrush family is a large one and if you know the song thrush well, you will know or at least guess, that the blackbird is also a thrush.  When you've learned the blackbird you'll begin adding other thrushes to your list"."

Well, alright then.  Blackbirds, thrushes, and other thrushes.  But I was going on to wrens, anyway.

Now, my old Uncle Albert always said that he invented hunting the Wren when he was in the navy, but he was wrong for once.  Because long before his time people used to go out at New Year and try to catch a little wren.  Then they used to parade it around the town.

Mind you, that's exactly what Uncle Albert did, as well.

Of course, years ago farmers used to do all they could to discourage birds.  They used to have scare-crows like my aunt Sarah, of course, but they weren't the only speciality.  There were also scare-rooks, scare-long billed flycatchers, and so on.  Well, in those days there were plenty of birds left to scare.  But in the end they were too successful.  All the birds were so scared that nowadays people are trying to find ways to entice them back again!

But there's nothing new to all this.  Take the case of the dodo.  Years ago people heard of this bird called the dodo, and they heard it was dying out.  So they thought 'what could we do to help?'.  And then it came to them - they had to get everyone talking about dodos.  So they all sent off to have stuffed dodos sent over for them to get people talking.  Sadly, though, it was illegal to stuff a live dodo, so they were all killed off and sent over here so they could be saved.

Mind you, I think that was a lost cause, actually.  I've read up about the dodo in The Boys Book Of Facts And Flags Of All Nations 1947, and I don't think it had long to go.  For instance, did you know that the dodo had lost the power of flight?  Well it had.  But it hadn't lost the inclination to nest at the top of tall trees!  And another thing - dodos used to go up to sailors, and rub themselves up against their legs.  Well, I don't know if you've ever been to Great Yarmouth, but if you were to try that there you'd be extinct pretty soon, I can tell you!

"Brewer says that Ravens, by their intense sense of smell, discern the savour of dying bodies, and, under the hope of preying on them, light on chimney tops, or flutter around sick rooms: hence the raven indicates death."

Of course nowadays birds are well looked after.  So much so that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds has had to be set up.  As a matter of fact I'm doing a bit of work with them.  We're trying to set up a 'bird reverse', which is a place where there'll be no birds at all.  I mean, not everyone likes birds do they?  And they do tend to attract bird watchers, which nobody likes.  They call them 'Twitchers'.

Mind you, I think Twitchers are misunderstood.  The trouble is, people think there's only one sort of them, but that's just ignorance.  You can get all sorts.  There's the White-Fronted Twitcher, the Black-headed Twitcher, Greater- and Lesser-spotted ones, and so on.  If you want to know more you can get a book called 'I Spy Twitchers'.  Or join something like we have in the Old Goat Inn, The St Just Bird Watcher Watchers.  They organise meetings and so on, and, once a year, as a treat, they hire a mini bus to watch them in their natural habitat, in Croydon.

Of course, you don't see as many Twitchers about now as you used to at one time of the day.  Some people try to blame the farmers for it, but I won't have that.  I don't reckon the farmers shoot enough of them to make any real difference.

But the Twitchers don't know everything.  For instance, they don't know the best way to catch pheasants.  And I won't tell them.  Also, they don't know one thing that's been worrying me for a long while - how do they milk the chickens for cream of chicken soup?

"The authors of Spotting Birds, pose this thought.  "Strange to think, isn't it, that the little sparrow taking crumbs in the street, and the flock of starlings roosting across the field, control our very lives.  For if all the birds were to disappear the insects of the world would multiply so rapidly there'd be nothing left for us to eat"."

Well, no, actually there'd be lots of insects left for us to eat.  And honey.  But there's two sorts of birds I haven't done yet.  There's hawks and there's cuckoos.  Now both of them are sort of anti-bird birds, one way or the other.  Because hawks catch other birds and eat them, while cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests.

Cuckoos arrive in the spring, and appear in the letters page of the Trunch Trumpet along with complaints about Mrs Dace's late-night tea dances, and appeals to raise money for my cousin Kevin to be sent somewhere.

Which only leaves hawks.  Well, actually, I've got nothing to say about hawks.  Except that the people who flew them were a rough lot, which is why you still see signs on people's gateposts today saying 'No Hawkers'.  But hawkers weren't stupid.  I mean, at least they could tell a hawk from a harnser.  A lot of people couldn't, which is pretty daft because a harnser looks nothing like a hawk, as I said at the beginning.  Which means, I suppose, that I must have come to the end.