Birds Britannia. Stephen Moss

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СКАЧАТЬ convenience of birdfood has tracked the way in which we’ve changed our own eating habits. The rise and rise of prepared meals in Marks & Spencer’s is echoed by being able to buy the ‘fat bar’ – none of this getting fat from the butcher and melting it down and mixing it with peanuts and things – it’s all there in a plastic package!

      Today, feeding birds is yet another way in which we express ourselves as consumers, and even practise the art of one-upmanship, according to David Lindo:

      I think a lot of people deep down do feed birds for selfish reasons – but in a good way. They want to say ‘in my garden I get this, that and the other – I get Bullfinches, Chaffinches… I’ve got a great garden for birds – what have you got?!’ There is that competitive edge, but that’s fine, because it’s benefitting the birds, whichever way you look at it, and it’s bringing nature closer to that person as well.

      It is this deeper need to reconnect with nature that underpins our nation’s vast expenditure on bird food – at least £150 million pounds a year. However, Mark Cocker sees this not just as an expression of our consumer society, but as another way in which we make links between ourselves and the natural world:

      Day after day people provide food for the birds, and extraordinary relationships of trust are built up. I think it’s our chance to step outside the fate of our species, which is a terrible one – I mean who wants to be feared by every other creature?! And that simple, Franciscan act of giving to birds makes us feel good about life, and redeems us in some fundamental way.

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      Our urge to reconnect with nature through the birds in our gardens is nonetheless tempered by the fact that the garden itself is an artificial, semi-domesticated space, created by us. Jeremy Mynott is concerned that by feeding garden birds, we may be in danger of turning them into little more than ‘wild pets’: ‘I think the wish to feed garden birds is part of a larger emotional wish to somehow make the birds dependent on us, and control the birds as part of our environment – to “decorate” the environment with birds.’

      The desire for control over wild nature has always been part and parcel of gardening. We’ve always favoured some plants at the expense of others, and waged war on those we consider to be weeds. And in recent years the popularity of television gardening makeover programmes such as Ground Force has led us to regard the garden not as outside of, and separate from, our home, but as part of it – effectively an extra room.

      Now, having invested time and money bringing birds into this space, we may subconsciously want to control them too – we want them to behave in ways that conform to our own moral codes. This can throw up both practical and emotional issues, as Helen Macdonald points out: ‘If you put a bird table in your garden, you are creating a Sparrowhawk feeding station. It’s really quite funny and distressing to realise that when a Sparrowhawk flies along the backs of suburban gardens it’s just taking advantage of the wonderful feeding opportunities people have created for it.’

      When this ruthless predator does pay a visit, Helen Macdonald understands people’s emotional response:

      People get very upset about Sparrowhawks, for example, because they see their garden as an extension of their living-space. So when you look out of the window and you see a Sparrowhawk pulling a Blackbird or a pigeon to pieces on your patio, it’s kind of “murder on the living-room floor”. And this is why some birds are described as being mean, or evil, or villainous, because they become part of the human world.

      And as Bill Oddie notes, the arrival of uninvited predators into our gardens throws into sharp relief the emotional ties we develop with the birds we feed: ‘If you’ve got used to “your” Blue Tits, and some great big predator goes whizzing through, and basically takes that away, I think inside you’re going “Aaagh! That’s mine!” And you know you’ve lost something.’

      As a result, many of us have begun to divide garden birds into two camps: on one side, our friends, and on the other, our enemies, according to Jeremy Mynott:

      We project human values onto the birds, and then admire them or dislike them for those. We like the Robin because it is tame and confiding – or so it appears, in fact it’s the merest cupboard love – we dislike Magpies and Starlings because we think they are noisy, rackety birds, vulgar and aggressive. These are all human characteristics.

      Mark Cocker shares this view: ‘The melodrama that is the garden, and our encounter with it, can lead to the introduction of moral ideas in nature, which are very unhelpful.’

      He points to the way that many people view Magpies – as the arch-villain of the garden soap opera – as a case in point. ‘Magpies are big, bold songbirds, with not much of a song, with a great taste for young songbirds of other species, and we really hate the fact that they eat our Blackbirds, and steal tits out of the bushes.’ But Magpies are fascinating birds too – intelligent and calculating. Tim Birkhead certainly thinks so, as he wrote a book about them, The Magpies, in 1991:

      They’re confident, they’re cocky, and they’re incredibly smart. So they will find a Blackbird or Song Thrush nest, and if the parents mob them or chase them away, they just bide their time, and come back at a more appropriate time. And then, much to everybody’s horror they butcher the offspring on the lawn in front of you.

      Branded as baby-killers, there’s a popular view, promulgated through lurid headlines in the tabloid newspapers and on the web, that Magpies are responsible for a decline in songbirds. Tim Birkhead utterly refutes this: ‘There’s no scientific evidence that Magpies have been responsible for the decrease in garden birds or songbirds. The British Trust for Ornithology was involved in a very detailed survey, we at the University of Sheffield were involved too, and from a scientific point of view there’s no evidence for that.’

      So, although perhaps the majority of Britons blame the Magpie for a perceived decrease in songbird populations (even though, incidentally, the populations of most garden bird species are on the rise), others admire their intelligence and tenacity. Among their impassioned proponents is David Lindo: ‘Magpies I defend to the death. I’ve had many fights with people over them, and people saying that Magpies and Sparrowhawks are causing the decline of songbirds. Well I think we’re using Magpies and Sparrowhawks as scapegoats, because we are the animal that has caused the decline of songbirds much more than them.’

      When viewing the garden-bird soap opera through anthropomorphic spectacles, we are often blind to the real villains – to our own role in the drama. As well as the negative effects of modern farming, industry and transport policies on bird populations, there is another factor much closer to home. Britain’s domestic cats kill fifty-five million birds every year. This has placed organisations such as the RSPB in a tricky position: do they condemn cats as ‘unnatural’ killers of our native birds, and risk losing cat-loving members, or do they ignore the problem? So far they have tried to occupy the middle ground, offering advice on how to minimise the carnage by keeping cats indoors at dawn and dusk, or putting a bell on them. Whether this will eventually reduce the number of birds killed by cats we shall have to wait and see.

      So although our relationship with garden birds is thoroughly modern, our attitudes to individual species remain pretty traditional, resistant to change even in the face of new scientific evidence.

      We have our favourites, like the Robin; our friends, like the Blue Tit; and our enemies – top of the list being the Magpie and the Sparrowhawk. And in the garden-bird family there has always been one poor relation: the House Sparrow.

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      The recent history of Britain’s sparrows reveals not only the strength of our passion for our feathered neighbours, but also our inability as garden СКАЧАТЬ