Bird-hiding

How I slowed down, found nature and found my people in the process.

Woosh.

The skies are a clear blue, with the faintest hint of storm-grey cloud ahead. Below, the ground opens into a watercolour of washed-out greens and blues, panning, shadows flowing over hill and contour line. The wind is forever at my back, a perennial tailwind. I open my mouth, ready in awe of the spectacle.

‘Kittiwake! Kittiwake!’ says my voice.

Woosh.

Open my eyes, unstick my cheek from the cold train window that I’ve been resting against. A big yawn and stretch. Ah, I’m ready to become a 30 year-old. I feel like I’ve been 30 in spirit for a long while. I’ve embraced slowness, reflection, self-awareness and oneness with the outdoors in ways that are only appropriate for someone who has had it with being busy and running the rat race.

The train thrums on, an occasional drunken lurch breaking up its otherwise arrow-straight progress across the Cumbrian countryside.

This brings me to birdwatching - the pursuit of slowness, care and enthusiasm. Now, I have little real knowledge of ornithology, but I am nothing but enthusiastic. I couldn’t really tell you if the bird I’ve just spotted is a coot, a kite or a crested grebe (names I’ve just looked up on Google) but I will stop by the wayside, screech to a halt on my bicycle and point animatedly anyway, endlessly excited at this chance encounter with nature.

Admittedly, it IS magical. Birds, and their skyscape, are an enigmatic, entrancing entity, inaccessible to us terrestrials and possessed of a perspective we can only dream of. Birdwatching may not actually get us in the sky, but damn, does it come close.

It was the pursuit of birdwatching that led me to the aptly named group of Bikes and Bird Hides. Run by a fellow educator, Abi, formerly in the South Lake District, it’s a community of like-minded birdwatchers of various levels of enthusiasm or knowledge, united by our love of the outdoors and getting there by bicycle. The format is deliciously simple - meet up to ride bikes somewhere remote, hilly and marshy, eat cake, drink tea, revel in our shared exhilaration of these winged sentinels.

My fascination was only amplified by my conversations with Abi, filled with enthusiasm and encouragements to come along and join in. It felt like talking to an old friend; I had ‘known’ Abi, as I had known Immy, Wylie, Alice, Liam and others who were joining us, via Instagram for months before I actually met them. As the 2023 school academic year came to a close, I finalised plans to join them on the first weekend of the summer holidays in distant, remote, dramatic Cumbria.

As always, the journey there was part of the adventure; delayed trains, missed connections and the good fortune of a compensatory cab meant that it was a dark July night that I rolled into my campsite, the charming Winshields site just south of Hadrian’s Wall. We were to be birdbiking from the pretty Northumbrian town of Haltwhistle, up to the RSPB site at Geltsdale. Even as I set up camp in drizzling rain, snug against a (relatively) dry stone wall, I was captivated. From dreary Midlands urban sprawl to the dramatic North. My hands may have been shivering and wet, struggling to clutch a mug of hot tea next morning, but my spirits remained undamped.

I felt vindicated immediately after I rolled into Haltwhistle. A soggy but cheerful group of 30-adjacent year-olds we were, happy to be there in the mizzle with nothing but miles of hilly, sweeping and scenic miles ahead of us. I was greeted by Abi and Immy like we had met again after years, returning home again, to the far North.

It didn’t matter that we were going so slow as we stopped every few minutes to gawp at the scenery, or exchange stories of this historic landscape. When we got to Geltsdale, we were all soaked, bug-meal and mud-splattered, but didn’t care. The rain had driven all but some ducks, moorhens, herons (and one possible hen harrier) away, but we pointed, stared and laughed with enthusiasm at every distant avian. As I said my farewells that evening, rolled to the local youth hostel and then the pub for a hot meal, I realised I was hooked. This was a wonderful, mindful and rich experience. I wanted to do it again.

We met again many times after: in the almost totally flat landscape of Chester, in Kendal in the Lake District, even as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed, far north near Scotland, each time with nothing but the joy of being present in this landscape of nature and nature’s feathered creatures drawing us back. I grew only slightly better at identifying birds, but it didn’t matter. I could’ve seen only ducks all day, but wouldn’t have cared any less.

****

The train I’m on is taking me back to Kendal, to meet my birdwatching friends once more. The last time we met was on a ferry to the Farne Islands, just off the coast of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Abi had moved across the nation last summer, to the east coast of England, and this was my first time ever in that region. It was a clear, bright and gorgeous early summer’s day, a cool sea breeze the only thing that betrayed the Northumbrian weather. The small ferry rolled and pitched lightly as we got further out to sea. In the near distance, the rocky masses of the Farnes drew closer, bringing with them an ever-growing concentration of kittiwakes, guillemots and the regular flamboyance of an orange-billed puffin. The audio wave of ‘oooh’s from the boat rose to match the wave of bird calls.

By the time we drew alongside the first of the islands, the density of bird calls, birds in flight, birds roosting on the rocky islands and the almost-tangibly thick odour of generations of deposited guano - it was almost overwhelming. The boat operator droned on in a gentle Northumbrian drawl about the numerous species, but I could hardly see one bird for their masses. After taking several photos, I settled back in my seat, rain jacket buttoned up against the sea chill, letting it all wash over me.

I think I get it. So much for life lists, ultra-long zoom lenses and different colours of plumage. Whether it was there, on a boat in the Farnes, or at home, listening to a wren calling from my garden, the insistent and resilient presence of birds is impossible to ignore.

I rolled smoothly downhill to Kendal, my cheeks stinging from the cold but a smile already formed, ready to greet my friends and marvel at the magic of birds once more.