Blue tits led the pecking order
One of the minor wonders of my childhood was to see a blue tit pecking its way through the foil cap on a recently delivered milk bottle to get at what we called ‘top of the milk.’
Top of the milk was a low-cost alternative to cream and mum would decant it to pour over tinned mandarin oranges. Delicious!
Milk was originally delivered to the nation’s doorsteps without a foil top. This was when the blue tits, and the occasional robin, learned to dip in to obtain those rich nourishing fats. When the milk bottle top came in, it was a simple learning curve for these clever birds to peck through the foil.
This the tits did in droves (or flocks should I say) and soon every blue tit in the country had learned the technique.
The robins, however, being aggressive territorials, never went round in flocks, so the chances of peer mimicry did not occur.
The young robins rarely had the opportunity to pass on the milkpinching skills.
Now of course, doorstep delivery has declined so presumably the pecking skills are no longer being passed on.
My friend in Whitstable has a seagull which taps loudly on the dining room window every morning demanding his breakfast of bacon scraps.
Craftily, he only does it when none of his pals are about, so the chances of every gull in the land learning the technique are slim, although the bird’s son has adopted the routine. Or has he been taught?
Interestingly, a crafty crow has observed and copied, tapping loudly at a different window. Far too Hitchcockian for my liking.
My other ornithological childhood memory is of big families of sparrows, seemingly arguing in the garden hedgerows. One rarely sees or hears a sparrow these days. People say they miss it. It’s the sound of the suburbs.
Being a sensitive child, I found their constant racket disturbing. Something to do with my parents’ incessant petty bickering. Wheel in the child psychiatrist.
A friend of mine went to Glastonbury Festival, based in a little camper van. He could put up with the cacophony emitted by myriad sound systems, the all-night drumming and the inebriated shrieks of festival goers trying in vain to find their tents.
What drove him absolutely mad was the endlessly repeated metronomic call of a chiff chaff which resided in the tree above his camping pitch.
You must have heard this, doubly annoying when they pause just long enough to make you think they have given up for the day. Then it starts again.
Blow me, when he returned to the same spot a year later, said annoying bird was still at it!
A similar bird haunts my Caribbean holidays. It’s a certain kind of dove that has the most negative and depressing single ‘coo.’ Like a sad, repetitive little sigh of resignation. It always seems particularly prevalent on the day before we have to fly home.
It knows it’s time to pack those damp swimming trunks and those sand-filled deck shoes.
And it has definitely heard the UK weather forecast on BBC World Service!
Ralph Oswick was artistic director of Natural Theatre for 45 years and is now an active patron of Bath Comedy Festival