The early birds
Catch spring first! Meet the season’s advance guard on a tiny island in our southern seas.
MIGRATION, OR THE seasonal movement of animals across the globe, is one of Nature’s greatest spectacles. Flying across ocean and desert, tracing rivers and coast, millions of birds are now winging their way back to Britain for the summer. Desperate to witness this miracle of life, to shake off the late winter blues and fast track into spring, I set out to meet them.
Spring in Britain isn’t aligned south/north, but rather south-west/north-east. Spring itself is a migrant, travelling at a steady two miles per hour, bringing life in its wake. A life that grows into summer, then migrates south once more in autumn, leaving the empty pit of winter. This makes where I’m heading the first port of call for spring in the British Isles. I’m driving to the end of Cornwall, then catching a ferry still further. It is a thrilling prospect.
Swallows, house martins, warblers, puffins, shearwaters, whimbrel: these are the feathered confirmation that spring is coming. The green shoots of plants, drifting blossom, lengthening days and rising temperatures: these make the cake of spring. Birds: they are the icing. Twenty eight miles off-shore, the Isles of Scilly must be a welcome sight to these summer visitors. For most, it’s a stepping stone, a last services before their destination on the British mainland is reached. For some, this will be their home for the season.
It’s on the ferry that things start to change. The mainland drifts away like a retreating ice sheet and birds appear. Hand-railing along the southern coast of England, gannets (our largest sea bird), puffins, guillemots, razorbills and numerous other species fly in small groups or alone, heading west. The more you look, the more obvious the movement becomes; more purposeful, more deliberate. This is visible migration (or ‘vis mig’ as it’s known in birdwatching terms). These birds are heading for their breeding sites on rocky cliffs – either out on the islands I am heading to, or turning the corner up the western side of Britain.
The archipelago covers more than a hundred isles and islets which together form the nation’s smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty at just over six square miles. Five islands are inhabited: the main island of St Mary’s, plus Bryher, Tresco, St Martin’s and St Agnes, which are known as the off islands.
SOUTH SEA GETAWAY Looking like a Polynesian island, Great Porth is just one of Bryher’s white-sand beaches.
Out on the deck of the ferry the forward horizon starts to fixate me. Down at wave height, there is a bird whose skill at mastering the air and staying out of the water is mesmerizing: the Manx shearwater. The sea moves, the air moves and the birds move, often seemingly without beating their wings. Needless to say these albatross-like birds are heading in a similar direction to the others.
All this movement makes me restless – after all I’m here to walk. The Isles of Scilly are ideal for ramble-almost-anywhere exploring, and because they’re small there’s plenty of time to stop and to look. The off island of Bryher is my particular destination, home to another Birdman who many of you may have read about (see panel opposite). It has a host of different habitats: cliffs, sandy beaches, estuaries, woodland, scrub, open grassy fields, low hills. Stand on a cliff edge and the thing that strikes you is the sheer number of islets in the archipelago. The sky is blue and dabbed with cumulus; the sea mirrors it, with atolls poking from the waves with the same regularity as the clouds. Ancient walls curve down to bays containing the largest, smoothest pebbles. Prehistoric tombs watch from on high, dug into the near hillsides like coastal defenses from recent conflicts.
This island has a slice of everything and birds can be found anywhere. Trees or shrubs give particularly effective cover for the weary. A bush may contain fifteen blackcaps, two chiffchaffs and seven willow warblers, or it may contain nothing. In spring, migrating birds are eager to get back to their breeding grounds, keen to be first to bag the best nest site and have the pick of partners. This means an onwards, ever onwards, journey for most, and sightings will be brief. The bird that was here in the evening may be long gone by morning. This is part of the allure. It’s a lottery. Anything could turn up. You’ve got to be in it to win it, and on Bryher you’re definitely ‘in it’. Heaven has to be a little like this place.
The migration of birds, like many things, is complicated. To start, there are these summer visitors who arrive in spring to breed. Then there are winter visitors who fly in from the north in autumn because Britain has a readier supply of food through the coldest months. There are passage migrants who stop off here to rest and feed before continuing their journey. There are partial migrants, like starlings and blackbirds, whose resident numbers swell in winter as birds from colder countries join their cousins here.
“The bird that was here in the evening may be long gone by morning. This is part of the allure… Anything could turn up.”
Altitudinal migration is a phenomenon that doesn’t involve leaving the country: species that breed high in the mountains head to lower levels in winter, where food is more plentiful. Some birds are moult migrants, moving to a safe place to shed and regrow their plumage. Shell ducks are famous for this, flying to the island of Heligoland way out in the North Sea where they’re safe from predators. Most striking of all are irruptions, when vast numbers of a particular bird arrive in search of food, driven by a paucity in their usual haunts. Waxwings are a prime example of this irruptive winter migrant. A few birds will get blown thousands of miles off their migratory route: each year the Isles of Scilly will see a handful of rare and exotic species.
Let’s put a few numbers to all this. The Arctic tern has the furthest to fly of all avian migrants: it covers around 44,000 miles on its trip from Greenland to the Antarctic and back again. Around 1.7 million swallows arrive on our shores. Over 30,000 cuckoos make it, and the Manx shearwaters mentioned earlier arrive to the tune of around 600,000 pairs of wings beating. Impressive, but the numbers pale into insignificance compared with butterflies. Yes, butterflies. Southern Europe sees tens of millions of painted ladies and red admirals leave for Britain in search of nettles and other such plants familiar to our spring and summer wanderings. A moth known as the silver Y arrives in hundreds of millions and yet they are probably the most overlooked of all.
Bryher operates on ‘island time’ and the walking here is relaxed. There’s never any hurry. I’ve been out since dawn. Gorse bushes, flowering in a thickly-spread, buttery yellow, give the island its crown, glowing brighter than any gold. The sunrise is life-fulfilling. A wheatear, that white-rumped small bird from our uplands, feels the hope in the new day. Hardly have I raised my binoculars before he (the males are strikingly black and grey with a dash of white and a powdering of buff) is off, flying purposely rather than flitting about. He is gone, off on the last leg of his great journey, back to some lonely mountainside in Snowdonia perhaps. Later, three more might arrive and spend the night in the same bush. One may be killed in the morning by a merlin as it leaves its roost site, but the other two might get away (I actually see the remains of a predated wheatear during my wandering). Such are the odds on this great journey.
Later in the day, in a hollow with bushes to one side that provide shelter from a strong breeze, seven house martins pass close to me. Flying low and using every bit of cover to make their journey more efficient, they move with the determination of marathon runners. The really exciting thing is the loose flock breaks and passes either side of me. I get to look them in the eye. For a nano second I am a part of their migration, an obstacle to be avoided. It is a bird like the house martin that I really wanted to see here on Bryher. A bird of our homes, they build a mud nest under the eaves of house roofs, then raise their families alongside ours. I wish them a silent, but heartfelt good luck for the rest of their journey. Down by the seashore, whimbrels are feeding, probing their long downward curving bills deep into the sand, searching for the fuel ( lug worms etc) that will get them to their destination. A few minutes later and they’re off. A straggly line, all bill and legs, mastering the air over the waves, to the next of the Isles of Scilly, then on to the big British isle beyond.
You know that feeling when you arrive home after a long flight and you are secretly jealous of people who have loved ones there to meet them? Let’s show our birds some love, stand on a hilltop on Bryher, and welcome back our swallows, martins, warblers, and all the rest of these eternally optimistic returnees.
“The loose flock breaks and passes either side of me. I get to look them in the eye. For a nano second I am a part of their migration…”