Sound of silence? One man’s search for a bird’s song ... before it’s too late
Elusive Scottish capercaillie are among 10 of the most endangered birds highlighted in fascinating new book
UNDER cover of darkness, deep in a Cairngorm wood and with eyes peering through a tiny mesh panel, Patrick Galbraith saw what only a handful of people in recent years have witnessed.
It was a chilly April night and hours had passed since, as quietly as he could, he had zipped himself into his sleeping bag.
Earlier from his tent he had watched six of Scotland’s most elusive creatures gather, black as the night and with a flash of red smeared across their eyes.
One by one, wings wildly flapping, the half a dozen capercaillie rose to roost high in the pine trees, calling as they settled, while just a short distance away lorries and cars roared by on the A9.
Now, before the break of dawn, shivering from the cold and trying not to make a sound, Mr Galbraith’s patience was rewarded as he watched the birds’ remarkable mating dance.
He had been guided to the hide by an Aviemore gamekeeper who told him how, as a boy, he had seen the birds so frequently that it was barely worth mentioning.
Since then, loss of habitat, predators, climate change and fragmentation has left their numbers hanging by a thread.
The night-time episode watching the male capercaillie “lek” to attract a mate is recalled by Mr Galbraith in a thoughtprovoking new book which documents his travels around the UK in search of 10 of our most endangered birds.
The encounters he has – holding a delicate nightingale in the palm of his hand, sleeping out on one of the country’s biggest capercaillie leks, and tagging a hen harrier – are extraordinary moments with nature that few experience.
Islands decline
TRAVELLING from Orkney, where he finds kittiwake numbers have declined by 87 per cent since 2000, to the Western Isles where some of the country’s few remaining corncrakes can be found and to the Norfolk Broads in search of the bittern’s distinctive booming call, he criss-crosses the
UK to find disturbingly similar stories of loss.
While the birds’ numbers suffer, there are further victims: in the rural crafts which once helped to sustain birds’ habitats such as hedge layers and reed cutters, among poets, writers; musicians and artists whose creative juices are fuelled by the sights and sounds of Mother Nature; and people who for generations have felt a connection with the birds that roost around their homes.
In the middle is a grim battle between gamekeepers, animal rights activists and conservation bodies, each putting forward their case and sometimes with conflicting ideas that may benefit one species at the expense of another.
Mr Galbraith’s book, In Search Of One Last Song, has his search for threatened birds at its heart but, he points out, it is as much a sociological exploration of how bare our lives would be without them. “When you talk to the people who live alongside these birds you understand how their sense of identity and the way they understand a place is influenced by the presence of these birds,” he says.
“If you like a particular bird or it means something to you, that bird probably also meant something to people 150 years ago in the same place. It echoes down the generations.”
‘Little time’
THE journey across the UK was sparked after Mr Galbraith, raised in Dumfries and Galloway and the editor of a prominent field sports magazine, met naturalist and animal campaigner Chris Packham. The conversation turned to the birds they both adored and the little time some species have left.
He left the meeting acutely aware that if he didn’t hear a nightingale’s song, the gentle purr of a turtle dove, or the distinctive popping sound of a male capercaillie soon, he might never have the chance.
The world’s largest grouse species, capercaillie were hunted to extinction in the 1700s, before being reintroduced to the Cairngorms in 1837. Numbers soared to a high of 20,000 in the late 1970s, but a combination of lack of habitat, low productivity, predation, collisions with fences, poor genetic mix, and climate change are all said to have impacted numbers. There were an estimated 1,100 birds in 2016. “Camping out on this capercaillie lek was an amazing experience and a priviledge,” says Mr Galbraith.
“The gamekeeper is doing all he can for the birds, and he does it because he
Some birds would be in a much better place if different stakeholders were able to work more effectively together
thinks they are an important part of his heritage.
“He has lived man and boy through these birds. But while he is trying to control deer numbers, he believes predators are also a big problem.
“Foxes are a big problem, badgers are another – but that’s hugely debated,” he adds. “One difficultly is there is so much human conflict. Some birds would be in a much better place if different stakeholders were able to work more effectively together.”
On his journey, Mr Galbraith finds a common theme: the impact of human activity on landscapes affecting bird numbers, and the deep sense of loss as their numbers slump. That is brought into sharp focus as he searches out the corncrake in North Uist. Once common throughout the land, the tiny birds now cling to small areas of the west coast.
“It is incredible to think that in the middle of the 19th century you could hear corncrakes calling on the edge of Charlotte Square in Edinburgh. Now they have been pushed right up to the fringes of the country,” he says.
“My uncle lives on the Ardnamurchan peninsula – he remembers when the corncrakes would keep him awake at night making this extraordinary sound. There was once plenty of corncrakes on Skye but this year they counted just 10.”
Cultural links
AS bird numbers slump, the connections between birds and people, customs and culture are fading too, Mr Galbraith adds, pointing to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song and references to peewits “crying across the hills”. They are now a “red list” species.
From the arrival of the first swallows heralding spring to lapwings heading to lowland fields for winter, birds’ movements have influenced human behaviour, he adds. “Fishermen will talk about how they knew it was time to paint their boats when the corncrakes came. Often people’s understanding of time and the rhythm of the seasons was through the birds coming and going.”
In Search Of One Last Song, by Patrick Galbraith with illustrations by Robert Vaughan, is published by Harper Collins and released on April 28