Bird of the Month John Mcewen
It was greatly to the advantage of Denys Watkins-pitchford as a nature writer that he was brought up in the Northamptonshire countryside and received a long art training. It sharpened his verbal descriptions and lent authority to his aesthetic judgements.
Known as a children’s author by the pseudonym ‘BB’, Watkins-pitchford had a particular affection for the bullfinch ( Pyrrhula pyrrhula) or ‘bully’, after its black and stubby bullish beak and head. His favourite pictorial subject was a pair perched on a blackberry branch in a Northamptonshire lane. Carry Akroyd lives in the county and still occasionally sees them in the lanes. One of BB’S earliest successes was the
Countryman’s Bedside Book, first published in 1940. The following passages are typical of those that gave solace to many an overseas serviceman.
‘There can be no prettier sight than a family of bullfinches in late autumn when the red berries glow against the hedge, and the twigs have taken on that soft purple bloom which seems almost like a mist. The soft pink of the male bird’s breast harmonises beautifully with its surroundings … They like deserted roadways and spinneys.’
He found the female’s colouring equally pleasing: ‘The hen with her soft lavender, black and white plumage is a wonderful foil to the resplendent male.’ A resplendent male adorns the cover of the current Collins BTO Guide to British Birds.
The honours of his ebon poll Were brighter than the sleekest mole; His bosom of the hue With which Aurora decks the skies, When piping winds shall soon arise To sweep away the dew. William Cowper from ‘On the Death of Mrs Throckmorton’s Bullfinch’ (1788)
The bullfinch, an able birdsong mimic, was once a popular pet. Rescued ‘bullies’ were a constant of BB’S life. Usually nestlings, he fed them hourly on boiled and huskless rape and canary seed, plus ants’ eggs and mashed boiled egg, slightly lubricated. The female broods the young at night until they are fledged, so a warm covering was required. His favourite was Biddy. ‘Her greatest treat was to curl up amongst my hair, when my head was resting on the back of the chair, and in this cosy nest would go fast asleep.’ She also gathered ‘enormous moustaches of wool and hairs’ from the carpet and offered them with a ‘trilling twitter’. He recognised this as typical mating behaviour, also a welcoming gesture. Alas, his father accidentally trod on Biddy. Another of BB’S bullies, at the point of death, sang a melancholy song he had never heard before.
In living memory bullfinches’ taste for fruit-tree buds made them an officially killable pest. They are shy, glimpsed invariably in pairs; but can be tempted to feeders by sunflower and other seeds, particularly in rural gardens. The UK population (220,000 territories) is steady but forty per cent lower than in the mid-1960s. One map shows them absent only from the extreme north-west of Scotland – where I last saw a couple.
See also ‘BB’S Birds’ and ‘The Art of BB’, published by Roseworld Productions.