They make a mess of your tourer and wake you up at the crack of dawn with all their noise, but many of us still love them. No, I'm not talking about the kids – I'm talking about our feathered friends.
With the majority of caravan sites enjoying rural settings, it's easy enough to take the birdlife around you for granted. Pigeons, blackbirds, sparrows and starlings are common birds that virtually everyone will recognise. But if you saw a large pinkish-brown bird with a vivid flash of blue on its wings, would you know you'd been lucky enough to spot the usually shy and retiring jay? And if you've ever spotted a tiny black and white bird frantically bobbing its tail up and down, in a car park or town centre, would you know you'd just seen a pied wagtail?
There's a real pleasure to be had from being able to put a name to a bird, and then discovering more about its habitat, lifestyle and foibles. With that in mind, I had arranged to spend a morning with RSPB warden, Jack Edwards at Garston Wood Nature Reserve, near Salisbury, to get an introduction to birdwatching. My plan was then to head back to base at Postern Hill Caravan and Camping site, to put my new-found skills into practice from my Lunar Quasar.
When I meet Jack, he hands me a pair of RSPB binoculars but explains that many of the birds you'll see in a woodland setting are so small and fast that it's actually easiest to recognise them from their song. He stops, cocks his head slightly and listens. "Hear that? That's a blackcap." To me, it sounds more like a blackbird, but Jack soon puts me right: "The blackcap's song is similar to a blackbird's in that it is long and melodious. But it's higher in pitch and more undulating."
So how has Jack come to know all this, and will I ever be able to recognise all the different types of birdsong? "It would be impossible to learn every type of call," Jack tells me. "You're doing well if you pick up a few new ones every year." The calls Jack does know are those he has learned from descriptions in books. "But things have got easier these days," he says, "because you can learn birdsong from CDs."
It's time for me to start learning to identify bird calls, and an easy one wafts down from the canopy of leaves above. It's a chiffchaff
– so called, because its song sounds as if it's singing its name.
"It is a very distinctive song, with an even-paced, metronomic
tone," Jack tells me.
Suddenly, we catch a glimpse of the bird we are listening to. A dark silhouette zips between the branches. I grab the binoculars, but the chiffchaff has already flown to another perch. I try to locate it again and briefly see its beige breast and brown wings before it disappears again.
I'm starting to enjoy this and ask Jack what got him hooked. Originally an electrical engineer in the Royal Navy, he gave it up to become a warden at this ancient coppiced wood. "What keeps me fascinated," he says, "is the fact that some of these little birds spend their winters as far away as Sub-Saharan Africa, yet come back to Garston Wood year after year." He tells me that the chiffchaff can be found wintering anywhere from southern Europe to western Africa. I marvel at the idea that these birds have crossed continents, seen zebras and felt the warm desert winds beneath their wings only to return to Wiltshire. The semi-natural Garston Wood is ideal for chiffchaffs, with its understorey of hazel and its canopy of oak. Apparently, this is what chiffchaffs like, but I'm not up on the lingo: what do 'understorey' and 'semi-natural' actually mean?
"This wood occurred naturally more than 400 years ago," explains Jack. "The flora includes bluebells and orchids, and this tells us that the area has been woodland for 5000 to 10,000 years. 'Semi-natural' means the woodland developed naturally, but that man has since tampered with it, for example, by growing hazel for broom handles and fences. 'Canopy' refers to the top of the wood and 'understorey' to the smaller trees that grow beneath it."
All this woodland takes some careful managing. The coppiced area is cut in ten- to 12-year cycles, to create a habitat that will encourage dormice, butterflies and woodland flora. Paths are cut to ensure there is enough open space for butterflies and other insects, which, in turn, encourages the birds that like to feed on them. All this requires hard work and Jack and his team are helped by volunteers. "We have one retired Army major who loves making fences, which protect coppiced areas from grazing animals," says Jack. "It's often hard to keep up with him. Many people come to help out as a sort of holiday. You can stay on one of the campsites and do
some work on the reserve. It is a way of giving something back to the environment."
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