A Parliament of Show-Off Rooks

Bernard first spoke to me of the spectacle of roosting birds when he was still quite a small boy, perhaps five or six years old. He had been observed by an elderly neighbour sitting on the front doorstep as quiet and still as was possible in order to best monitor the comings and goings of sparrows and starlings and pigeons. He liked the starlings best of all with their brash certainty and their glossy and sometimes iridescent plumage, each struggling to be noticed as perhaps he longed to be himself. He wondered why they sometimes developed speckles of white about their feathers and why their bills were black in winter and yellow in summer but of course I couldn’t tell him and neither could the neighbour. He enjoyed their noisy squabbling and told me that somewhere he had heard that they could learn to speak which was something I had never heard myself so I told him that was unlikely. What he liked most about them was their determination to be gregarious and their habit of flocking together as they headed for their communal roost. Before he totally changed his mind about egg collecting, one of their pale blue eggs was his first ornithological acquisition. He placed it gently into a fake nest he had made on the table beside his bed.
He learned from a library book called Our Feathered Friends for Young Folk that mid-winter was probably the best time for spotting an undulating flock just before the sun went down. He told me that this was known as a Murmuration and our closest one was probably along the line of poplars down by Gemmel’s Farm adjacent to Springhead. If we were lucky, he said, we might see ten thousand or more at any one time.

My mother had long since decided that he was far too young to what she called Traipse around the countryside after Bloody Birds and so she detailed me to go with him if he was to go at all. So that is how we came to be sitting on the side of a frozen ditch one early December evening on the edge of one of Mr Gemmel’s newly ploughed fields. It was what my grandmother would have termed as cold as charity and although I was aware of every last degree of it, my brother was totally oblivious, hugging his pink knees and whispering that the concentration of birds we were about to see was because that habit served as a defence against falcons and hawks that would slaughter them in a blink of an eye. After a long silence within which I wondered how soon I would be able to persuade him that we needed to go home, he looked at me and asked if I thought it was exciting. I said Yes, I did because to say anything else would have seemed unnecessarily unkind.

And then it began. Slowly at first a tight sphere-like formation in the sky above us, expanding and contracting like an amorphous troupe of dancers then changing shape as if choreographed, each bird following the movement of its closest neighbours. The swarm was creating one complex shape after another, every one silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky and each process of change astonishingly elegant.

Next day Mr Hammond, the shoe-mender of Shepherd Street said when he was a boy some people kept starlings in cages and they could be trained if you caught them young enough not only to do tricks but to talk. One he came across could mimic the human voice so well that folk turned around to see who was speaking. When Bernard went home to acquaint my mother with this piece of information, Old Nan who was on her third cup of Wednesday afternoon tea said she wouldn’t give them house room because they were dirty buggers and inclined to shit all over the place. That seemed a bit odd to Bernard because if they were being kept in a cage there would be a natural limit to the extent of this annoying habit. But in any case he didn’t want to keep one in a cage so he did not think it worthwhile arguing about it.

I felt obliged to discuss with him a few days later that the Roost of starlings had been more interesting than I would have thought possible and following this admission over the next several months we wandered far and wide to witness similar winter evening exhibitions. Bernard even talked about the phenomena at school one morning at one of the inaugural Show & Tell demonstrations that were seeing their introduction into English primary schools in the 1950s. St Joseph’s prided itself on being much more progressive than other local schools, particularly those with no religious affinity and therefore considered next to heathen. He was so enthusiastic that it was difficult for Sister Camilla to actually stop him talking which infuriated Anne Murphy who was detailed to follow him and was to talk about her pet rabbit which she had brought with her in a cage.

The following autumn Bernard stopped talking about Murmurations of starlings and began instead to discuss Rooks. He very much wanted to go to Cooling to witness a Roost. He told me that the flock would not be called a Murmuration and would be called a Parliament instead and furthermore although it was easy to confuse the Rook with the Crow the former was distinguished by greyish skin around the base of the bill in front of the eyes and that in any case their feathered legs looked shaggier than those of the Crow. I bore all this in mind and promised never to confuse them.

Rashly I undertook to take him to the Rook Roost at Cooling at the first opportunity and did so only because I recalled the walks I had done with my father whilst he was still alive, walks that seemed interminably long at the time, along the Thames and Medway Canal to the marshes at Cliffe where I was told we trod in the very footsteps of Charles Dickens when he was a boy. When Bernard next went to the library the children’s librarian gave him permission to borrow from the Ornithology section in the adult library where they had seven or eight volumes by various authors that told you all you could possibly want to know about birds, including Rooks. He learned that they were highly gregarious and that males and females bond for life, that to farmers they were a nuisance because of their habit of decimating crops and most exciting of all, their spectacular aerial displays in autumn had to be seen to be believed. So he became intent upon observing this for himself and spoke non- stop about how exciting it was going to be when we finally found ourselves in the village of Cooling with the Roost itself, as our grandmother would say, within spitting distance! In the meantime he offered several times to share his newest information at Show & Tell time at school but was told that the subject matter he suggested wasn’t appropriate. Poor Bernard was only seven years old and therefore extremely hurt.

The journey plan was finally made in the first term of the school year in September when an outbreak of Measles locally ensured that being absent would mean he wasn’t noticed. I was recovering from a rather nasty attack of Chicken Pox and had not been at school for three weeks and our mother was conveniently detailed to be at Old Nan’s place in Crayford by eight am to look after Little Violet while Nan’s feet were attended to at the local hospital. She might be late back and we were therefore to get our own tea of fish and chips with the shiny half-crown left on the kitchen table. She was temporarily feeling flush because of an extra day or two worked the previous week for Mrs Lovell of Darnley Road. In addition she undoubtedly felt a certain amount of working class guilt at not being home to make sure we ate two slices of bread and what was always called Butter followed by a home-made rock cake or two. We took the rock cakes with us, wrapped in newspaper.

Purloining odd coins from the Toby jug above the kitchen stove provided a further cash injection for the bus fare into Gravesend but after that we would have to walk if we wanted to be sure of fish and chips later. In any case it was generally unwise to ask clippies to give change for half-crown pieces because they were almost honour bound to be rude simply because we were children which would only draw the attention of other passengers towards us. I felt a slight unease in any case about being a child because in those days as far as bus fares were concerned you stopped being one at the age of fourteen unless you were on your way to school preferably in school uniform. I had recently celebrated my fourteenth birthday.

As fate would have it, when we got to the bus stop opposite the Catholic church nosy Mrs Newberry was already in the queue poised ready to cross examine us with what passed as a look of polite interest on her face. Mrs Newberry had replaced The Bassants Next Door when they went to live in Burch Road Rosherville with their adopted daughter Ena. She was very keen on hand washing and stayed up late at night making sure that her family had the cleanest shirts, frocks and socks in the neighbourhood. My mother said that it wasn’t natural and to mark her words because her hands would suffer something terrible in the long run. I found myself staring at her hands as she predictably wanted to know where we were off to so early on a Wednesday morning. I said I was taking my brother to the new Ear Clinic at the hospital and wanted to get there before the rush. My mother had discussed over the fence with her as she pegged out endless lines of newly washed garments that my brother suffered dreadfully with his ears which was true because he did. So Nosy Mrs Newberry made sympathetic noises and said she understood bad ears only too well as her hubby, Charlie had been a sufferer in his childhood and had ended up deaf on one side because back in those days there was no new Ear Clinic to attend, no matter how early you got up to go there.

Then, as we boarded the bus and seated ourselves, Bernard couldn’t help himself and announced that we were also going to Cooling for the Rook Roost. I added that we might do but only if time permitted and his ears were not too bad and I kicked his shin violently. In a smaller voice he began to explain to her that rooks were very interesting and had surprisingly powerful beaks and that sometimes they walked around the fields in huge steps and sometimes they hopped just like sparrows but of course she wasn’t listening. When we arrived in the town, however, she was still aware of us enough to prompt us to get off the bus at the stop closest to the hospital which we didn’t really want to do but did anyway and thanked her for the reminder. As we headed south towards the canal, past the shops on the main road, still not open, my brother observed that possibly pretending to be on a hospital visit had not been very good idea. It quite quickly began to seem like a very long walk and we had to ask directions on a number of occasions from people out with their dogs. The men were generally taciturn but when we approached the occasional woman she was invariably helpful though curious and wanted to know where we were heading and why.

The winter sun grew higher in the sky and once we managed, after what seemed a very long time, to get into the marshland environs of Cliffe and Cooling I began to feel more positive. I was again remembering the many walks I had done with my father in previous years before he was so suddenly snatched from life when Bernard was still a pre-schooler. Importantly I said I was completely familiar with the marshland route and why, and Bernard was impressed and even said he wished he’d been old enough to come with us back then. Further enthused I began to recite the history lesson I had been subjected to on one such perambulation and told him that Cooling, where we were now heading, got its name from a Saxon word which meant Cow and that the Romans had once occupied the area which was a fact because in 1922 on a nearby farm a Roman kiln had been found and it contained a great deal of Roman pottery.

We sat by the roadside to eat the rock cakes which were not the best that my mother, who was by no means much of a baker, had ever produced. Bernard did not seem to mind and neither did he object when I pointed out that the construction of Cooling Castle was started in the thirteen hundreds and that the church featured in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. He did ask who Charles Dickens was though but I decided not to subject him to a trip to the churchyard to see the little tombstones that were supposed to be Pip’s brothers and sisters as it was rather depressing.

The walk became interminable and when we came across a shop beside some newly built houses we decided to buy lemonade and Smith’s Crisps to sustain us with some of the money that had been reserved for fish and chips. After all, Bernard said, we could always simply buy chips when we got back to Gravesend because as far as he was concerned, chips were the best part of fish and chips. I agreed because there seemed to be no earthly reason why we needed fish. The woman behind the counter said she thought we looked Done In and Bernard said we were going to the Rook Roost and had walked all the way from Gravesend. She said we should have taken the bus to High Halstow and we should be sure to catch the bus on the way back.

It was becoming late in the afternoon by the time we reached Northward Hill and found the Saxon Shore Way where my brother insisted we needed to be to get the best view. A dog walker told us we were now in a good place to observe the Roost and so we sat exhausted on the edge of a coppice, Bernard complaining that his legs were hurting quite badly. I nodded, wondering where the bus stop was and how I might recognise which was the best bus to catch back to Gravesend. It would not be a very satisfactory end to the day to find ourselves in Rochester or Chatham for instance. And while I was contemplating the possible minor calamities that might yet be in store for us Bernard clutched my arm and whispered that it was about to begin. So in the early winter dusk all thought of bus timetables and routes were forgotten and we sat mesmerised as the red and grey sky that stretched endlessly over the marshland became inky with a myriad of birds wheeling and gliding in groups. As one but in their thousands they played to the gallery, distracting us, demanding our attention and performing a series of spectacular synchronised movements, diving, rolling and tumbling unrestrained against the clouds just as the Springhead Starlings had done only with more abandon, as if taking part in some strange and dazzlingly accomplished avian ballet.

On the way back towards the road through the rapidly descending darkness Bernard said that the Rooks were much better than the Starlings and I asked him why. He thought it was because they were better at letting us see what they could do. Doing what Sister Camilla at school had warned his class against – showing off, because it was her firm opinion that nobody admires a show off.

Somehow or other we found the bus that went to Gravesend and then we only had to walk to Northfleet. We bought chips and doused them liberally with salt and vinegar and Bernard told me that he greatly admired the Show-Off Rooks and that the day had been the very best day of his life.