A Bird Called Kairo

It didn’t occur to me to question where the bird came from, not back then at the turn of the 1970s. I was the very opposite of curious yet I knew it was improbable that it had been found in the average pet shop. It would have even been unlikely to happen upon one in that extraordinary Pet Department that once nestled in the far corner of the fourth floor of Harrods where I once bought a hamster that inexplicably perished on the way home. They of course gave us our money back. You could get all manner of odd creatures at Harrods. It was rumoured that in 1933 Noel Coward bought an alligator there to surprise a friend for Christmas and as recently as 1967 it had been possible to purchase a lion cub. But there were no Kestrels as far as I recall and possibly that was because they simply weren’t popular. I could certainly understand that.

The bird I now refer to had been given the name Cairo for some reason now long forgotten and Cairo with a K rather than a C – Kairo. Now I begin to think about it the most likely reason for Bernard’s possession of it was that he filched it from the nest among Alice the Falconer’s window boxes. He certainly would not have bothered seeking the permission of those with Authority even had he had been required to because his obsession to possess one became overwhelming. At times I wondered why this was because it was he who told me that the bird had for hundreds of years occupied a lowly status in falconry and in the middle ages was spoken of derisively as the Knave. In the late 1960s the Barry Hines novel about Billy Caspar in his cheerless Northern town finding and training such a bird inspired him further and he read and re-read the book, becoming even more glued to Ken Loach’s film a year or so later. He began to refer to the Kestrel in a strangely soft voice by its old country name of Windhover - therefore Kairo’s appearance in his life was not altogether unexpected.

I was with him when he first met Alice in her 20th floor council flat somewhere in South London and I was only there because his wife-at-the-time, Janice, refused to go with him despite the fact he had been voluble to me and my partner-at-the-time, Vidar, about Janice being his Best Friend and that he simply would not be able to cope with life without her. Janice said that kind of talk was always a bad sign. Someone, she pointed out sensibly, had to stay home in the flat above the Painting & Decorating Store in Camden Passage and look after the baby. She was absolutely not prepared to subject the child to yet another jaunt into the further reaches of suburbia in search of strange and anomalous species. Vidar had expressed a similar lack of interest so that’s how it came that just the two of us climbed twenty flights of stairs because the lift was not functioning on an unusually chilly late May evening.

Alice was a small bird-like woman herself, in her sixties with tightly permed hair and a husband in a wheelchair on account of his back. She was waiting for the Council to rehouse her or, alternatively, ensure that the lift could be relied upon because the top floor was not what anyone would call convenient for wheelchair living though it did of course have a splendid view. She told us that it was the third year in a row that the birds had raised a family in her window boxes and she’d never heard of Kestrels. When Bernard spoke of falcons and hawks and birds of prey she looked alarmed and wondered if the cat was safe with them though they’d never shown much interest in it to be completely honest. That year there were five chicks for them to care for and she had felt concerned for them and even offered them budgie seed which they did not care for so she was trying them on bread soaked in warm milk but they’d turned out to be fussy eaters. Bernard looked horrified at the described diet and spoke of the importance of trying to maintain their natural diet of voles or mice or bats or shrews and failing these culinary favourites, perhaps worms and insects. Alice looked equally aghast and blinked rapidly whilst the husband in the wheelchair turned up the volume on the television and said feeding wild birds was a damn fool idea if ever he’d heard one and if they wanted bread and milk they’d make bloody sure they knew what time the milkman drove past.

The objects of the discourse meanwhile, hunched in their home among the petunias and geraniums interspersed with the mint for the Sunday roast, looked guarded, wary and later Bernard said it was more than likely because they were expecting yet another onslaught of indigestible budgie seed. I could not help noticing that he looked a little cautious himself as he bent to examine them and there was just the slightest suggestion of a tremor in his hands. He was talking about falcons being smaller birds than hawks and that they killed their prey quite differently and how to tell the female from the male. The male, he whispered, was the one with the blueish greyish head and the female was the bigger one, the one that was a bit browner. The male had bright yellow legs and feet – could I see that? I couldn’t but I agreed that I could. When I whispered back that I had never seen one before he reminded me that Little Nanny of Hamerton Road had surely had a stuffed one under a glass dome in her parlour and did I not remember that? In any case he said, they were widespread throughout the country except perhaps on Shetland where there were no voles. Were there voles in South London I wondered but he seemed to think that didn’t matter particularly because voles were not absolutely vital – they would easily take sparrows if needs be. There was a lot of goodness in a sparrow from a kestrel’s point of view.

Somehow it happened that a day or two later we went back to Alice’s flat with a reporter and photographer from the local newspaper and had our photos taken alongside Alice and the birds that the following week appeared under the headline Alice of Crompton Court – Falconer Extraordinaire! She definitely thought that the publicity might help with the problem of the non-functioning lift and perhaps it did because I don’t remember having to face the twenty flights after that though I know we visited Alice on frequent occasions during that early Summer.

It was a few years after his acquaintance with a complete family of falcons that my brother made an odd request of me that I was reluctant to agree to. Would I be prepared to stay at his new home in Chatham, Kent to take care of a pet bird and his small son whilst he and his wife spent a few days in Scotland in search of eagles? I had a small son of my own at this stage and thought it might be fun for the children to spend time together and a pet bird was not going to be too much trouble. I think I might have envisaged something diminutive in a cage. I was definitely not expecting Kairo and was dismayed to find that the bird lived in the spare room adjacent to the kitchen, on a perch arrangement to which it was tethered. Even more alarming was the fact that I was expected to perform care rituals such as Loosening the Jesses and offering portions of food that absolutely must be as fresh as possible and have a measure of roughage attached.

For my convenience a dead mouse had already been dissected into Kestrel sized pieces and was in the fridge beside the left over chicken. Before I even made the query I was sternly advised that the chicken was not also destined for the bird because Kestrels are not keen on cooked food – the chicken was for me and the children. If I could also manage to fly the bird I should not be surprised if it managed to catch something it particularly fancied. It was apparently inordinately fond of bats. In the interim when Kairo finished the mouse in the fridge I could cut up a wild rabbit, it was suggested because they were suicidal thereabouts and easy to run down at night in the headlights of the mini-van - and if I did so, to definitely not discard the fur. I said nothing though my heart was heavy.

I would have been more than willing to give the creature a chance because it wasn’t as if I was entirely against wildlife per se but it seemed to display an immediate resentment of me and scowled in so threatening a manner that I knew without question that our relationship was not going to be easy. Patrick, then aged about three was cautiously asking his older cousin where the actual pet bird was. Not, he qualified, the angry looking one tied up on the ledge but the pet bird we were going to look after. The one, he added hopefully, that would be in a cage and Merlin, completely accustomed to all that the avian world could possibly produce within the confines of a small terrace house in Chatham, obligingly explained the situation. He clarified knowledgeably for one who had not yet reached school attendance age that falcons never lived in cages and the only ones he was familiar with lived on ledges to which they were attached just as Kairo was at that very moment.

And so Bernard and Janice left I felt in a somewhat hurried manner in search of eagles. With the children at a safe distance in the doorway of the spare room I scrutinized the bird and tried to recall the detailed instructions as to how the falconer’s glove was to be used. I knew without doubt that things would ultimately go wrong. It was though a day or two before the situation completely deteriorated and during that time we three had proffered regular bits of raw mouse with the aid of kitchen tongs and congratulated ourselves when the offerings were rapidly consumed by the bird. The acceptance of the food might have been what gave me a false sense of security, a boost in confidence. I too might become a falconer and in any case why would I be afraid of a mere bird? Alice of Crompton Court after all had seemed quite at ease with her regular window box guests.

The problems began when somehow or other the bird got loose and although I tried diligently I could not persuade it to return to the ledge where it had originally been tethered. I’ve forgotten the details of how the calamity occurred but occur it did and no amount of tasty mouse morsels were going to lure it back to where our Chatham acquaintance began and I was led a merry dance throughout the small house, from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom and back again. Followed by the excited pre-schoolers I pursued it relentlessly attempting to bribe it with promises of raw bat just as soon as I could locate one. I consulted the various books on wild birds that proliferated the bookshelves because this of course was long, long before the advent of Google but nothing would persuade it to behave with anything like decorum.

In despair and during a hot chocolate break I gently enquired of my small nephew what his father might do at this stage should he find himself quite unable to catch a reprobate bird of prey. After a long pause he indicated he had no idea because to his knowledge such a thing had never happened and Kairo was a model of good behaviour with his father. He added helpfully that he had once seen his grandmother throw a teacloth over her budgie when it misbehaved so it would think it was night and go to sleep. It would indeed be wonderful if Kairo could be persuaded to sleep. With determination we began to throw tea-cloths but this activity was viewed with antagonism and the bird simply became more hyperactive. A few moments later when he perched precariously on the frame of a montage of family weddings sending them crashing onto the stairs he vengefully seemed to regard this as entirely our fault and withdrew once more to the kitchen where storage jars marked Rice and Vermicelli were also heard to clatter from their rightful place. So we abandoned the teacloth idea though Merlin assured me it had worked with Cheeky the Budgie.

I’m now unsure when it was I rang the local police station in despair – was it after two days of the Loose Kestrel or simply one? The constable on Desk Duty was quite matter-of-fact and called Dave. Kestrel-on-the-loose was it? Contrary creatures Kestrels could be. As it happened he was a bird man himself and even fancied himself as a bit-of-a-falconer so when he finished his shift he would be happy to pop round and see if he could help. Pop round he did, all burly reassuring six feet four inches of him. And once he donned the falconer’s glove, Kairo seemed to suddenly tire of the game that had so tormented me and swooped down from his temporary perch on the topmost bookshelf atop of British Birds of Prey and settled upon it. Dave worked wonders with the mysterious jesses, speaking softly to the creature and advising me that I would be wise to keep a better eye on him but if I had any more trouble I should not hesitate to call him again.

Of course there is no need to elaborate on how delighted I was with the return of the eagle hunters the following evening. I didn’t tell them the full story about Dave of course but mentioned that Kairo was probably homesick for the top floor flats at Crompton Court if in fact that had been his birthplace. For some reason he had not seemed completely happy or enjoy life the way a Kestrel should in the spare bedroom. Bernard was talking about eagles and absently stroking a wing feather I had not noticed on the kitchen floor but of course I wasn’t listening - I could not wait to return to London!

Years later when my brother had long since moved on to his second-wife-Irene and my small nephew had long grown to manhood and probably forgotten all about the time in Chatham when three of us engaged in an extraordinary Kestrel hunt, I happened to read a wildlife article about the sudden and odd change of breeding habit that had seen Kairo and his antecedents of several years develop a proclivity for high rise Council flats living. The writer thought it possible that Alice’s first pair had simply mistaken her window box at Crompton Court for a more convenient and customary clifftop. And possibly that is what happened.

When Your Face Doesn't Fit

I had never heard of Ringing Permits until I was well into my teens. I didn’t know that there were enthusiasts who spent a great deal of time putting tags or rings on birds for a variety of reasons and even when the reasons were explained to me at a later stage I couldn’t really work up much enthusiasm for the idea. On the other hand my ornithologicaly obsessed brother demonstrated a great deal of enthusiasm. For some time, and for the life of me I cannot now remember when the Ringing Permit preoccupation began, he was most anxious to become a member of the British Trust for Ornithology and be granted the required permission to put plastic identification tags onto the legs of birds. His uninformed and largely disinterested family couldn’t for the life of them see the attraction although as hobbies go it was relatively harmless and kept him nicely away from diversions that might well prove more damaging and possibly even shameful for the rest of us. Unhappily the activities that were to harm his reputation were already sitting in the future mapped out for him so perhaps no matter what hobbies were allowed there was no real chance of changing that.

The only problem that seemed to emerge was, our mother said, as plain as the nose on your face and it was clearly down to his face not fitting. She said this once she learned that if you wanted to be welcomed into the particular fraternity that so attracted him it paid to be just a bit posh if you could manage it. No-one in their right mind would have described any member of our family as remotely posh so you could say a distinct disadvantage existed from the very start and it was never going to be easy. On the other hand what we lacked in poshness we perhaps made up for in determination.

The ringing scheme in Britain had started in 1909 and was really a combination of schemes, one instigated by a certain Harry Forbes Witherby and the other by Arthur Landsborough Thomson. A third scheme launched by Country Life Magazine also began around this time but WW1 intervened and by the 1930s all these systems had morphed onto one – the British Trust for Ornithology known by those familiar with it as simply the BTO.

In its earliest years it seems that the BTO pioneers simply set out to find answers to some of the most basic questions of the time. Where did those birds arriving in summer actually spend the winter? Where did the winter visitors spend the summer? Where did they breed? Back in the earliest days of these studies, even the migration routes were only realised from observations of groups preparing for journeys in Spring and Autumn and at one time there was even a suggestion that swallows spent their winters at the bottom of ponds. Old Nan for one firmly believed that. From her point of view it seemed a likely alternative to the far-fetched idea that they would embark upon a journey of thousands of miles. Apparently the first recovery of a ringed swallow came in December 1912 as far away as South Africa. This caused astonishment to Harry Witherby reporting in British Birds, Volume 6 who noted that it seemed to him quite extraordinary that a bird that bred in the far west of Europe should have somehow reached the South-East of Africa. Information gathering regarding swallows and where they spent their winters henceforth became a trendy pastime that attracted the middle classes and those emulating them.

Bernard was certainly captivated by these awe inspiring avian journeys and became ever more determined to join the ranks of those considered trustworthy and responsible enough to document them for the purposes of posterity via the possession of a Ringing Permit. But achieving that goal took much longer than he could have possibly anticipated on account of his face not fitting. He thought it might be to do with the fact that the efficient funding of the organisation relied upon donations from prominent citizens in various areas and as he grew older he was fearful that those in and around the Thames Estuary might well be too familiar with his unhappy history as a Gravesend butcher’s assistant and the rapid termination of that employment. Securing an early record for what was then termed Robbery With Violence did little to enhance anyone’s reputation and was an abomination as far as many of the Good and the Great of Gravesend were concerned. It was a definite problem that at that particular time a cluster of them were avid bird enthusiasts.

Old Nan did not endear herself to any of us back then by pointing out that being somewhat Light Fingered in general did not help matters when it came to creating a good impression with Toffs. As she was undoubtedly Light Fingered herself this observation was never likely to be received well and my mother steadfastly insisted that it was more to do with his face not fitting than anything else and what’s more you could never really tell in advance how your face was likely to be received. Luckily as time went on things changed and bird ringing became less the province of the middle classes and eventually presented in many guises from individuals in urban areas to large groups over a wide geographic area. It was no longer quite as necessary to make absolutely certain that you had a spotless reputation. Ages eventually ranged from under ten to over eighty and of course in due course the much coveted Permit was granted despite the fact that the earlier transgressions did not simply disappear and the reported habit of light fingered-ness definitely remained.

Bernard saturated himself in more and more stories of awe inspiring migrations and even as recently as 2015 told me in some excitement that a Sand Martin ringed at a Hampshire colony was re-captured by the very same ringer the next winter in Morroco! These remarkable recoveries graphically illustrated impressive and regular journeys that for the truly addicted are hard to overlook although for the uninitiated sometimes the detail is difficult to truly appreciate. I still struggle to understand why it was so unpredictable that an Arctic Tern should fly into a Japanese whaler off Antarctic pack ice thus finding notoriety as the only BTO ringed bird to be found at a Southern latitude higher than the Northern latitude at which it was ringed. Why should it not do so if it so chose?

I learned these facts bit by bit over time whether I wanted to or not because every conversation with my brother over at least two decades was peppered with them. I was told that as the ringing scheme itself grew in size and in age then so did the recorded ages of the focus of its very existence. Apparently very few wild birds reach anything like their potential age simply because too many factors work against them. They deal with not only accidents and predators but weather, disease, starvation and old fashioned bad luck. This came as no surprise to Aunt Mag and Old Nan also privy to this particular monologue. It was their opinion that birds were a bit like the rest of us because we could all do with a bit more good luck. That aside, some of the longevities seemed quite staggering. A Manx Shearwater had apparently recorded an age of 51 years, a Razorbill 42 years, an Oystercatcher 40 years and a Pink-footed Goose 39 years. These records seemed even more remarkable when the vast distances covered in their lifetimes were considered. The Manx Shearwater from Wales would have spent all of 51 winters off the coast of Argentina thus covering 1.5 million kilometres just travelling to and fro.

Although Bernard quickly realised that the ringing process was carried out by those with skill who had the utmost consideration for the welfare of their feathered friends he quickly became a vocal opponent of the most frequently used method, the mist net. These were erected between poles and designed to catch birds in flight. It was apparent that they could only be removed safely by the most experienced ringers. The problem seemed to be that from time to time the procedure resulted in the death of many birds and he was thus far more attracted to the idea of ringing chicks in the nest and justified this standpoint by saying that at least the precise age and origins was then known.

In spite of the fact that his views did not always win him friends he served an elongated apprenticeship under the close supervision of others and eventually learned the essential abilities that involved the safe and efficient catching and handling of birds, the identification, ageing, measuring and record keeping. The only setback seemed to be that on each occasion that his permit needed to be renewed there was invariably rather more delay in the process than he felt was usual or necessary. Our mother shook her head knowingly on every occasion this happened, bent over the current piece of knitting she was involved in and said she had told him over and over again it was on account of his particular face and that was a fact no matter how reliably he turned up at 5 am on the North Kent Marshes.

It was certainly another fact that Bernard had always been drawn to the Northfleet and Gravesend marshland and throughout his ringing period had diligently progressed through the study of a variety of Estuary migrants together with tits and finches on bitter cold winter mornings. During the breeding season of warblers he was reliably on site at least thirty minutes before those whose faces had always fitted. His conscientious attentiveness eventually paid off and when he suggested that he was more than anxious to make the leap to owl chicks in nest boxes and hawks of every persuasion after some discussion he was allowed to do so. He began to think that perhaps in time he would even have the good fortune to tag a Golden Eagle.

I was definitely aware of his ambition regarding the Golden Eagle. I knew that from the time he first became aware of its existence he had nursed a desire to become more acquainted with it. I fully understood that it was the Golden Eagle that drew him so frequently to the North of Scotland and that eventually became the prime reason for him making his home there in the last ten years of his life. His wife on the other hand, uprooted from the comfort of the Kentish village surrounded by friends and family, took longer to come to terms with it and called it an Obsession. It was clear that pleasing everyone was impossible.