The Circle of Strife

Tonight was an odd set of roost counts. The birds had clearly been disturbed of late. The Magpies pre-assembled all along the western edge of the chalk pit, avoiding the usual spots. The Woodpigeon had deserted in droves. Many of the passerines didn't show (shockingly, Chaffinch only just made double figures). I might have put it down to the warm weather, but the Magpie numbers were still clearly high. I did wonder if the seventeen youngsters congregated at the viewpoint might have been a regular disturbance of late? Sunset was nearly five- plenty of post-school loitering time now, at least they weren't glued to their computers.

Me being me, I stood my ground, nodded and smiled, and started counting. Then stopped smiling and asked them to stop kindly stop throwing their rubbish down the bank. Then to not throw branches down. After about ten minutes of staring me out and eff-ing and jeff-ing in my general direction, they drifted off, not without the odd taunt hurled from a distance.

Ah, the youth of today.

Exactly the same as the youth of yesterday.

I didn't get into birding until post teens, but a general interest in nature had been stirred a few years earlier, mainly, as I recall, through some nicely illustrated AA books and a set of carefully cut out cardboard nature dioramas, care of the nice people at Weetabix. Which was how, as we trudged our way to Luton Recreation ground forty years ago, I had been able to bore my own local 'gang' by continually pointing out one of the few plants I'd learnt, a jolly patch of Lords-and-Ladies, proudly adding "also called arum maculatum" every time. Every single time until the day they'd been flattened. Smashed to bits. Ground into the ground. Even now I can still hear Magoo (our squinty goalpoacher) laughing "Yer won't be saying yer noncey-poncey Latin anymore now, will yer?".

Thank you for that lesson Mr. Magoo, I've never forgotten it.

I was the one now squinting, adding up the notebook ticks in the twilight. Cumulative numbers were down by about a third on last February but I'd broken the 250 mark for the Magpies again, that'd have to do. Time to go. Now if I could just find my way back out in the dark without landing in the little herberts' broken glass, fag butts and crisp wrappers, that'd be grand.