For a few years now, I’ve had a scheduled assembly with some previous pals. I drive to an space an hour away from me and, invariably, they’re there conserving to their aspect of the appointment.
One factor that I discover actually laborious to know, and I’m certain that tv documentary script writers and presenters are rather a lot guilty for, is the idea of a “Pure World”. It’s as if there have been two worlds: ours (a species set aside by its personal conceitedness) and the remainder. We’ve got been indoctrinated into considering that it is a actual division. Once we have a look at the “Pure World” we’re an image however we’re not part of that image. Nothing could possibly be farther from the reality. No surprise our world – all of it -is within the state that it’s in!
In one other section of our imagined world, we speak about aliens from different worlds. Usually these aliens tackle some sort of human type and the issue we’ve is learn how to talk with them. Properly, I’ve that downside day by day however we don’t must go to a different planet to search out these so-called aliens. They’re throughout us. Species after species of birds, mammals and numerous different organisms which have developed alongside our personal species. We might even see ourselves as distinctive however so is each different species, dwelling or extinct. We’re simply one other distinctive species.
My “alien” pals have been the place I anticipated them to be. They have been conscious of my presence however I doubt that they remembered me from one other yr. I don’t even know if I used to be encountering the identical people from earlier years. I simply want that I might someway talk with them and perceive how they understand the world we share, and infrequently come throughout one another in. My pals are birds. They belong to a species that we’ve named the Nice Noticed Cuckoo (Clamator glandarius). They arrive to breed within the Iberian Peninsula, laying their eggs within the nests of corvids, notably Eurasian Magpies (Pica pica) that are anticipated to lift their younger for them.
The fascinating factor for me is their punctuality, not simply in time, but additionally in area. Annually I discover them in an space of 10 sq. kilometres and I do know why they’re there. They’re gorging themselves on an enormous emergence of caterpillars in an open olive woodland habitat. These birds have been away for six months, within the Sahel, simply south of the Sahara Desert, between Senegal and the Internal Niger Delta. They someway discover their means again to use the caterpillars after which they transfer on to the breeding grounds. A latest satellite tv for pc monitoring examine confirmed that these birds ceaselessly modified location south of the Sahara, presumably exploiting peak of caterpillar abundance in several zones throughout the Sahel. From this perspective, my pals are simply persevering with this useful resource monitoring, this time north of the Sahara Desert.
One factor that the examine additionally confirmed, albeit with restricted information, was that these cuckoos migrate at night time, singly. Now, that raises an fascinating query. I discovered ten birds in a small space, eight of them in a one-hectare patch. I had assumed that that they had arrived as a flock however maybe they’re all merely programmed to get right here on the proper time and it’s right here that they meet. That may clarify the joy among the many totally different people, calling loudly and chasing one another in between breaks in caterpillar-hunting.
For a quick whereas I entered the world of one other species and I felt privileged. I wasn’t simply trying and photographing them. I used to be, someway, of their world, catching a glimpse of a miniscule actuality that is part of a better world – my world and likewise their world. That’s my sort of birding!
