Element 79

Shortsighted

The spring of 1966 brought startling news to the British bird-watching world. A pair of Baird’s Oreales were nesting in the park of an estate near Bury Saint Edmunds.

Hugh McAlan was an improbable bird-watcher. Seriously shortsighted, he was a convert to the eye-exercise school. Bird-watching had been recommended to him as likely to sharpen his acuity. It did so, but not for the reason McAlan imagined. There was no improvement at all in the optics of the eye. What bird-watching did was to make him more consciously aware of the information that was passing in any case from eye to brain, information which he had previously ignored. It simply directed certain things to his attention, things that had been there anyway.

McAlan applied to the Ornithological Trust for a permit to visit the estate near Bury Saint Edmunds. He wasn’t too hopeful about his application, because it was plainly impossible for the Trust to grant permits to more than a small fraction of the many ornithologists of the Greater London area. Hugh McAlan was one of the lucky ones as it turned out, however. He was given a permit for eleven a.m. Sunday, which was much the best day of the week for him, and pretty well the best time of day, too.

So one morning in late April, McAlan headed his Austin Mini out of London onto the Newmarket–Bury road. By his side were binoculars and a luncheon satchel, in the boot of the car his faithful waders.

The ornithological party, when fully assembled, turned out to be about fifty strong. With so many people, the warden who conducted them through the estate was understandably reluctant to approach the Oreales closely. At all costs, the birds must not be frightened from the park.

Some of the party claimed to have sighted the Oreales in the far distance, but McAlan wasn’t one of them. He saw a white-backed woodpecker, a nuthatch, and a redstart, which partly made up for the Oreales. The session lasted several hours. His feet were quite tired by the time he got back to the Mini.

Hugh McAlan decided to return along the Haverhill road instead of by the faster A11. He started off down quiet country lanes, musing to himself. He wasn’t giving full attention to the driving, but neither was he really careless. He would have noticed any unexpected road traffic, like a car pulling out of a side road, for instance. What he did not notice, until it was too late, was a pair of birds, flying endlessly round and around each other, a pair that came into the road over the bushes on his near side. There was an unpleasant thud as the car hit the wretched creatures. Only after the impact was McAlan fully aware of what had happened. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. The birds were lying dead in the road, the road itself covered by an incredibly vast carpet of feathers. He climbed slowly out of the car and sadly walked to the point of the tragedy. Some of the feathers were of a greenish tinge. There were black tailfeathers, too. But most were of a brilliant yellow. Hugh McAlan had “got” his Oreales after all.