Check Out Those City Birds
Chris Holder

What does the phrase ‘urban birding' mean to you? I tried it out on friends for a couple of days before I was scheduled to meet David Lindo, the self-styled urban birder. The responses were pretty standard – ‘you’re doing what?’ or ‘which club are you going to for that?’, followed by sniggers. And I have to be honest, I thought the same and didn’t know what to expect – can you really go bird watching in London?

I turned up at the arranged time, expecting a Bill Oddie type creature, dressed from head to foot in khaki, binoculars around neck and knapsack on back, having a cup of tea from his orange flask. No such luck, David is friends with Bill, has appeared on the BBC’s Springwatch alongside the former Goodie and is a nature lover, but that’s where the similarity ends.

When we met at the entrance to St. James Park, David was dressed like anyone else in Soho – open-necked shirt, jeans, trainers and shades, with not a patch pocket or flask in sight. He works in advertising and, when he’s not bird watching or working, he’s a DJ, playing melodic house – not what you’d expect from a birdwatcher.

David Lindo, the coolest birdwatcher in town

The mistake I made was thinking of David as a ‘twitcher’, rather than a ‘birder’. The difference is that twitchers chase around the country (even world) to see rarities, where as birders often stay in their own backyard and look at what is there. In fact, as David explained, the term twitcher comes from the way fanatical bird spotters used to twitch on the gears on their motorbikes on their way to rare sightings in the 1950s.

So, the burning question for me was simply ’why?’

Having grown up in Stanmore, which is not know for its birds, David began birding when he about eight, having spotted a kestrel on his school field. It was this Kes moment that kicked it off and he’s never looked back, birding wherever he goes – even in rundown parks LA with fellow birders.

David gained the nickname ‘bird brain’ at school because of his interest and regularly went out looking for birds with a family friend, That’s where he got the patience that enables him to wait in a place for hours on end.

Mornings are the best time to see birds in an urban environment, David explained as we walked, but we’d chosen early evening. I’ve walked through St. James Park hundreds of times, but not really taken any notice of the birds; I’ve seen the pelicans, ducks and geese that swim around the lake, along with the pigeons flocking around the tourists, but that’s about it.

Even I know that pelicans are not native to the UK (they’re fed everyday at 14:30, incidentally), but David talked me through the huge range of species, the majority of which are not native either. Pigeons don’t count, but there are native mallards, teal, moorhens and coots. There are also cousins from Asia, Eastern Europe and North America there too; all have their wings clipped so that they can’t escape – something else I had no idea about, thinking that was reserved for ravens at the Tower of London.

Away from the water, the best place to find smaller birds is to look in the dense undergrowth, and it’s worth just sitting down nearby and waiting. Obviously the tourists mean that they stay out of the way, but the park is rich with bird life, including Long-tailed tits, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Robins, Blackbirds, Wrens, Great Spotted Woodpeckers and even Tawny Owls. We saw a couple of blackbirds on our outing, but that was it.

That wouldn’t put me in any record books, but there are people in London – David among them in Wormwood Scrubs – who keep records of all their spots in their own area. In fact, talking to other birders, there’s huge competition between them. There are also ‘world birders’, who are in a class of their own. There aim is to spot as many species as they can, with two people having seen more than 8,500 species. But that’s no urban birding!

Lists aren’t my thing, and I am likely to forget what I’ve seen, but I did enjoy my urban birding experience and would definitely do it again, perhaps in the morning. I may even have a stroll out to the river or park at lunchtime, just to see what’s there. I may take a nice bottle of rosé, glasses and members of the team, and make it a (silent) social event.