Orangutan Diary

The final episode of Orangutan Diary will be shown on BBC2 today at 5.30pm and shows highlights from the past series. Even if you can’t tune in or view the episodes online, I would suggest you get the wonderful DVD of the whole second series. Not only are the baby orang-utans adorable (and disconcertingly like human babies, even laughing when tickled) even to those unsuspecting folks who would not expect to be moved by such things, but the people who look after them are amazing:-
• the Danish former flight attendant who started it all, staying up all night with orphan baby orang-utans in her home and turning that into the world’s biggest ape rescue centre;
• the English GP who acts as chief medic to the orang-utan orphans and also treats the staff when they are ill, balancing his time between an A&E in Scotland and the Borneo jungle
• the impressive babysitters who wander into the forest with numerous young nappy-wearing, dewy eyed orphaned orang-utans draped around them whilst pushing groups of others sitting in wheelbarrows back after a long day
• the delightful groups of technicians (Teknisi) who are sometimes shown wandering into the wilds of Borneo to climb to dangerous heights and to dart adult orang-utans who are in danger of being killed and catch them safely in a net when they fall hundreds of feet to the ground below; and
• the bold souls who stop at nothing to venture to wherever they have heard there is a baby orang-utan illegally being kept as a pet, never knowing what hostility they might encounter.

On my father’s birthday recently, which since his death I have taken as leave from work to avoid bursting into tears under pressure on such a sensitive day, I chose to cheer myself up by watching the entire second series on my recently arrived DVD of Orangutan Diary. It was gripping stuff.

Orang-utan means “man of the forest”, but unfortunately the forest is rapidly disappearing. A Danish flight attendant, Lone Droscher-Nielsen, years ago decided she must do something about the plight of the orang-utans being orphaned through this heartless destruction of their habitat, and she did.

She started the Nyaru Menteng Orang-utan Rehabilitation Project in Indonesian Borneo in 1999, working with the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation (BOS), and it is now the largest primate rescue project in the world, with more than 600 orangutans in its care. I often look at her wandering around the sanctuary in casual khakis and no make-up and can still easily picture her dolled up in the ‘glamour’ expected by that profession, all make-up, uniform and smiles. Yet she could hardly be further from that life now. She is tremendously hands on, meeting and caring in her heart for every ape and every member of staff, training and managing the latter, which includes dozens of local Indonesian Dayak.

Lone is quite amazing. In itself, seeing the problem of Borneo’s forest destruction and the devastating effect on orang-utans and wanting to fix it is impressive, but whereas in my case, that means sending a small donation, in her case, it was an astonishing life change, moving to the jungle in Borneo and starting up the rescue centre, with a whole system of rehabilitation and progression for these apes.

The centre is looking after six times its intended capacity of red apes, which have tragically lost their homes in the wild principally because of the demand for palm oil, which is destroying rainforests at an alarming rate so the land can be used for palm oil plantations. Not only do the orang-utans then lose their habitat and starve, but a shocking number are killed by humans, who often slaughter a mother in front of its traumatised baby and either leave the baby to die or take it as a pet, although it’s illegal and the only home they seem to offer tends to be a tiny wooden box.

Baby orang-utans in the wild would stay with their mums until they were nine years old, and the youngest need constant care and lots of love, like human babies. At BOS, the orphaned babies attend nursery during the day—complete with baby bottles and coconut milk “juice boxes”-- and have 24/7 care from the "babysitters". The youngest babies at night sleep together in a room full of snores with loads of orang-utan orphans in laundry basket cribs, with babysitters present. The slightly older ones are taken out into the jungle each day by their babysitters to learn skills an orang-utan will need to survive in the forest, such as using tools to find food, building nests and climbing trees. The much older ones are taken to a safe island (orang-utans can’t swim) where they have almost no contact with humans, although it is still a false environment as there is not enough space or food to sustain a large population of apes that would normally be spread out, so the humans drop off a food supply each day. I understand there is even a fruit plantation somewhere on the BOS grounds.

A very few orangs are fortunate enough to be released in a safe place in the wild, but of course these safe places are rapidly diminishing. Here again is where Lone is amazing. In addition to keeping an eye on her wonderful orang-utan village and practically acting as the foreman for building works on top of her other duties there, she also scouts out places deep in the remaining forest near a mining outpost, chartering an aeroplane and helicopter, navigating through piles of paperwork and red tape, and arranging an intricate web of schedules that eventually enable some of the orang-utans who more recently joined BOS, and thus are wilder with the necessary skills to survive, to be taken there. This involves a dizzying scurry of activity where orangs are sedated, crated along with food, loaded onto planes and automobiles until they are delivered, dangling in their crates from a harness below the helicopter. The team also need to be dropped in what seems to be remote jungle and camp out until they can release the orang-utans.

Meanwhile, the workers at BOS rescue and, where possible, quickly relocate adult orang-utans that are found near rubber plantations (they eat rubber sap that takes days to collect, so are at risk of being killed by the workers), too near schools or villages, and of course on the dreaded palm plantations, where they can be attacked with machetes if not reached in time. They also go to amazing lengths to find and confiscate babies that are illegally kept as pets.

One of these confiscations shows a waif of girl struggling for many hours in an attempt to reach a rumoured captive baby orang, trying to progress down impassable roads where vehicles become trapped in deep mud and bridges have collapsed, using mopeds that take them for miles until they have to turn back, borrowing a boat that is too weak to fight the river’s current, and finally arriving only to find the people keeping the orang-utans are not home. This young girl, fortunately with someone from the Forestry Commission and a camera crew, which I hope helped, waited until the people returned—carrying a gun—to convince these people illegally keeping two babies (perhaps after killing the mother) to hand them over to BOS without any payment even though each ape is worth a month’s wages if they were to sell them, and to teach them why they should not capture any more.

I missed much of the series when it first aired (I can’t usually watch wildlife programmes as I get upset when I see furry things run for their lives and then get eaten) but when I caught an earlier episode on BBC2, I was entranced—not just because of the adorable animals, so clearly our cousins, but also because of these extraordinary people who work with them.

One puzzle that really caught my eye was the presence of Dr David Irons, whom was referred to as a GP rather than a vet, but I since learned that he heads a medical team that also looks after the 200 staff, and he demonstrated his experience well in one episode by calmly rushing into the forest to administer pain relief to a babysitter who injured her chest in a fall, helping her cope as she was carried on a make-shift stretcher back to the BOS centre and driven to hospital. (It was very serious but also a bit surreal to see hairy orange arms right in there with all the human ones grappling at the patient).

“Dr David” points out that orang-utans have 97% the same DNA as humans and they get some of same illnesses, such as malaria and colds, and “The medicine’s as if I’m in a hospital in the UK but obviously with hairier patients.” And he is in a hospital in the UK fairly frequently, apparently spending a few months as A&E manager at the Galloway Community Hospital in Stranraer, Scotland, to fund his voluntary work at the orangutan centre, where he pays all his expenses. He got involved, following an earlier stint working at a small rescue centre in Borneo, when doing admirable work with impoverished children in Argentina and he saw a BOS appeal for £3,000 to buy a tract of forest and realised that, if he worked over the Christmas holidays, he could earn that amount and donate it himself. I understand he attended a BOS event in London (where have I been when those have come along? Must not be mentioned in Time Out), hit it off with Lone and now spends most of his time in Borneo as the BOS Medical Director at the centre. He and Lone are terrifically impressive; I never meet people like that, but then I’ll never be a person like that, which might have something to do with it. (I should say with some shame that I like my home comforts, my gadgets, PCs, books, music, movies, theatre, art galleries, Starbucks, cooler air and showers.)

Bizarrely, mobile phones seem to work in the Borneo jungle, and Dr Irons in a newspaper interview spoke of how he can’t keep his too near him or the hairy orange charges tend to pickpocket him.

It occurred to me that he would be fascinating to follow on Twitter, but alas, he is not yet with us. Just picture his tweets though: “Cuddling orang recovering from malaria” one day and then, a month later, “busy night in Stranraer A&E, another stabbing but we’ve patched him up”. I assume he’s publishing or at least preparing useful papers and studies on medicine whilst there. He would be fascinating to have a chat with if he ever stopped in London on his way back to Scotland or his family’s home in England.

Steve Leonard and Michaela Strachan present the BBC2 programmes but are hardly in-your-face; in fact, I almost completely forgot that they were involved. Most scenes are just the camera following those who work there daily, showing how it is with some warm narration.

I have heard the odd bit of criticism of this false environment, and some wonder how much it actually helps orang-utans. Indeed, even Lone is no doubt aware that she is unlikely to re-home them all, with only a comparatively few released on precious and rare safe land with rapidly increasing new arrivals, and the newly arrived adults keep pushing the babies they are raising further down the queue.

But what is the alternative? Leaving babies to die slowly in the wild or to go mad kept in boxes by the people who they saw machete their mother, sometimes injuring them, or be illegally sold as pets, and leaving the adults to be destroyed even when you have a chance to save them? That’s no answer, particularly not for an endangered species, and one that is such a close relative. Lone gives them a second chance. She even houses a blind orangutan and another with crippled arms after having been kept in too small a cage, so he cannot now climb trees. The younger ones have love and comfort, and it is important that there are people willing to rescue and rehabilitate the myriad orangutans who need our help because of what we, as humans, are doing to them.

The jungle is being devastatingly bulldozed. Illegal logging is a dreadful problem but palm oil is the single biggest threat to the orang-utans’ survival, and we, consumers, keep feeding the demand for it. It is in everything—food, fuel, cosmetics. Our homes are truly littered with many dozens of products containing palm oil. I try to be aware of it and avoid it, but it is not often listed in the ingredients. Then I was horrified recently to read the box of Nairn’s Oat Biscuits that had been delivered with my grocery order, which I swore by as useful food following stomach bugs and the like, and now see that, like everyone else, I’ve contributed to the destruction of this tremendous world resource as it lists palm oil as an ingredient (though at least they do not hide it like others). We really need to be more aware of what contains palm oil and to campaign for less of it to be used. (There are websites and blogs who try to help educate us on the former.)

There is a BOS UK branch although the website is currently undergoing maintenance (seems fine now, go to: http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/index.php?page_id=20 ), but you can adopt an orang-utan there or merely make a donation by visiting http://www.savetheorang-utan.co.uk/diary/ . With adoptions at BOS, you receive an official personalised certificate, a background story and an A4 colour photo of your orang-utan, with updates promised on your orang-utan at least every six months.
View the general BOS site at http://savetheorangutan.org/
On that site, you can view a video postcard by Lone from Borneo with some help on the camerawork from a curious Orang. It has also been posted on YouTube, I believe after the first series, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af1rWmHNetA&feature=channel

So many would benefit if you made a contribution to either BOS or WWF, and even more if you did so through both. I adopted as a gift for my mother some years ago an orang-utan via WWF and continue to give a monthly donation for that purpose to the World Wildlife Fund by direct debit, but I also intend to send a small donation (I’m heavily in debt but hope every small bit helps) to BOS. I think it makes an excellent gift—generally, or if you’ve forgotten to order something for someone, and particularly for children who need to be made aware of the need to help the planet in this way.

Whatever you choose to do, please somehow help these lovely creatures who are some of our closest animal relatives, and do, if you can, catch the series. To whet your appetite, a snippet is on YouTube here, focusing on Dr David Irons but also showing the one horrible event seen on camera, when an orang-utan suffers a terrible fall from a tree and bounces off a concrete wall: YouTube - Sumanto Falls . There are also other short clips, including one showing the shocking state in which one nearly dead mother and her baby arrived, and then you see her so healthy after eight months at the centre, just before being released into the wild in a safe area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reTAxUODTC8&feature=channel .

The DVD of the full second series is the best bet, available at Amazon here, and I can only hope some of the profit goes to BOS: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orangutan-Diaries-Series-2-DVD/dp/B001UHNXQK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1240162579&sr=8-2 .

A Sad and Empty Home....

It is with nearly unbearable sadness that I must announce the passing of my most precious Darryl, who has brought me endless cheer and looked after me beautifully well over the past 19 years.

Darryl, who was born in my bedroom in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1989, died on 2 June in my lounge in London, England, at the human equivalent age of 93. He was a Pewter Persian, born to my Blue Persian called ‘Boop’ and my mother’s Chinchilla Persian called ‘Baby Boy’, who was lovely but a bit slow in every way. Darryl inherited most of his dad’s looks but fortunately his mother’s smarts, and immediately set out to embrace life for all its beauty and fun.

His energy was a marvel, and my friends learned quickly to tolerate the constant jangling noise in the background as Darryl continually batted a toy octopus dangling from a string tied to the refrigerator door handle, ringing its little bell for literally hours until pausing only to let out a yowl to inform us that he’d hit the toy so hard, he needed a taller mammal to retrieve it from the top of the stove. When he took a break from all that play, he would fall asleep in one of my shoes--something he carried on trying to do later in life ‘til he realised it wasn’t as comfortable if most of you didn’t fit inside—or between cushions of the sofa, usually upside down as though he’d accidentally fallen there and nodded off on the way down. He loved everyone and everything, and seeing a sitting human or another sleeping cat was, to Darryl, in invitation to go crash immediately beside them or upon them. He carried on an intense fondness for lap-sitting as an adult; finding a refusal incomprehensible, he would make a determined move for a lap even if it were filled with a tray of dinner at the time.

This irresistible vivaciousness twisted fate when I could not bear to leave him. He was the runt of a litter of three, two of whom looked so similar, I called them ‘Darryl’ collectively, since I did not intend to keep any of the litter (an allusion to the sitcom Newhart, which had three hillbilly brother characters, two who were mute and the other who announced them every time they walked into a room: “Hi, I’m Larry, this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl.”) I carried on calling him “Baby Darryl” throughout his life. (He is in the foreground here.)

After a difficult six months in quarantine with my older Chocolate Persian Tava, whom he worshipped like a big brother but who, perhaps just like a big brother, liked his space and saw Darryl as a bit of an over-enthusiastic pest, he joined me in London following my marriage, and was just as overjoyed as I was when freedom took hold and we moved to our current flat. Again, visitors had to adjust, this time that they could only ever see 75% of the television screen as the rest was covered by Darryl’s fluffy head. An ardent television aficionado for many years, Darryl’s favourite sport was drag racing, though he was frustrated at not being able to capture the cars when he reached around the side of the telly once they veered off screen.

An indoor cat, his prey was not just the myriad helpless toys lying around (and fascinating bubbles and playing light tag) but flies, which he would astonish me by capturing by leaping suddenly about eight feet in the air with 100% success. Fortunately, he never tried the same trick with wasps. He’d do a great imitation of a bolder lion every time he yawned, squeezing his ears together as his mouth nearly roared.

Darryl was so tidy that he couldn’t wait for Tava to leave the litter before barging in to go make sure everything was covered up to his high standards, and fortunately he later bore with great dignity the consequences of being an elderly gentleman with cystitis, arthritis and weak back legs, a tricky combination if you need to get places quickly. (Mind you, he never let that stop him, and barely seemed to notice if he fell over, as he’d pull himself back up and carry on.) When Tava in 2005 had a shocking, massive seizure that left his organs failing, Darryl absolutely knew that Tava was about to leave and never come home, and he ran over to him, lay down beside him for a couple minutes, and then rushed away. He didn’t look for Tava when I came home alone, and he helped me tremendously in trying to deal with that grief.

He had amazing patience and enormous calm and dealt wonderfully with whatever cards were dealt to him. As he grew older, he time and again scared the life out of me with illnesses that made me think that was it for him—particularly recently getting e.coli in the bladder and then a dangerous reaction to the drug that treated it—but managed to surprise me and all the vets with his tremendous will to survive, always pulling through and often purring on the way. One vet suggested Darryl had got hold of a medical dictionary and was working his way through each page, throwing us all new challenges. But he always impressed everyone and beat the struggles that challenged him.

In the end, he was patiently taking medicine to control his seizures and steroids to give his weakening muscles a bit more strength, and he was running my daily schedule precisely without reference to any timepiece, just some gentle but effective murmurs to prod me awake and to announce mealtimes. He needed and deserved a lot of loving attention and nursing care in the end, which I was all too willing to give, and he gave a lot back. The fact that he was 100% chirpy, delightful and charming as always on the morning that he died is heartbreaking, as I had to face the fact that, despite his amazing ability to beat illness time and time again, his rear legs were failing to such a degree that he could not really cope when I was at work. I did manage to take the last week to be at home looking after him, catering to his every whim in the end and spoiling him rotten, mostly with love but also with former Christmas-only treats like chicken. He continued to prove that he was the dearest heart and cutest sleeper in the world, and whenever I cried at what we were facing, his reassuring purr kicked in and he did what he could to cheer me. Sadly, he’s not here now to help me cope with this ultra-horrific void….

I can only hope that he is somewhere wonderful now, greeted by Tava if not my father, and that Tava is more tolerant of what would be Darryl’s youthful exuberance now that he is no longer held back by his crippled body. God bless Darryl, I thank him for sticking around against all odds for so long to keep me happy and coping, and I really pray that he’s enjoying himself now, leaping high into the air as he used to and whacking whatever would be the paradise equivalent of an octopus bell-toy to his adorable furry heart’s content.

Mother's Day and Furry Children

Today is Mother’s Day in the States. As I didn’t have the many reminders that the card shops thrust upon you nearer the time, since Mother’s Day in England is in March, I’m worried I didn’t post my card in time, so I will ring my mother in the States as well. I’m just waiting for her to return to her home, as she spent the weekend with her own mother in Pennsylvania, and is now miles above the east coast on a quick flight south.

It’s not the happiest Mother’s Day for her. One of her children is in London, and the other one, who could normally be depended upon to drive the four hours to her home and take her out to brunch or dinner, is away and in mourning. Sadly, yesterday he had to put down his absolutely adorable, most beloved Golden Retriever, who has been like a child to him and his wife for 10 years. Dear Dutch even took part in their wedding.

Like most Golden Retrievers, he seemed to wear a constant smile on his face and absolutely embrace life, bursting with enthusiasm and adoration for his owners. Unfortunately, he was recently found to have cancer and went downhill quickly. I know my brother and his wife are utterly devastated in a way that people who aren’t true pet lovers can never understand; it is like losing a close member of your immediate family for whom you’ve been entirely responsible as a full-time carer. The void left where all that love and energy so recently existed is massive and deeply painful. I went through such a death of a beloved furry one a few years ago and dread the day when my miraculous survive-all but very frail 18-year-old Persian can no longer surprise me and the vets with his amazing staying power. It’s an awful loss, particularly painful when so many people around you consider your sorrow to be a silly indulgence for little more than a possession.

But I didn’t mean to focus on that sorrowful situation, although my brother and his wife are definitely in my thoughts, and bless dear Dutch, may he rest in peace now.

It is a coincidence that the Mother’s Day card I sent my mother—well, a regular card that I turned into a Mother’s Day card, as after all, she usually likes the ones with dirty jokes that are embarrassing to buy, so she’s hardly a traditionalist---has an animal/offspring theme. She and I both seem to prefer animals to children, at least in our own homes. The Paw Play greeting card produced by QuittingHollywood.com pictured cute cats and a dog on the front, with the words:-

“Dogs and cats are better than kids because they eat less, don’t ask for money…and if they get pregnant, you can sell their children.”

Fox Caught Cat Napping

As an animal lover, I was surprised and enormously cheered to find a lovely fox curled up asleep in the middle of my urban garden at lunchtime on Saturday…and unfortunately, this delight led to a bit of embarrassment on the train this morning. I didn’t accidentally take the fox to work with me—nothing like that.

On Saturday, I had just come back from the vets (got all my shots!) and felt somewhat shaken from the journey there at the hands of a truly psycho minicab driver, so it was a diverting surprise to see my new furry friend honouring my neglected--nay ignored-- garden with its snoozy presence. Anyone who read my first posting about how a pigeon’s nest outside my window lifted my spirits for a month can imagine I might get positively feverish at the sight of a fox so near for so long. Usually, they are just fleeting glimpses of scarlet in the moonlight, dodging the bullying neighbourhood cats as they search for food often in atrocious conditions, nights I would have hoped they’d stay huddled safe in their den somewhere, but I suppose they must go out in horrid weather as they can’t ring Domino’s for delivery.

Here in broad daylight, in the middle of a small square shabby garden that was long ago concreted over and just barely decorated with errant vines straying from the neighbours’ garden with no respect for the boundary, and on the other side of the fence, with numerous noisy Christmas shoppers chatting and slamming car doors just a few feet away in the car park so near the main shopping centre in town….lay a snoozing fox, rather exposed.

It seemed so surprising that I started to worry that the fox must be injured and could crawl no further so stopped where it landed. Fortunately its chest was rising and falling with comforting regularity, and surely any broken limbs would not manage to curl into such a tight red ball. I also feared that it might be disturbed and run into the path of danger, and I hoped it would at least sleep ‘til dark, which would be in a few hours at 3.30pm.

So I kept an eye on him, took a few photos from a distance as I did not dare go down into the garden for fear of terrifying him. I eventually got out my old-fashioned camcorder and filmed him, and just as the sky grew a bit darker, he picked up his head, looked back (coincidentally in my direction) revealing his gorgeous fox face and wonderful ebony ears, had a bit of a chew on his probably mangy skin, and gave his ear a scratch with a back foot as a dog would. He was lovely, and he seemed to be well.

He then hit nature’s snooze button and curled up for another brief visit to noddytown, then after a bit lifted his head, stood and straightened out by lunging forward then backward, stretching his legs. He raised his head to assess the situation but didn’t look at all surprised about where he was so it must have been a conscious choice to nap there. After a bit, he moved to the edge of my garden to the path that led to the front, cautiously gazed down it and seemed to decide that direction was unsafe, thought he’d go through the small picket fence to my neighbour’s garden and cutely tried to put his big furry head through the fence only to find—fortunately before it got stuck—that it was way too big to fit. So he looked up and leapt over the fence, ran through my neighbour’s garden and disappeared….though he would have had a lot of concrete and pavement to cross before he got anywhere remotely secluded.

Pleased to get some footage of such cuteness unravelling before my eyes, I transferred it to my computer that night and left it (and a few other clips) burning onto a DVD whilst I slept. In the morning, eager to see how it turned out, I grabbed the newly burned DVD to watch on my laptop on the train. Comfortably seated on a busy train carriage, having put my MP3 player headphones in my ears, I turned on the laptop and carefully checked that the sound was, as always, muted so the DVD would not be heard by everyone in the carriage. The DVD would contain no fox noises (which I’ve often thought to sound a bit like someone slowly strangling or crushing a screeching bird of prey—horrible in the night) as I had filmed through a closed window. What it did contain, I’m ashamed to admit, was a running commentary from yours truly that comes naturally when I see cute animals. It’s scary; I talk out loud and in a thoroughly shameful goopy voice.

So I watched the DVD on the crowded Christmas Eve train, and lots of people looked over at me and my laptop, which often happens; I think it’s rude and surprising that people are so unaccustomed to seeing someone use a laptop on the train that they stare. When the fox footage ended, the DVD moved straight to a slideshow I’d done of photos of my father throughout his life to Warren Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart. Such a fitting tune, but I did not expect to hear it absolutely blasting out of my laptop today on the train. It took me a moment to realise I was the one to blame for the powerful noise, as my ears were otherwise engaged listening to music, remember. I ripped out my headphones to confirm, with great alarm, that my laptop volume was not muted after all and in fact was horribly loud. The speaker volume was set to mute, yes, but apparently the DVD-playing software overrode that setting. I immediately shut down the software and opened the DVD-tray in a panic to stop the noise that everyone in the busy train carriage was hearing.

To my horror, it dawned on me that I’d just unwittingly treated said carriage full of people to about 15 minutes of the soundtrack of the fox footage. They would have heard a constant chorus of “Awwww, bless it! Look at the cuteness! Look at da fuzzy wuzzy ears! What adorableness! Please, please let it be okay! Awww, look at the fluffiness of da tail! It’s skitching its little ear, soooo sweeeet!” in an ultra-goopy voice of which I am not proud. I also seem to recall near the end as the fox made its getaway that I uttered an extremely rare-for-me expletive when I tried to film and photograph the fox at the same time and dropped one of the cameras. So that, after all the fuzzy goopy silly ‘adorableness’ constant narration, would have been blasted around my train carriage without my realising. For about 15 minutes. So maybe, just maybe, that was why everyone was staring at me! Including the many, many children on the train who must have been coming to London for some pantomime treats.

Oh dear. I just hope that those people are people who ride the train in only on Christmas Eve so I will never see them again. I’m sure that will be the case, if I wish really hard on the Christmas star I see tonight….

Pet Pigeon

September has brought a sadness for the loss of more than just the summer; I feel as though I have lost a pet. I should think in more positive terms as though it was taken to live on a farm where there’s more room for it to run around—or fly around—and live happily ever after, or so I hope. What pet? A pigeon. Not one of those fancy ones, the poodles of the pigeon world, nor a homing one. No, just Joe Pigeon. Joe and his bride and his wean.

I live in a London borough where the avian wildlife mainly comprises pigeons, seagulls, Hitchcock-like numbers of starlings, and the odd crow or magpie. I adore animals but have sufficient knowledge of hygiene matters to grimace when tourists in Trafalgar Square encouraged these major disease-carrying flying health hazards to perch upon them en masse. But that doesn’t mean I’m not heartbroken when I see one limping around with a deformed foot, or annoyed when I see a child run at them as they desperately try to scrounge a meal.

Said heart was stirred and surprised when I glanced out of my window in early July at the large Weeping Birch that my neighbour wants me to remove, thinking that it would be the wrong time of year to do so as a bird’s nest had revealed itself when the tree was bare in the winter, and I’d seen several adorable blue tit fledglings on the branches some weeks before. When I tried to make out the nest’s outline through the many draping branches in full leaf that usually hid it, I was shocked to find a bird sitting on it then, just level with my first floor kitchen window. It was a pigeon. I thought pigeons’ nests were never seen, that the birds nested on ledges in high-rise buildings, yet here was one in a tree.

Thus began a relationship of sorts that lasted about two months. Every morning when I raised my blind, I would check on my pigeon. When I came home from work, I’d go to see that the pigeon was there, and it always was. Whenever I went to make a cup of tea or wash up: pigeon. I’d often feel forced to photograph this glimpse of nature, and would be unnerved when the pigeon would seem to turn to look at me, as surely it couldn’t see past the branches and shadows, through the glass and into my kitchen to see me. But then I remembered that pigeons have excellent eyesight; they can, after all, recognise landmarks when they are flying high above them, which helps their homing skills, although that’s apparently based on some sort of magnetic pull (though these days perhaps they have a i-phone with GPS). Pigeons can see colours and even ultraviolet light. Their hearing is also superb, which is why a flock sometimes seems to fly away for no reason; perhaps they’ve been disturbed by a foreign volcano (as opposed to one in Kent).

I found that I spent a great deal of time worrying about my pigeon—or pigeons, as there were two taking shifts. The dad clocked in for the work day, and the mum sat on the nest overnight (I read this; I couldn’t tell their gender). One of them sometimes looked speckled brown from the underneath rear view as though a giant wren had taken its place. I suppose it was just that I'm not used to seeing pigeons from below with their tail raised, nearing their soft white underside. These pigeons—wood pigeons--also had a lovely white ring around their necks, like a pearl necklace, which made me think of them as upper class, and more closely related to delicate doves, symbols of peace and love, than your average urban disease deliverer. But most biologists would tell you there’s not much difference between pigeons and doves anyway, and pigeons are actually rock doves.

Pigeons are also monogamous, so this pair might have been together for years and might remain so for many years yet; they can live for around 16 years. I learned many such pigeon facts as my curiosity was peaked by my feathery new neighbours, and I have a new respect for them.

I came to look forward to checking on my pigeons—I'd see them one at a time, of course—and worried about them. They must have thought their watch was wrong as it couldn’t possibly be August, with absolutely fierce winds blowing them all around, loads of driving rain, and they’d chosen the worst place for a nest. Any other tree surely would be more stable; a Weeping Birch is top heavy, flimsy, and waves about madly in the slightest wind. Indeed, another one in our close was felled by the merest breeze. This precarious situation made me fear for them, which made me feel even fonder of them. The nest was composed of a mere few twigs barely connected, it seemed, and surely the only thing that kept it in place, though it did seem to drop slightly over time, was a rogue vine that was torturing the tree.

One time, their white egg was clearly visible from the side, and I worried that it must be dangerously chilled as certainly neither the nest nor the tree offered it much protection. I cringed when rowdy groups of young delinquents drank and shouted in the car park a few feet away from the tree, and wished I could shield my pigeons, and always prayed that none of said delinquents would ever catch a glimpse of the nest, as no doubt they’d compete to knock it out of the tree with rocks. I would stand and watch the pigeon who was sitting guard on the nest during the worst windy storms, praying it would make it, and the next morning I’d return to the check the tree, fearful of the worst. To my relief, one of the pigeons would still remain dutifully in place.

This sense of duty later seemed to fade slightly. There would be times when I eagerly rushed to the window to greet the sight of my pigeon, only to find a vacant nest. I would be terribly worried for hours. What had happened? Had the egg been blown out of the nest, so the pigeons abandoned it? Just when I began to feel deflated that the joyful experience was over, the next visit to my kitchen would reveal one of my feathered friends sitting there. Perhaps they’d needed a break; it was a tougher than expected job after all, with this wintry weather in summer. When the absences become slightly more frequent, I worried that one of the pair might have been killed. One time when the nest was empty, I saw a lovely wood pigeon on top of a nearby garden shed, forlornly looking out as though it was searching and waiting for its partner. I noticed then that this pigeon was actually a lovely bird when you see its grey back feathers separated by the breeze, so much prettier than those glossy lacquered-looking solid typical City pigeons with the iridescent opal-like sheens. This bird had character, and right now, it was looking lost and lonely. Or perhaps I was going a bit mad; I’m no Dr Doolittle.

Fearful that one pigeon was forced to leave the nest to feed because its partner had been killed, I once put some breadcrumbs on top of my bin near the tree so it wouldn’t have to travel far for food. The bread remained untouched. I later learned that wood pigeons don’t eat any old junk like their concrete city cousins, they prefer plant shoots and sometimes insects. Or maybe they just didn’t like my cooking; no one does.

I also wondered whether the egg had yet hatched, as I could no longer see through the sides of the nest to be certain. I felt the presence of a new life (or squab) had been confirmed when I saw one pigeon sitting on the nest when another flew in and stood on the edge, leaned over the nest as though regurgitating into a squab’s hungry mouth, which was also happy confirmation that both the cock and hen were still alive (unless they rope in step-parents pretty quickly).

There still remained some worrying interludes when no adult was on the nest, but I didn’t know the phone number for Pigeon Social Services. My fears were realised when, one morning, I opened the kitchen blind to look out at my warm and fuzzy “Springwatch” scene---only to be greeted by an Edgar Allen Poe horror. I saw a flurry of giant black wings flapping madly over the nest! A crow was attacking my precious pigeon, my nearly constant companion day in and day out for well over a month. I couldn’t think what to do so I just opened the kitchen window as loudly as possible, and the crow leapt off its prey so abruptly that a few black feathers fell to the ground, and it perched on the tree trunk beside the nest and gazed at me to size up the threat. After a few moments’ thought, it flew to a nearby branch and watched me as it pondered its next move, then shortly afterwards, it flew away. (I have no photo of the dramatic crow attack as I was too busy trying to save the pigeons; I guess I’d fail the David Attenborough School of Naturist Filmmaking as I interfered rather than just observing.) I later wondered what I might have done if the window noise had been insufficient, and I realised I had some brazil nuts that I might have thrown, but if I’d injured even this devil, I’d be devastated that I’d hurt an animal, so it’s good it hadn’t come to that.

I actually felt shaken by the attack and realised that no adult pigeon had been on the nest; it had been a one way fight. But surely the crow had just killed the baby pigeon. This, I thought, is why the adults shouldn’t leave! Think how terrifying that attack must have been for the baby, and what an awful death. As I expected, I didn’t see another pigeon all day; I figured the baby had been killed so they’d abandoned the nest.

Much to my surprised delight that evening, I not only found an adult pigeon on the nest, but I saw it feeding the littlun’! I couldn’t believe it had survived the crow attack, and I was thrilled. It was a treat to see all three pigeons that night with both adults fussing over the peeper, one adult sitting on the nest, the other flying in with food.

That fortunately was the last terrifying episode that I witnessed, although I saw no reason why the crow wouldn’t try again as the parents still occasionally left the nest. Shortly after that, the combination of the wind having blown the branches around so much and the rain having brought tremendous shoots of new growth on the tree meant that the nest was no longer visible to me unless wind blew the branches out of the way. I could still tell when an adult was seated on it as I might catch a glimpse of its tailfeathers, but I didn’t see the youngster again…..until my birthday.

My birthday at the end of August provided me with a gratifying treat when I opened the kitchen blind and found that the baby pigeon had fledged. It was perched on a branch near its nest, absolutely adorable, a mini-pigeon puffed out, more like a new species of sweet little bird. That sight cheered me up no end, but that night was terrible, with driving rain and dreadful winds that really shook the tree side to side. I couldn’t imagine that this new little fluffball, using its new feet and clinging to a branch for the first time, could survive it. I kept checking on it until I got the sense I was making it nervous; I guess the dear ingrate didn’t appreciate that it was me who had saved it from a crow. Soon, it was too dark for me to make it out in the branches, so I closed my blind and prayed, but worried all night.

I was jubilant in the morning when the fluffball was not only still clinging on, but it had moved to a branch right outside the window. Worryingly, this was in plain sight and I feared it might invite a crow back, and I hoped the adult pigeons were keeping a close eye on it, and it seemed to do fine. After a couple days, I saw no more of the baby pigeon, and of course the adults were never on the nest again.

So I feel a bit lonely now. Several times a day for two months, I would regularly look out my kitchen window and see ‘my’ pigeon sitting there, and I saw these two adults raise a youngster that eventually flew the nest, without Bill Oddie or Simon King obstructing the view or narrating. I remained worried for a while about the welfare of the baby bird but have to have faith that it’s out there living a grand life. A few days after it fledged, I found myself leaning against a fountain in Trafalgar Square as I enjoyed a Chai Tea Latte before catching a matinee of Elling starring John Simm, and naturally I was surrounded by pigeons, but the common variety rather than the prettier special wood pigeons. Indeed, I find when I walk around the city that I care more about all pigeons, but see wood pigeons as vastly superior to the others, with more character and class.

So if you spot a slightly daintier, seemingly more naïve wood pigeon trying to tackle some food stuff that is beyond its capability, or see some kid cruelly and needlessly running at it, please protect it, because it might just be my little pigeon.