Who is really the bird brain?

It was nine years ago when I first looked at a bird with anything more than passing interest.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like our feathered friends – rather that I hadn’t really expended enough mental energy to regard them as anything other than feather brained.

But in 2009, The Other Half and I were in Berlin and decided to take in the city’s zoo. In the event, our visit was cut short by a storm, but we were impressed enough that we returned before our week was out.

Aviaries are the sort of places I would previously have skipped, but with a quality camera around my neck, what stopped me in my tracks was a king vulture.

A family nearby was trying to attract its attention through the fence, but it maintained a regal sense of aloofness – ignoring them completely and opting instead to stare me down. That bird had attitude. And I got great pictures.

Since then, I have looked out for birds – and always make a beeline for any vultures. I’ve have even been able to identify one in the wild, flying above a Pyrenean town – a lammergeier.

Anyway, fast forward to last autumn and a lunchtime browse in the shop at the near-to-work British Library. Such visits have to be strictly rationed, since it’s well nigh impossible to walk out without having added to our own already creaking shelves.

On this occasion, I picked up a 2017 paperback version of The Genius of Birds.

By this stage, it was some time after my ‘ravens rock’ thing had first blossomed, but the initial enticement to Jennifer Ackerman’s book was a rapid flick through the index to see if ravens merited a mention.

Standing in the shop reading a brief section on how researchers had been on the receiving end of a pair of ravens using weapons against them (dug-up stones) was all it took. I bought the book.

A few weeks ago, waiting for something else to arrive, I plucked it down from the shelf and started to read. Nothing had suggested just how compulsive I’d find it.

Every time I visit the hospital my father now frequents regularly, I talk to the crows that rule the roost on the recreation ground opposite – we know each other well – so it delights me that corvids rate very highly in the avian intelligence stakes.

The early part of the book includes fascinating information about the tool use of New Caledonian crows, the Einsteins of the bird world, but other corvids feature too.

However, there was a whole world of bird brains to discover.

The chickadee, for instance, with it’s astonishingly varied call that can be used to warn its community of a nearby predator and even how threatening that predator is.

We can read about the architectural and aesthetic works of bowerbirds and learn about the astonishing capacity that pigeons have for navigation. It’ll never be so easy to simply dismiss them as ‘rats with wings’ after reading this.

King vulture with attitude, Berlin 2009

In a German experiment, it was found that homing pigeons that were allowed to fly around outside their loft and get to know its surrounds, and then participate in races of up to 175 miles, had hippocampi that were 10% larger than homing pigeons that had not been allowed outside a spacious loft/aviary.

Here, Ackerman adds a fascinating note on research done with humans, showing that experienced black cab drivers in London have more “grey matter” in the rear of their hippocampus than bus drivers or new cabbies.
Which begs the question of whether navigational tech such as GPS is damaging to human intelligence.

The author is always careful not to over-egg any puddings by anthropomorphising avian intelligence, but that works both ways, as she urges us not to consider ‘intelligence’ only in human terms, even where intelligence does not easily correspond with the human understanding of the word.

And at the end of a book that constantly makes you go ‘wow’, Ackerman brings everything together within the context of climate change and what that might mean for birds.

This is popular science, but don’t let that suggest that it’s sloppy. There’s plenty of science here and that can take some serious reading attention. But from start to finish, it’s also an absolute joy. I’ll never again consider birds to be rather boring.

• The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman is published by Corsair and available in a variety of formats.

Inspired by walks in Rye and Hastings

Yew and Boat

If the weather on our visit to Rye was mixed – two days sunny and dry, two days wet and grey – it didn’t ruin the trip.

On Sunday, with drizzle in the air, we headed back out across the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve to Camber Castle, a low fortification built by Henry VIII.

Now a ruin – and only open to the public on limited days – our only company as we gazed inside were sheep.

The Little Gate

It was a walk that had already taken in the Stanton shelter from WWII, and the sight of a lone Spitfire above the salt marshes, banking

and turning to head back east.

I’ve seen Spitfires before – and Hurricanes and a Lancaster bomber: ceremonial fly-pasts in London come in low over our little patio garden, with The Mall just seconds away; so low, you can see the markings on the wings above.

But to see one like this, as one would surely have seen one, 75 years ago during the Battle of Britain, over this same landscape, had something both awesome and haunting about it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera to hand.

The Gate Post

And later, when we spotted a hare leaping among sheep in the distance, and shortly afterwards, a marsh harrier hovering over the vegetation, the camera was absent too – but not our pleasure in seeing such sights.

There were flocks of geese – of at least two species – plus ducks (not just mallards), and a family of swans out for a Sunday morning swim with a cygnet.

You could stand in the middle of the reserve, reeds towering on one side, and listen as the wind rustled through the greenery: the only sound to be heard. In London, there is always at least the background hum of traffic.

As reported previously, it’s an environment that provides plenty of inspiration for local artists – and little wonder.

Camber Castle

So to conclude these posts about the trip, here is a small selection of my own efforts, inspired by the same surroundings.

The photographs were all taken on an iPhone 6 Plus, which saves lugging something bigger around and produces some very good results. They have been processed in Photoshop and I have experimented with a wider variety of approaches than usual.

The first one, Yew and Boat, was taken on the Friday walk and is a perfect illustration of how, sometimes, you’re torn between whether to not to use monochrome or colour.

Sheep Under the Hawthorne

It’s wonderful in either, but I think the colour version simply sings – and, of course, alongside the others, gives a real impression of just how sunny it was.

I admit to be particularly please with this – a good framing, but still requiring the fortune to come upon it.

The Little Gate is another where I was fortunate enough to spot it – and the contrasts between the light and shaw work so well.

It’s almost a cliche of the English countryside – and none the worse for that.

Gate Post, Camber Castle and Sheep Under the Hawthorne were all taken on the Sunday walk, in the conditions mentioned above.

Door at Ypres Tower

The first of these has been de-saturated – a quite trendy look – and has been sharpened to bring out the detail even more. The second has a simple monochrome treatment.

The third has had some desaturation – but nowhere near as much as the Gate Post, and has none of the same degree of sharpening.

And while I appreciate that it’s the wrong part of the country, there’s something about the subject that makes me think instantly of Thomas Hardy’s novels.

Door at Ypres Tower is just what it says on the tin – but works well in black and white, which adds drama to the strength of the inside of the door itself.

Anchor Detail

Anchor Detail is also what it says. This is a close-up of part of the wood of a two-ton Napoleonic anchor that’s on display alongside the net shops in Hastings.

While photographed like this it becomes abstract, there’s so much beauty in the pattern and colour of the wood.

Lastly, I’ve included Teasel, which was done on a 15x10cm scraperboard, taken from a photo I shot during the first walk on the nature reserve.

I did quite a lot of scraperboards in the mid 1970s, copying an etching of an otter that my parents had, and selling form for something like a fiver a throw.

It was last year when, contemplating producing my own Christmas cards for the first time, I bought a packet of small boards – black ink over a gold-coloured background – in order to produce an image.

It took some time to get back into the swing of it – and there’s some debate about how much I managed that – but while I wasted plenty of the small boards, I found myself with two left.

A picture of a teasel, snapped from above during our first walk in Rye Harbour Nature Reserve had the sort of graphic quality that seemed to be crying out for a treatment along these lines.

It’s a reasonable effort, I think – given how long ago it is since I played with the technique.

I hope you enjoy these pictures here – it is, of course, entirely possible that the inspiration will continue in the coming days and weeks.

But only time will tell – and that will be for another post, another day.

• All images are copyright.

Finding art in Rye and Hastings

Camber Sands by David Purdie

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that much of my own art takes as its starting point the built environment – after all, I live in a pretty extreme version of that and experience it on a daily basis.

But our trip to Rye was not limited by walls, and the outdoors and natural worlds that we found ourselves enjoying is clearly  an inspiration to plenty of artists working in the area.

That first walk down to Rye Harbour saw us, as mentioned before, take tea and cake at the Avocet Gallery and Tea Room.

The cake was delicious – and the art on display was appetising enough to have me smacking my lips at the range of high-quality works by local artists who had been inspired by the varied land and seascapes.

I came away with a delightful limited edition, signed and numbered print by Sue Scullard, an illustrator and artist whose woodcuts are simply incredible in their detail.

They’re also very small – which is particularly handy when you’re running out of available wall space in your own private gallery.

Out of a superb selection, I chose a print of a woodland scene – anyone who has been following this blog will know that I have a growing fascination with woods and forests, so it was a perfect picture.

The Edge of the Wood by Sue Scullard

But it wasn’t the only art that we saw – or that I picked up – although it was the most expensive, at £55 (plus what it’s costing to have it framed in plain oak, which seems an appropriate choice).

Find out more about the gallery – and they are constructing an online shop – at avocetgalleryandtea.co.uk.

Sue's own site can be found at suescullard.co.uk.

We had ambled up and down the High Street in Rye on the Friday evening, by which time all the shops were safely shut. But it had given us the opportunity to see what was around.

There was a general art gallery – and next door, a gallery belonging to photographer David Purdie.

A few doors down the street, another photographic gallery displayed works that had had colours so heavily saturated that John Hinde postcards would have natural by comparison.

It hurt my eyes every time we passed it over during the course of our stay.

But David Purdie’s gallery, on the other hand, drew me inside.

Red Hut by David Purdie

Making your work pay is not always easy for artists. In David’s case, his superb photographs are available in a number of ways, from signed prints, to posters to greetings cards.

It’s a long time since I bought any photography to display at home, but I was more than happy to spend under £20 to buy a specially-made frame that holds three of the greetings cards.

Like the print, it fits into a specific spot – indeed, on the wall in my little bit of study/studio space, thus adding additional inspiration.

And since the three photos I picked – groynes at Winchelsea Beach, an old fisherman’s hut next to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, and dunes at Camber – are united by the sea, which I love so much, it was entirely apt.

It was amusing talking to David: he moved to the Rye area from London – not far where we’re based. After some years in the area, he finds it quiet – we’re desperate to get to somewhere where you can actually hear yourself think!

You can find out more about David’s work – there is an online shop, and he also runs photography workshops – at purdiegallery.co.uk. There’s also Twitter for keeping informed about the gallery – at @PurdieGallery.

Not that this was the end of the artistic aspect of the trip. On Monday, with the wind lashing in and a constant drizzle falling, we’d headed through the grey to Hastings.

Initial disappointment had given way to pleasure and interest when we’d discovered the fabulously-named Rock-A-Nore Road, a designation given it in 1859 and derived from a former building “lyinge to the Mayne Rock against the north”.

It borders The Stade – a Saxon term for ‘landing place’, where Europe’s biggest beach-launched fishing fleet is based and where you can find the incredible old net shops – black-tarred, tall, wooden buildings that used to be used to store the nets and other fishing tackle.

Misty Morning by Andrew Dennis

Later, wandering along one of the winding streets of the old town, we spotted a gallery with pictures in the window of the net huts.

This was the Old Gallery, and it largely serves as an outlet for work of self-taught local artist Andrew Dennis.

The Other Half spotted instantly why his pictures of the net shops would particularly appeal to me. Such was the way in which they caught my attention that I picked up another small print.

This is already on the wall – a simple, black frame picked up for next to nothing in Cowling and Wilcox last weekend does the job very well.

To find out more about Andrew’s work, visit theoldgalleryhastings.co.uk.

These were not the only artists’ work that we admired during the trip.

Pill Box, Rye Harbour by Brian Yale

The Rye Art Gallery was a revelation, with a small exhibition in one of the rooms upstairs, as well as the sale rooms downstairs.

My favourite work on display was the acrylic painting, Pill Box, Rye Harbour (2002/3) by Brian Yale.

Deceptively simple, it seems to me to contain the past and the future in the region’s familiar shingle landscape: humanity’s interventions in the landscape returning to that landscape as nature reasserts itself.

The gallery has a website under construction at ryeartgallery.co.uk.

So, while we’d headed to the coast with literature in our minds, we found far more art than expected – and this just gives you a hint of what can be found in the area.

Food, glorious food. Or not

Knights and ketchup

It was the best of England; it was the worst of England. It was a reminder of why we should take more breaks in the UK – and a reminder of why we don’t.

With The Other Half in recuperative mode, and both of us having ditched the tobacco, we decided, at short notice, to grab a long weekend away from London – to somewhere where we might stand a chance of breathing clean air.

It perhaps says something about pollution in the Metropolis that we chose a spot not far from a nuclear power station.

We had picked Rye on the basis of a Saturday morning conversation over coffee, which had started with me musing: “Where was it that the BBC filmed the Map and Lucia that they showed last Christmas?”

Google has its purposes. The location for filming turned out to be Rye, where Map and Lucia author EF Benson had lived for some time and even been the mayor.

Not only that, but the Tilling of those stories is Rye, with Mallards being Lamb House, where Benson himself had lived, and which had housed the American author Henry James before him.

So, literary credentials, plenty of opportunities for walks, the sea close at hand – what was not to like?

Well, one of those downsides of UK holidays is rather obviously the weather. In this case, our four full days in Rye saw two of soaring temperatures and azure skies, with the following two being almost entirely the opposite.

But on a break like this, that wasn’t too bad and more of what we did in later posts.

On our first full day, the Friday, we took a walk down one side of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, ambling through sheep-dotted salt-marsh pastures all the way to Rye Harbour itself.

There, we took tea and magnificent homemade blackcurrant cake, still warm from the oven, in the delightful Avocet Gallery and Tea Room – but more of art in the area another time too.

Refreshed, we set off for Winchelsea Beach, aiming to be there for lunch. There are two routes: one, along what passes for the front, while the other appeared to pass through the reserve, alongside one of the bodies of water within it.

I say “appeared”, because we were relying on Google maps and were having to do a certain amount of guess work given the lack of information on footpaths.

We should have taken the lessons of Google maps in Bavaria in March, but hadn’t. So instead of proper maps, we were stuck with the computerised version again.

The Other Half plumped for the latter route, thinking that it would offer us more to see.

In the event, we discovered that the reserve is, in effect, split across the middle by an area of private land, which prevents you getting near any of those bodies of water.

By the time we realised this, it was too late to turn back. We were walking due west, with the sun pouring down on us straight from the south, with nothing to provide any shade.

Unaccustomed to British seaside stays in the summer as we are (Brighton or Bournemouth in June or February for work does not count), I had forgotten any sun screen.

We were dressed sensibly enough for walking, but by the end of the trip, one side of me was pretty much beetroot red.

However, although we were prevented from seeing the sea by a sizable ridge – a secondary part of the local sea defences – there was plenty more to catch the eye.

Is beans on toast really so difficult?

This included masses of common blue damselflies or azure damselflies, darting just above the gravel path, their vivid, electric colour

There were also brown hawker dragonflies – flitting far higher up, often very near you, and vast, at 7cm or just over.

Flowers abounded in the shingle and the scrub, bringing flashes of unexpected colour to catch the eye.

A battered boat, sitting next to a large tree, provided one wonderful photographic opportunity.

We saw hardly anyone and the few who did pass us exchanged greetings.

When we eventually reached the beach area, with it’s caravan parks, we were in need of lunch.

Those caravan parks – indeed, the beach – might suggest facilities. A simple eatery or two, perhaps. But that’s where the ‘worst-of’ stuff kicks in.

We ate a Mr Whippy simply to keep us going as we continued the hunt. And it was some time before we came across a single café at the far western end of one camp site.

By that stage, we would have been prepared to eat almost anything.

Now in such an environment, I do not remotely expect anything fancy. I don’t want haute cuisine. Pies and chips and the like are eminently acceptable.

But this is not an excuse for such dishes to be poor. They are not inherently poor food, but they need cooking properly, while decent ingredients are as important as elsewhere.

Frozen chips and cheapest-possible frozen scampi will not produce a feast. And nothing will ever be helped by a pile of grey-green tinned peas that are barely even warm.

After that, we trudged back eastwards to get a bus. When we eventually caught one, less than two miles from Rye itself, it cost £2.50 for a single fare. That’s £2.50 each, remember. For a single fare on a short journey. Perhaps London’s constantly-rising bus prices are not quite so bad after all.

In that, then, you have another reason that we head across the Channel for breaks: public transport. The Other Half can drive, but I never have. We don’t have a car. Neither of us has a licence.

Hake with popadom

In the UK, this means that you will: a) get shafted by the cost of public transport; b) discover that public transport is very limited in being able to deliver you to more remote rural spots.

The latter has been experienced on previous UK holidays, on Skye and in the Lake District, where we had to rely, respectively, on local taxies and the generosity of the co-owner of a B&B in order that we could do any decent walks.

That evening, after a rest at our B&B, we headed to The Ambrette, an up-market restaurant in the old town that came highly recommended.

It serves a fusion of local produce with Indian spicing. The menu was mouth-watering.

Unfortunately, what we were served was rather less so.

The spicing was far from subtle and dishes seemed essentially to be slightly deconstructed and poshly-plated curries.

For my starter, part of my pigeon breast was raw and the whole was pretty much covered in a rather sludgy, brown sauce, which was miles for being the hoped-for fragrant.

An afternoon scone  with Earl Grey in Rye – not bad

For a main, I had opted for the fish of the day. It turned out to be hake – and came covered in something that bore little obvious difference to whatever had smothered the pigeon, and a piece of popadom that had lost its crispness by being in contact with the sauce.

We decided to forego a dessert, although while we waited for the bill, we were each given a small glass of guava granita with vanilla sugar, which was light and refreshing and a delight, and left one regretting that that had not been a case with the rest of the food.

At this juncture, I want to mention the mystery of the toast.

Why, at breakfast in our B&B, did the menu say ‘beans on toast’ or ‘egg on toast’ when there was absolutely no ‘on’ to be had for love nor money?

To be fair, the tactic of giving you unbuttered toast alongside your beans or eggs for breckie had hit me in London, where my round-the-corner-from-work caff suddenly started doing this a couple of months ago, and where I now have to stress when ordering that, by ‘on’, I mean ‘on’.

And I’ve since heard that I am not the only one to have experienced this, which suggests it’s some sort of utterly stupid emerging trend. Well stop it. Just stop it. It’s stupid and annoying.

On Saturday, the same lunch issues persisted. We found Tambika, a small café that also sells fossils, for lunch. The Other Half had a vast bowl of piping hot leek and potato soup, while I had two large fishcakes and a salad.

To be fair, it was as good as lunches got, although the fishcakes were a bit sloppy, while the accompanying salad was bland to the point of lacking any discernible flavour.

Marino's fish and chips. Overrated

That evening, with hope in our hearts, we headed to Marino’s, which people universally acclaim as the best chippy in town.

If it is, then it doesn’t say much at all for the others.

There had been vast queues outside the take-away part on the Friday evening and we timed it well to get seats inside just 24 hours later.

Both of us ordered medium cod and chips, with mushy peas. And waited expectantly.

The mass of chips were clearly not hand cut. They were not the worst I’ve tasted, but they were a very long way from being the best. The batter on the fish was okay, but the fish inside it was dry. It didn’t flake properly and had the taste that you get from fish that has been frozen.

Nothing had been fried in proper fat. And by that, I mean dripping.

Fish and chips is not rocket science. But it requires decent ingredients and proper cooking. In dripping. Then it’s a joy – which is why I so fondly remember fish and chips eaten in Hull years ago and even in Scarborough in 2011.

On Sunday, after a very pleasant morning’s walk, we found ourselves in the same old predicament.

This time, we ended up at the Café on the Quay. Plus ça change. It’s chips with everything, as Arnold Wesker might have put it. Or everything with chips.

A cheese omelette this time – plastic, flavourless cheese, that is, and the usual British heavily-set egg concoction. With piles more mediocre frozen chips. And another insipid salad that a rabbit would turn its nose up at.

I was longing to go back to Rye Harbour, just for the Avocet. They don’t do cooked meals, but the mere suggestion of the simple crab salad mentioned on the menu was a serious lure for taste buds that were dying.


For goodness sake – Cromer is a mere four miles from Rye, and Cromer crab is famous, yet I saw it on offer nowhere other than the Avocet.

On Sunday evening, we struggled to find anywhere that had space, as the town seemed inexplicably full to its Elizabethan rafters.

Cod at the Mermaid. But those are not proper 'mushy' peas

At this point, we need to briefly nip back to Thursday evening, a few hours after we had arrived. Then, we had dined in the bar of the centuries-old Mermaid Hotel.

We’d had fish and chips: the beer-battered fish was to prove to be the best we had. The chips were far from sensational, but were also probably the best we were to have.

On Sunday then, we eventually wound up in the same place and, having scanned the bar menu, both opted for the local lamb.

When it arrived, it turned out to be a salad, with slices of rare meat atop a mound of pickled celeriac and carrot, and the freshest, crispest salad leaves you could imagine, with a dressing that was light but, at the same time, packed a flavour punch.

Finally, something wonderful

It was a thing of utter joy in every single way.

Afterwards, we booked at the hotel’s restaurant for our final evening – a meal that proved to offer local scallops for the first time, cooked superbly and served with equally-perfectly cooked broccoli and potato dice, followed by shoulder of lamb and veg.

Were that not enough to revive desperate taste buds, we finished with an utterly divine dessert of elderflower and champagne jelly, a stunning raspberry coulis, chocolate soil (here it worked) a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and a wafer-light sablé biscuit.

It had been a difficult menu to choose from, and I was thrilled to see dishes that included sorrel and nettles.

A divine dessert

So the trip ended with really good food. But it would be remiss of me not to mention our last lunch.

Monday was a rainy day on the south coast. As such, we caught a train and headed two stops west to Hastings.

After an initially disappointing start – including but not limited to walking through the hideous Priory Meadow shopping centre, with its blander-than-bland architecture that wouldn’t offend Prince Charles (whose mother opened it in 1997) and which was built over the Central Cricket Ground that had opened in 1864 and remained there until the 1989; and also took in the classic British tactic of putting a bloody big dual carriageway between along the promenade – we found our way to something with character and real interest in the old town.

Just embarrassing

But come lunch time, we were struggling once more. And, yet again, we ended up having to give in to something and chips.

On ordering scampi and chips, this is what was placed in front of me. Few words are needed. No peas; no salad; not even a solitary leaf of garnish.

Germany is not rated as having a great cuisine, but in March, in Bavaria, there was not a single day when we struggled to find cheap, simple and tasty food to sustain our walks.

There were many visitors in Rye last week who hailed from Germany, France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

I shudder to think what impressions they take away with them of our food.

And that picture should provide ample illustration of one of the major reasons why we do not take more holidays on this side of the Channel.