Nick Penny

Call of the Kingfisher

Bright Sights and Birdsong in a Year by the River

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Call of the Kingfisher - an enchanting nature-writing debut. This love letter to River Nene and the wild things that live there, especially kingfishers, celebrates a year's worth of Northamptonshire riverbank walks. Written with a musician's ear, the book includes access to a number of high-quality birdsong recordings made where the book is set.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bradt Travel Guides
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. August 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 196mm x 125mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 302g
• ISBN-13: 9781804691113
• ISBN-10: 1804691119
• Artikelnr.: 66941138

Autorenporträt

Nick Penny grew up in many different parts of the world before doing an arts degree at Oxford University. He then set up his own workshop making musical instruments, as well as writing and playing the Paraguayan harp. After moving to rural Northamptonshire four decades ago, he became fascinated by the birdsong in his local woods, starting to record it and use the sounds in his own music. He also began to watch and photograph the kingfishers on the River Nene close to his home – experiences captured in his nature-writing debut, Bradt’s Call of the Kingfisher. Although not a trained naturalist, Penny is an inspiring speaker about wildlife and birdsong, and writes with a deep passion and concern for his subject. Always curious, always with his musician’s ear to the ground, Penny is keen to learn about nature – and delights in passing that knowledge on to others. Penny is from Peterborough, UK.

Inhaltsangabe

Chapter 1 January
Nick Penny goes for a walk on New Year's Day and has a chance encounter
with a kingfisher just minutes from home. He decides to spend a year
looking out for them on his local stretch of the River Nene, describes his
first kingfisher sighting as a boy, and gives broad introductions to the
common kingfisher, the river and the town. He introduces the idea of “sound
walks”, listening to birdsong and natural sounds, and how it relates to his
life as a musician. He rediscovers the eighteenth century naturalist
Gilbert White as an inspiration, gives tips on how to see and hear
kingfishers, and reflects on the importance of stillness when observing
nature. He walks by the river in the snow, ponders the dangers of ice for
kingfishers, watches a huge flock of lapwings and reflects on what he's
seen and heard during a wintry first month.
Chapter 2 February
He describes how certain sounds have affected him during a peripatetic
childhood and in his later life. He talks about herons and cormorants, and
visits the local church to illustrate a story about an eagle lectern dumped
in the river during the Civil War. He describes a day in his music studio
working on a piece inspired by a starling murmuration. He walks in nearby
Rockingham Forest, and reflects on skylark sounds and a running stream. He
has a very close encounter with a pair of kingfishers, and hears their
courtship warbling. He introduces the idea of soundscapes, and the
intrusion of human sounds into the natural world. It's Valentine's Day, and
spring is definitely in the air. He records some woodpecker sounds in the
woods. He goes to sit by the pond in a wood to meditate on its natural
sounds, and watches a relaxed and resting kingfisher for more than half an
hour on the last day of the month.
Chapter 3 March
He comes across a flock of fieldfares, looks closely at some cygnets'
feathers and goes into detail about kingfisher plumage. He watches a
blackbird nest building and reflects on their song. He discusses what the
river means to him and what it might have meant to others in the past. He
visits a Bronze Age site at nearby Flag Fen to get an insight into the
practice of placing votive offerings into water, and speculates on how
Romans in a settlement near Oundle and early Christians might have viewed
the river. He describes uses of the river to the present day, and the
dangers it faced, and still faces, from pollution. He reports the first
spring arrival of migrant chiffchaffs from Africa and goes into the
ambience of birdsong. He sees a male kingfisher carrying a fish as a
courtship offering, and discovers a pair beginning to tunnel into the
riverbank to make their unusual nest. He watches the mating dance of two
swans, hears the first blackcap calls of the year and records some
kingfisher sounds near the nest that suggest it's occupied and eggs may be
laid soon.
Chapter 4 April
He keeps monitoring the kingfishers' nest from a distance but starts going
to other woods in the valley nearby to record dawn choruses amongst the
bluebells. He watches and listens to signs of spring coming thick and fast.
He discusses migration, why kingfishers don't need to migrate from the UK,
and the egg cycle, including the involvement of both partners. The first
nightingale arrives in the forest on the 14th and he hears a cuckoo by the
river on the same day. He works on a song about First World War soldiers
hearing nightingales from their trenches and dreaming of home. He hears
reed warblers and ravens and makes birdsong recordings at dawn and dusk. He
meets a bird ringer in the wood who has handled most of the local
nightingales and ringed two kingfishers. He discusses how kingfishers got
their name, and their different names across the world. The local
kingfishers' behaviour suggests that one is sitting on the nest.
Chapter 5 May
He describes legends and stories about kingfishers and explains the halcyon
quotes in Shakespeare, as well as the arrival in Oundle of an
eighteen-year-old John Clare in May 1812 to train for the local militia.
The local kingfisher should be fledging chicks at the end of the month, and
he sketches what might be happening in the meantime. He visits the
bluebells at dawn and makes a video and records a soundtrack to it, watches
a sand martin going into a nest at the pond and observes a pair of cuckoos
in the meadows. He meets and talks to villagers and wild swimmers, and
marvels at the growth of foliage on the riverbank and the glorious smells
of evening. Towards the end of the month the activity and sounds around the
nest are calming down and it appears that the chicks have left the nest.
They spend only four days being looked after by the adults before they
drive them away, so he spends most of his waking hours trying to find them.
On the last day of the month he at last spots one and hears others hidden
close by.
Chapter 6 June
He spends a few days watching the chicks before they depart and describes
the difficult time they face on their own because of the biological
necessity of the parents starting a new brood straight away. He goes more
deeply into the meaning of birdsong, looks into the work of pioneering
recordist Ludwig Koch and listens to one of Koch's cuckoo recordings on a
friend's wind up 78 rpm gramophone. Demoiselles and dragonflies start to
appear but the butterflies are late. He meets a young entomologist by the
river. There are signs that the kingfisher couple are at the nest again. He
looks at the historic use of kingfisher feathers in costume and visits the
Pitt Rivers museum in search of feathered jewellery. The butterflies
arrive, and he discusses the influence of local conservationist family, the
Rothschilds.
Chapter 7 July
He comes back after a week away to find that the bank containing the
kingfishers' neat has collapsed, though they are still flying around the
area. The butterflies are at their height. He goes to watch little owls at
Stoke Doyle, near to where they were introduced into the UK in the
nineteenth century by renowned ornithologist Lord Lilford. He reflects on
the year he himself spent at Lilford Hall making instruments in a stable
block workshop. He goes into a care home for the elderly to play them music
and birdsong, and visits a friend who lives on a narrowboat in the fens
that's next to a kingfisher nest. Back home, he's confused about where the
new nest might be, but new chicks turn up on the riverbank and he spends a
magical hour hidden in close proximity to one of them. They move on, and he
experiences feelings of anticlimax and exhaustion.
Chapter 8 August
Sparrowhawk chicks and a cuckoo chick turn up along the river, and he
watches the cuckoo being fed by a tiny reed warbler. More butterflies
appear. He buys a canoe and takes it down the cam from Grantchester to
Cambridge, musing on the ghosts of Syd Barrett and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He
watches kingfishers from the canoe and goes to other areas to see them. He
walks the upper reaches of the river around Northampton, and visits the
church porch where John Clare sat on his trips out from the asylum. He
enjoys the smells on the riverbank and discovers the word petrichor. He
notes that birdsong is falling away as summer passes, though yellowhammers
are still singing. He discovers the connection between their song and
Beethoven's Fifth. He encounters wild swimmers, and has some thoughts about
fencing and trespass and access to the river. He has thoughts about
kingfisher colours and the colour wheel.
He walks the river Nene in sections between Oundle and the source
Chapter 9 September
He goes into the porch of Cotterstock Church in the footsteps of 1960s
nature writer “BB”. He watches swallow chicks in a nest. Only a few days
later all the swallows have left to fly south. He looks into passages in
The Wind in the Willows, takes evening walks to listen to and record owls
and watches a harvest moon. He finds a slice of yew tree and talks about
how the timber was used historically in bow making and luthery. A
kingfisher reappears at the lock and takes up residence. He nearly sets
fire to the house doing experiments putting a match to a fungus called King
Alfred's Cakes. He measures moon shadows and takes wet walks in the woods.
Chapter 10 October
There's a kingfisher at the lock every time he walks by. It's still warm,
but mornings are chillier and there is a misty dawn with dew-dropped
spiders' webs. He watches a kingfisher fly by with a large fish, comes
close to a woodpecker, and listens to rooks arguing. He thinks about St
Wilfrid, who died in Oundle on 10 October 709.He goes to the world conker
championships at Southwick, and walks to John Clare's Cottage to find out
more about the man and his landscape. He looks into Clare's use of natural
sounds in his verse, and different poets' treatment of kingfisher themes.
He walks past a dead badger on the path and is intrigued by the fact that
it's moved to a different position every day for a week. He sees a
kingfisher hover like a kestrel and looks at the reflections in a swirling
pond. He enjoys a calm day, but the next day there's an almighty storm with
lots of trees down in the wood.
Chapter 11 November
He watches kingfishers pairing up prior to separating for the winter.
Leaves begin to fall, and he thinks about how autumn is treated in
literature. He walks by the lakes at Titchmarsh and watches starling
murmurations alongside a sparrowhawk. He plays in church at a craft fair,
and as a very young baby reacts to his music he has a flashback to watching
a kingfisher chick listening to the new sounds around it. He looks into the
scientific study of a kingfisher's beak and how it was used in designing
the Japanese bullet train. He watches an unusual tail display by a
kingfisher, is buzzed by a barn owl and sees a stonechat. The fieldfares
and redwings arrive and he analyses the late autumn soundscape. He finds a
dead carp killed by otter, and a kingfisher takes up residence at the
bridge and is challenged by a rival.
Chapter 12 December
The kingfisher's at the bridge every day. He thinks about how much better
he is at spotting and hearing them, and how he's rediscovered ancestral
skills that would have been important for survival. He has a close
encounter with wrens and goldfinches, and is surprised when the river level
suddenly falls due to works going on downstream. There are heavy frosts,
and unwelcome shooters by the footpath. He drives to the mouth of the Nene
to the Peter Scott lighthouse. Scott went to school in Oundle and started
his painting and wildlife conservation work at the lighthouse. It was also
the inspiration for Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose, which had a big impact
on Nick as a child. The volume of birdsong is swelling again, and
blackbirds are arriving from the continent. He spots a kingfisher flying
through traffic at the top of the bridge and revisits the dangers they
face. He's starting to think of the river as a living thing, and looks into
modern animism. He has a dream on Christmas night about kingfishers coming
alive from their carved images on the stone friezes in the Ancient Egyptian
room of the British Museum. On the last day of the year he watches a
kingfisher from the bridge. There's a feeling of release and sadness as the
light falls, but that morning he'd heard woodpeckers drumming in the new
year, and he's optimistic about the future.