‘Have you seen my hair? Nothing pecky with claws flies near me’

Illustration by Clara Dupré

And that was how the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds caught me in its clutches.

One might think that, as with drugs and cults, beginning so young would entrap us for life. For all I know, my fellow nine-year-olds became committed twitchers, still getting together for annual orgies of mandibular structural appraisal. I, miraculously, was spared. Despite being virtually an infant Victorian parson with a specimens case, a short naturalist already deeply interested in fossils, bees, shells, cones, conkers – anything I could collect, or read about – some core of self-preservation remained. Yes, I sent off my pocket-money, waited excitedly for the post. But this was the early 80s; childhood was only just being invented. Eventually, our enticements came: a monochrome album for bird-stickers (lickable, not even self-adhesive), some unbelievably boring facts and a badge: not exciting, and definitely not cool. Even I, to whom coolness was and remains a mystery, knew not to go there.

That was it. Henceforth, birds were mainly for eating, not watching. This persisted. Round here, a bird feeder only attracts rats. Yes, cygnets are sweet. Otherwise, spare me your tales of faithful robins. I’m too busy being interested in everything else. Besides, I like my animals mammalian, strokeable; have you seen my hair? Nothing pecky with claws is flying near me.

But subtly, incrementally, the avian kingdom slid into my life. Its first insidious approach came in January. I was alone on the allotment site, minding everyone else’s business, warmed only by smugness as I spread manure, when a cartoon-eyed pom-pom with absurd yellow legs plopped down on the horse-dung and began to stump about, undaunted by the quivering human barely six feet away. Was it a hawk? A… golden eagle? Ever since a wild-wee mishap, I always kept my phone in my rucksack, not on me… except, praise be, today.

I snapped several photographs, offered thanks for nature’s majesty, at least for social media… and then, eventually, it flew away. There followed a really magnificent chat with the allotment WhatsApp group, who identified it as a young (unmoustached) female kestrel. Briefly, I knew greatness.

A long period of latency followed: couple of blackbirds, identifiable from the Beatles song; bubonic pigeons; endless inexplicable seagulls. For months I was moved by the presence nearby of a family of wild geese, possibly Canadian, maybe even Barnacle, before realising that the regular honking sound was simply the rusty swing-chain in the dog-park playground behind my flat. Thanks for nothing, Mary Oliver.

My neighbours’ over-ivied fence, already home to a polycule of gastrically generous foxes did, I conceded, nourish small birds with its berries. If only they’d leave my redcurrants alone; couldn’t they tell which fruit was for them and which for me? For my birthday I received the prince of fruit cages but, because my allotment plot slopes sharply downhill, the door hangs open, allowing birds to gorge on my scanty harvests, and be eaten themselves by predators, in privacy. Parakeets devoured every fruit on my modest apple-tree; the slugs go unmolested. Our fragile ecosystem works perfectly, except for me.

My uneasy relationship with birdlife continued, until Australia. I was asked to Adelaide for the glory that is Writers’ Week. The festival was an unalloyed sunny joy: stately Australian women in either long stylish dresses and therapist jewellery, or short dresses with multiple piercings; clever readers; loads of fruit. I was in my element.

One afternoon we visited the Botanical Gardens. I knew of kookaburras solely through a children’s nursery song; suddenly one stood on the path before us. It’s an absurd creature, like a toupéed Danny DeVito, and it really does laugh. Other mad Australasian birds followed; black-faced curly-beaked ibises, somewhere between a chicken and Anna Wintour; owls perching on our knees at a raptor sanctuary, as wedge-tailed eagles flew overhead; pink cockatoos hanging out on the tree-top terrace of Melbourne friends.

And then, on a suburban road, I found gold: a striped kookaburra tail-feather, and I became obsessed. Now, on every walk and gardening-bout, I have something new to fixate upon. Their owners, I confess, still do not compel me; if it flies, I lose interest. But feathers are thrilling, like seedpods, or leaves. And I have, admittedly, now downloaded Merlin, the birdsong-identification app.

Not that I ever have my phone with me when gardening. The app remains unopened. But, every time I’m on my plot I think of my baby kestrel, hot-stepping amid the manure, and I live in hope.