BIRDS OF THE ERMITA

Gustav Mahler was so irritable that he couldn’t stand to hear birdsong in the countryside, where he sought refuge from the noise of the city to write his music. It is difficult to imagine such an extreme case of bipolar disorder. But some birds do sing more in tune than others while some are downright monotonous, pee-witting on two notes all afternoon.

One of the first calls to greet the dawn in my hermitage – “La Ermita” in central Chile – is that of the turca (Pteroptochos megapodius): a low whistle which begins on a b flat, then descends two or three not very well-defined intervals, ending its song in a panicky clucking. It looks like a tiny hen, runs on the ground and has comparatively large feet, as its Latin name suggests.

At the higher end of the talent scale is the Chilean Mocking Bird or tenka (Mimmus thenka), an insolent individual with brown and grey wing and neck flashes. Its repertoire is powerful, joyful and the most varied among all the birds I know. It provides a rich medley of the arias of blackbird, thursh and lark, puffing out its white chest as it hits the top notes, perched on the highest twig of a pine tree in front of my bedroom window. I suspect it is also the joker who makes me risk a heart-attack sprinting back to the house to answer the telephone.

If the Mocking Bird has not found a mate by early spring it will bash itself on the window pane, apparently enraged by its own reflection. This behaviour can go on for several weeks, making Mahler’s ornithophobia understandable. Despite its lovely voice, the tenka is not popular because it devours fruit, espcially grapes, but I leave some vines for birds some distance from the house, where they are safe from cats lurking on the pergola.

Strange to say, the birds don’t sing much in spring. Gone is the merry squawking of starlings pecking at the avocados or dried loquats in the winter August rain, the tweeting of the wrens and finches or the shrill chatter of the humming-birds around the purple salvia.

Words cannot convey the beauty of the green-backed firecrown. Despite its speed as it wooshes from flower to flower in powerful loops, this minute bright-eyed bird, which measures less than four inches, is easy to observe while hovering and feeding like a bee. I was up a ladder pruning when one came a foot or so below my head, giving me a rare view, almost a vision, of the incandescent dark green of its plummage crowned with a halo of shining gold.

The giant humming-bird also appears from time to time. As big as a blackbird, it hovers with a stately grace, its long beak seeking nectar in the red trumpets of the straggly salvia involucrata or frightening the butterflies away from the lantana bush.

The swallows arrive in mid-winter – in October - to nest under the eaves and dive-bomb the cats, who jump at them in vain. The woodpecker, whose knocking I mistake for a carpenter working in the adjacent property (its Spanish name is carpentero), hunts bugs in the bark of trees close to the summer-house but moves out of sight like a squirrel when I try to get a closer look.

Perhaps the birds are too busy nesting to sing much. One exception to this concert interval is a tiny linet which chirps like a cricket as it hops on the banks of the stream – a torrent in winter - which runs round the house like a moat, bridged by railway sleepers lacking only winch and chains to make this Englishman’s house his castle. A kingfisher – one of few protected species- once flashed like a blue arrow over the water but I have not seen it since. The memory is enough.

For years I have been unable to identify another, rather pathetic bird which, more than thirty years after General Pinochet’s coup, continues to chant “The People United will never be defeated!” This politically defeated fowl dare not utter the slogan in full, repeating timidly “El Pueblo Unido, el Pueblo Unido...” I am now persuaded that the tenka is responsible for this intrusion of politics into the garden, being a mocker in more senses than one.

Some birds are better at a distance. Eagles occasionally soar above the wooded mountains and are probably guilty of killing several of my kittens. Owls, however, do not present a threat. Little owls with tufted ears are sometimes seen dozing in a tree after a hard night’s hunting. Sadly, I have found the carcasses of barn owls, victims of the overground electricity cables. Their feathers, however, bring luck if you wear them in your hat.

A strange herald of the winter, which squats on my drive on nippy nights, is the nightjar or “blind hen”, as it is called in Spanish. The “gallina ciega” appears to be wounded and unable to fly when I drive towards it with my headlights on. Last winter I stopped within feet of one and got out of the truck to examine it at close range. It resembles a small partridge and is no doubt just as scrumptious. It would seem an easy mater to clout it with a stick and pop it in the pot, but at the last moment it ups and silently floats away. Coming across them on the dirt road to my place, these odd birds always fly up unharmed as though woken from their nocturnal slumber in the nick of time.

Another mysterious bird – if it is one at all –groans like a spoilt tomcat tired of waiting for its supper. It calls in this manner once and then falls silent. I hope to identify it one of these days.