Migrants
- Richard Crooks
- Oct 18
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 13
Once upon a time, Alix and I were pretty poor at spotting and identifying birds. And then lockdowns happened, when we were permitted just one walk every twenty-four hours (crazy, wasn’t it)
We were very lucky, because our daily release involved wandering around the neighbouring parkland and farmland of Cirencester. We took our time, as we wanted our precious per diem freedom to last. Our walks became longer in distance, and we stopped more often to take notice of our surroundings. We noticed things in nature that we had never made time to notice before. We started to take more photographs of things that were once, to us, unremarkable.
There were no jets above, and so no con-trails to deface the blue expanse above. And it was blue; the spring of 2020 was long, and dry, and warm. And with no car engines, everything was quiet; so quiet that we could hear things that we had not paid so much attention to before.
Like bird calls and songs. We always seemed to hear them before we saw them. A shrill ‘chiff chaff’ or a mellifluous “warble” turned our heads towards a hedge, or a tree, or a stone-wall. And then we’d watch in stillness, holding our breath, until we picked out the caller.
At first, in March, we spotted the residents, those hardy little things that managed to overwinter in the cold, grey and damp of a Cotswolds winter. And then as March gave way to April and May, new and unfamiliar calls and songs peaked our attention. The summer visitors had started to arrive, after completing their annual northwards migration.
We walked similar, circular routes each day, and we started to become familiar with the calls and the sightings. Instead of having to return home and compare my photos with my dad’s old bird books and the on-line guides, we recognised these tiny feathered creatures more easily. Not just their shape or colouring, but their flight or their calls, or their location.
Some individuals even had their own trees or hedges. We got so immersed in the landscape and our friends’ environment, that we could even expect to see a bird at a particular spot, even when it had not yet shown itself. There were the ash trees where the odd over-wintering bramblings flocked, hiding amongst the noisy chaffinches. There was the large, woodland edge beech where the vising blackcap flitted around.
Furlough came, and to amuse myself I created a map on Google Earth to record all our bird sightings. I even shared it with the land owners - the Bathurst Estate – who seemed briefly interested. I was becoming a real “twitcher”:
As the spring advanced, spotting became more difficult. The burst of leaf turned the open, twiggy hedges into impenetrable green walls. There was the stretch of hedgerow where we would hear the first whitethroats. We had no chance of spotting them, until they popped up to have a fleeting look around at us, before disappearing again beneath and behind the dense canopy. The bird we heard many times yet found hardest to spot was the chiff-chaff.
Some birds are really difficult (to me) to identify by sight. Many of the warblers, like reed warblers and sedge warblers, seem to me to be almost identical, even after I’ve read the identification notes in the guides, and studied the pictures and diagrams. Some LBJs will always remain ‘little brown jobs’. One such LBJ, that we did not see often turned out to be a meadow pipet. One of its defining characteristics is its unfeasibly long rear toe and claw, that it uses to wrap around it’s chosen perch. It is a summer visitor to Cirencester. It may overwinter in southern Europe or across the Mediterranean in northern Africa. What a journey for such a little chap.
And then lockdowns were lifted. Distant car engines on the bypass returned to spoil the quiet with their constant background hum; con-trails again scarred the sky; and we once again got diverted by other distractions that had been prohibited.
Nature, sadly but gradually, stepped backwards out of our lives again.
But then nature suddenly slaps you in the face, and amazes you, and forces you to pay attention once more. In October 2021, Tony and I were waiting in Riposto, Sicily for a weather window to cross the Ionian Sea to western Greece. A deep low pressure had been stuck in our path for ten days with strong winds and big seas. Eventually we could wait no longer, the urge to move on becoming overwhelming. We cast off Missy Bear’s lines and headed east for a 280NM crossing. We expected to sail for two days and two nights with Force 6 winds and a 2-metre swell south of Italy’s sole.
We were on a broad reach on port tack with a couple of reefs. On the first night we experienced prolonged bursts of near gale conditions (38 knots peak), and the swell was nearer 2.5m, with the odd larger rogue often arriving over your shoulder from a slightly different angle to the wave train. We were in full oilskins (it was chilly), clipped on, and hand-steering as I felt the autohelm was struggling to cope safely.
Then suddenly, in the dark and surrounded by all that power, we saw a LBJ fluttering in the cockpit. Where on earth had that appeared from? Had it been a stowaway? We were in the middle of nowhere.
It made its way instinctively to the companionway seeking warmth and sat on the steps. Later as light broke, the little chap, flew off south, but after doing a few circuits of the Missy Bear, decided he’d take his chances aboard and sheltered under the dinghy that was lashed to the foredeck.
The second night, he appeared in the cockpit again, looking very tired. We’d had the engine running in idle for an hour just to top-up the batteries, and the tiny bird seemed to sense the warmth from the exhaust and made his way back to the stern and ended up between the back of the lazarette and the stowed bathing platform. We coaxed him out and offered him crumbs of bread and cereal bars. But he was not persuaded. Next time we found him, he was still. He hadn’t made it. I was ridiculously sad.
When we arrived in Preveza and in reach of phone signal again, I did some research and concluded our little passenger had been a tree pipet, I recognised the markings and long hind claw of a pipet, but this one was not of the meadow variety. Tree pipets breed in Europe in the summer and then migrate in August and September to sub-Saharan (south of the desert) Africa to overwinter, often using Sicily as a stepping stone. Perhaps our chap had been a straggler?
According to my Wikipedia search, “a tree pipet is an undistinguished looking species, with brown stripes above and with black markings on white underparts and buff breast below. It can be differentiated from the slightly smaller meadow pipit by its heavier bill and greater contrast between its buff breast and white belly. Tree pipits are more likely to perch in trees.” Given there were no trees in the middle of the Ionian Sea, this offered no useful clue. And, I had no idea if this birds bill was slightly heavier than anything else…
Now, fast forward to yesterday (October 16, 2025).
Missy Bear was broad-reaching on starboard in a steady northerly across the Icarian Sea (eastern Aegean), heading west from Lipsi island to tiny Levitha island, a small rocky speck in the sea, with only four permanent human inhabitants.
A couple of hours or so into the journey, and suddenly there was a flutter under the spray hood, which startled First Mate. It was an LBJ. It kept trying to fly forward out of the cockpit, but into the clear, transparent plastic of the sprayhood, before dropping back in a frenzy of fluttering.
Where had it come from? It surely hadn’t been a stowaway. I carefully and gradually ushered it backwards. I knew this time that it was a tree pipit. As it cleared the side panel of canvas, it launched itself downwind. It kept heading south, maybe towards Astipalia island, and then Crete perhaps, before the slog to Egypt maybe. Who knows? But what a journey lay ahead.
I had no idea of its sex or age. Was it a female who would have built the nest, and incubated maybe 4 to 6 eggs. Or a male who would have helped his mate feed and fledge the chicks? Had they been one of the unlucky couples parasitised by a cuckoo. Or was it a juvenile, making its first autumn migration south? The rocky islands of the Aegean are covered in low scrub. So perhaps there would be lots of insects on the ground for this lightweight traveller to forage and replace energy reserves.
Suddenly Missy Bear's relatively short hops from rocky isle to rocky isle seem so superfluous and inconsequential. But it does make you think. Migrations are perpetual and ubiquitous. Even some humans still migrate, even if its just up the Swiss mountains from the valleys each summer. Just as birds migrate seasonally to find food, many humans still migrate to find work to pay for food.
Do problems arise when these perennial flows are interfered with? Humans for 10,000 years have settled, and made roots, and then erected walls and fences and other artificial borders to protect their assets (sheep or health services). But the animals that continue their migratory cycles suddenly come across impenetrable barriers. What to do?
At least birds have the gift of flight and soar over these obstacles, remaining largely free of human interference, at least during their migration.
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