As I sat in the garden enjoying the summer evening sun, my attention was caught by a movement in the bushes. Not this time one of the dunnocks which are our year-round companions, and not big or heavy enough to be just another pigeon or blackbird.

No, it was a blackcap foraging for berries, not in a black cap, but a smart russet brown one befitting her gender. Happily I had my camera to hand, so here she is. I’m very fond of her and her trim, dapper mate.

Most summers for the past decade we’ve had blackcaps for neighbours. They always nest in the same holly bush just beyond our back gate, and I’ve often wondered whether it’s the same pair returning year after year, or perhaps ensuing generations. And, if one was fledged here, whether it was the male or the female returning to its early home.

All of which raises the question: how long do small birds like blackcaps live? And the answer, it turns out, is not entirely straightforward.

Most sources give a typical blackcap lifespan of two years, which might suggest we’ve had several generations of visitors. But then the Animal Ageing and Longevity Database – a great resource to discover – gives a maximum age in the wild of nearly 14. So it seems at least possible that the pair busy in the garden hedge right now are the same two birds I first spotted 10 years ago. Statistically unlikely, perhaps, but certainly plausible.

Because this is the thing about life expectancy: not many creatures die of old age. Most succumb to accident, disease or being eaten by other creatures long before their bodies wear out. Which means those that survive those perils may live many times longer than the average for their kind.

The same statistical pattern used to apply to human beings – and in some parts of the world it still does. Some individuals can live to a ripe old age through wars and grinding poverty. Most won’t, so the average is relatively low.

Which brings me back to the question: what is a ripe old age for a bird?

Of course, it depends on the bird. One wild albatross was ringed on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific in 1956 while incubating an egg. Since the species doesn’t breed before the age of five, she must have been at least 62 when she was spotted again in 2013, rearing another chick.

Some pelicans and an occasional eagle make it into their 50s. Buzzards can reach their late 20s and those red kites now taking to our skies may go well into their 30s.

The oldest recorded dunnock, or hedge sparrow, was 20. The garden warbler – a close relative of my blackcaps – can live to 24 in captivity. And that familiar little charmer the chaffinch has been known to reach 29.

All of which I find fascinating in itself – and I hope you do too. But it should also give us pause to think.

As the most wasteful and destructive species on this planet – by far – we have a responsibility to all those other creatures we share it with. And if we make it uninhabitable for them, even the birds we take for granted are not necessarily easy-come, easy-go, short-lived beings that can quickly bounce back.

The fulmar, that brilliant navigator of the wind currents around our sea cliffs, can live in the wild to at least 51.
I shall write more another time about fulmars, which are truly marvellous birds. For now I’ll just note that scientists believe every grown fulmar in the world – every single one – and every albatross has some plastic in them. Which is just one reason to wonder how many will make it to old age.

We live in an age when it’s possible to fly from London to Sydney in less than 24 hours and you can talk in real time to people anywhere. Presenters of TV documentaries can start a sentence in Siberia and end it in the Sahara.

Communications technology has shrunk the world. You might be forgiven for thinking there was nothing on the planet still to be discovered.

What a joyful surprise, then, to learn only last year that a previously unknown coral reef, amost 700 miles long, had been found off the coast of South America.

Joyful, and in a curious way something of a relief too. As if the discovery of a reef in one part of the world could compensate for the death of another, 10,000 miles away.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been called “the canary in the coal mine” for global warming. Its reported death may be both symptom and further cause of ecological catastrophe on a massive scale.

Meanwhile, the newly discovered Amazon Reef appears to be thriving.

Corals live mostly in clear salt water with plenty of sunlight. This one has astonished marine biologists because the outflow from the Amazon makes its waters among the muddiest and least salty sea areas in the world.

Yet they have found there 73 species of fish, 60 types of sponge and a rich variety of other life. There are dolphins, turtles, manatees and species that haven’t yet been named.

The reef may have been unknown until recently, but its importance to the global ecosystem – and our knowledge of it – may be considerable. That Amazon outflow amounts to a fifth of all the water flowing into the world’s oceans.

Here then, is an amazing place. An environment and a habitat to cherish.

The last thing it needs is multinational oil companies diving in with their drills and rigs to rip it up, spoil and pollute it. One spill like BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster could do untold damage.

So who’s prospecting for oil on the Amazon Reef right now? BP and Total. They need to be stopped.

Wonderful as programmes like Planet Earth II are, you can enjoy wildlife without the intermediary of David Attenborough, high-definition TV cameras and crews camping out for months in exotic locations. 

I encountered something heartwarming and nostalgic as I walked the dog the other day. A large flock of birds was wheeling above the river, silhouetted dark against the sky, then suddenly all flashing white in the low sun as they turned together. Lapwings. 

When I was a kid, every ploughed field in East Anglia seemed to have its resident lapwing flock. Beautiful birds, distinctive in appearance, flight and that call which gives them their other name, peewit. These days, though I quite often see the odd one or two probing the mud along the river shore, the appearance of large numbers together is rare enough to cause comment.

The lapwing is so significant in English country lore that it has its own law – the Lapwing Act of 1926, which banned the collection of its eggs for food. That habit was common enough to have caused a decline in lapwing numbers, which picked up again after the act was passed. Since then, however, changes in land-drainage, ploughing, field sizes – and especially the use of agrochemicals – have hit peewit populations hard. What was once one of Britain’s commonest birds is now reduced to red list status for conservation concern. Since 1960, its numbers have fallen by 80 per cent.

But they are still out there, a sight and a sound to lift the spirits.

And so are the rooks, as ever at this time of year, gathering in their chosen fields like delegates at a conference.
What do they all talk about at these important, well-attended meetings? And how do they select the venue?

Don’t think I’m being over-imaginative, either, in describing them as talking to each other. This is not anthropomorphism, it’s observation.

Some years ago my attention was caught by a fight going on, high above me, between a rook and a sparrowhawk. A second rook joined in – then almost immediately left again, flying fast and straight towards a distant wood. Within a couple of minutes it was back with reinforcements, maybe 20 other rooks. Exit sparrowhawk, as rapidly as may be.

Now tell me rooks don’t talk to each other. What else can you call communication of that kind? The cawing of a rookery may just be rather charming noise to us, but I have no doubt it has meaning to them.

Like all the corvids – crows, jays, magpies, jackdaws – they are far more intelligent than our study of brain size and shape suggests they should be. Which says more about our understanding of the brain than it does about the birds.

That rook encounter, though memorable, was far from being the only conflict I’ve witnessed between hawks and other birds. The preyed-upon, or those whose chicks may become prey, don’t like raptors. And even quite small birds can be valiant defenders.

I’ve seen a hedge appear to explode with tits and finches fleeing from a sparrowhawk that came down from the sky like a bomb. I’ve also watched from my dining-room window  another sparrowhawk being driven off by a small group of determined blackbirds.

Last summer, in Orkney, I saw a single plucky oystercatcher risking its life in driving away that most savage of sea-going pirates, a great skua.

Closer to home, on another riverside dog-walk, I was startled recently to see a buzzard –a very large bird, and well armed – fly past me fast at head-height, pursued by a single angry crow.

A few weeks back I watched another crow engaged in a long, almost balletic, aerial dispute with a kestrel. I didn’t see the outcome of that confrontation, as the two wheeled away out of sight, still locked in combat.

Most remarkable of all, perhaps, I was watching a buzzard recently circling over the river near my home. Suddenly it dropped, in a hunting manoeuvre that just failed as a redshank flying low over the river dived into the water to escape. Redshanks are waders, not swimmers – their spindly legs and feet are not designed for swimming – but it was a lifesaving move to land in midstream, well out of its depth.

I’d never seen anything like it before. It may have been a rare event – or a commonplace occurrence in the world of birds. That wonderful, strange world that goes on all the time, all around us.

You don’t need the telly. You only have to keep your eyes open to witness marvels. What happens in the mountains, the forest, the desert, happens right among us too. Life-and-death struggles between hunter and prey. Parent birds of both kinds working hard to rear, feed, teach and protect their young.

Keep your attention at street level, or on your smartphone, and you might never know what you’re missing.


Meanwhile, on an HD screen near you...


It’s an unusual experience for me to be part of one of TV’s biggest audiences – though I did get drawn into the later rounds of the latest Bake Off. But no series, surely, has so thoroughly deserved its viewing figures as Planet Earth II.

Even more certainly, there can never have been better use made of the modern wonder of HD filming and broadcast.

From close-ups of lemurs in Madagascar to penguins struggling on Antarctic cliffs; from rare Himalayan snow leopards to tiny, near-transparent rain forest frogs; from young ibex gambolling about vertical slopes to an Amazon jaguar killing a large caiman (or croc, to me and you). That baby iguana running for its life from the pursuing snakes. That gangly giraffe kicking out against an ambushing lioness. Those shimmering hummingbirds.

We’ve long grown used to seeing stunning footage from the BBC wildlife unit set up by David Attenborough more than 50 years ago. But this series has raised the bar for stunning. Again.

The term “national treasure” is much over-used, especially of TV celebrities. But if anyone deserves the title, it’s Attenborough. In fact, if the title of British President were available, there couldn’t possibly be a better candidate. (Though if it were, I’d fear the danger of ending up with a President Clarkson. We might once have had a President Savile.)

Throughout my life, Attenborough has been not only the great entertainer, but the great educator. A man whose knowledge and enthusiasm have guided my own, and that of millions, more than almost anyone.
And over all the years, the underlying message of all his glorious programmes hasn’t changed. Only become more vital, more urgent.

It is that there’s a world full of wonders out there. Beautiful, incredibly varied and endlessly fascinating life. Independent of humanity. Except that humanity, in its spread and its ingenuity, now has the capacity to destroy it all.

And in its carelessness, selfishness, recklessness – our clever stupidity – threatens to do so.