South Stacks RSPB, Anglesey, August 2023
The wind blew off the Irish Sea, throwing spray at people walking down the stone steps towards the white observation tower. We were all there to enjoy the view. Making our way down from the RSPB car park, a man clocked my camera and confided that dolphins were feeding out at sea. He had a dog on a lead, those old, broad-barrelled binoculars, and a St. Helens rugby jersey. His accent matched it.
It was a bright but hazy morning. We didn’t see any dolphins, but something more rare. As I took some photos of the lighthouse stretched sphinx-like out to sea, a crow flew in and landed on the coastal trail path, where the track sloped down towards where I stood. This was no carrion crow, rook, jackdaw or magpie. It wasn’t a raven, either.
Its legs were an orangey-red, its bill the same. It was a chough!
I had only ever seen chough in the Picos de Europa, the mountains in Asturias, in the north of Spain. The closest I had got to this now rare British bird, a cliff-dweller, in Britain was a crest or coat of arms in Canterbury cathedral.
It was only after visiting Salisbury Cathedral that I found a cushion with three chough and the name of Thomas Becket embroidered beneath them.
The story goes that as Thomas Becket lay dying, having been attacked on the orders of Henry II in December 1170, a crow flew in and dipped its bill and legs in Becket’s blood. This was thought to be how chough as a bird came to exist(!).
These echoes in culture and defunct emblems shows they were once more common (though of course the same can’t be said for lions and dragons that make up so many crests in Britain). Kent Wildlife Trust have begun to return chough to their native range, though not in response to that crest in Canterbury cathedral.
At South Stacks the real life chough (probably pronounced ‘chow’, as in ‘ciao’, because that’s the call they make) pottered around in a crow-like fashion, inquisitive, confident, always on the move. A visitor’s arrival flushed it overhead towards the sea, wings tucked in, expert in negotiating the sea air’s sudden, shifting patterns.
As we had made our way back up the steps, my mum commented on the colours packed together – the pink, purple, green and gold. Meadow pipit alarm calls rang out and a sparrowhawk appeared low over the heather cascading down to the sea.
Daniel Greenwood 