Call of the Kingfisher

Call of the Kingfisher is the enchanting debut from composer and wildlife recordist, Nick Penny. This love letter to a short stretch of Northamptonshire s River Nene celebrates all the wild things that live there, especially the kingfishers. Uniquely, it comes with bonus audio content to complement the text, accessed via QR codes. Nick has walked beside the river at Oundle for four decades. But for a whole year he gave the waterway all the time it asked for. The more attention he gave it, the more he saw the kingfishers and heard their high whistling calls. Set in a lovely but little-known part of England, Call of the Kingfisher relates a year by the river, the author s experiences there and the different people he meets. Other strands are woven around the elusive feathered protagonist: explorations of local history and landscape, from Roman and Bronze Age sites to watermills and centuries-old stone churches; visits at different times and to different places in the valley; homages to naturalists who lived nearby; forest dawns and dusks listening to the precious song of nightingales. But the background tapestry is the sights and sounds, and greens and browns, of the riverbank, shot through with the blue and orange threads of a kingfisher s glowing feathers. As a composer and wildlife recordist, Nick has a deep interest in sounds in the natural environment. He both uses the local landscape and wildlife sounds as inspiration, and brings fresh insights into the sounds of the countryside. The book includes access to a number of high-quality birdsong recordings made alongside the River Nene - audio soundbites of nature s riches, from kingfishers and nightingales to owls and cuckoos. This is a book about the things that can be seen and heard when we approach nature with patience and curiosity. It celebrates people who have used that focus to help preserve wildlife and pass on their knowledge to future generations. Above all, Call of the Kingfisher serves as a call to appreciate what we ve got, wherever we are, and to use our ears as much as our eyes when we experience the natural world.

Chapter 1 January
Nick Penny goes for a walk on New Year's Day and has a chance encounter with a kingfisher just minutes from home. He decides to spend a year looking out for them on his local stretch of the River Nene, describes his first kingfisher sighting as a boy, and gives broad introductions to the common kingfisher, the river and the town. He introduces the idea of “sound walks”, listening to birdsong and natural sounds, and how it relates to his life as a musician. He rediscovers the eighteenth century naturalist Gilbert White as an inspiration, gives tips on how to see and hear kingfishers, and reflects on the importance of stillness when observing nature. He walks by the river in the snow, ponders the dangers of ice for kingfishers, watches a huge flock of lapwings and reflects on what he's seen and heard during a wintry first month.
Chapter 2 February
He describes how certain sounds have affected him during a peripatetic childhood and in his later life. He talks about herons and cormorants, and visits the local church to illustrate a story about an eagle lectern dumped in the river during the Civil War. He describes a day in his music studio working on a piece inspired by a starling murmuration. He walks in nearby Rockingham Forest, and reflects on skylark sounds and a running stream. He has a very close encounter with a pair of kingfishers, and hears their courtship warbling. He introduces the idea of soundscapes, and the intrusion of human sounds into the natural world. It's Valentine's Day, and spring is definitely in the air. He records some woodpecker sounds in the woods. He goes to sit by the pond in a wood to meditate on its natural sounds, and watches a relaxed and resting kingfisher for more than half an hour on the last day of the month.
Chapter 3 March
He comes across a flock of fieldfares, looks closely at some cygnets' feathers and goes into detail about kingfisher plumage. He watches a blackbird nest building and reflects on their song. He discusses what the river means to him and what it might have meant to others in the past. He visits a Bronze Age site at nearby Flag Fen to get an insight into the practice of placing votive offerings into water, and speculates on how Romans in a settlement near Oundle and early Christians might have viewed the river. He describes uses of the river to the present day, and the dangers it faced, and still faces, from pollution. He reports the first spring arrival of migrant chiffchaffs from Africa and goes into the ambience of birdsong. He sees a male kingfisher carrying a fish as a courtship offering, and discovers a pair beginning to tunnel into the riverbank to make their unusual nest. He watches the mating dance of two swans, hears the first blackcap calls of the year and records some kingfisher sounds near the nest that suggest it's occupied and eggs may be laid soon.
Chapter 4 April
He keeps monitoring the kingfishers' nest from a distance but starts going to other woods in the valley nearby to record dawn choruses amongst the bluebells. He watches and listens to signs of spring coming thick and fast. He discusses migration, why kingfishers don't need to migrate from the UK, and the egg cycle, including the involvement of both partners. The first nightingale arrives in the forest on the 14th and he hears a cuckoo by the river on the same day. He works on a song about First World War soldiers hearing nightingales from their trenches and dreaming of home. He hears reed warblers and ravens and makes birdsong recordings at dawn and dusk. He meets a bird ringer in the wood who has handled most of the local nightingales and ringed two kingfishers. He discusses how kingfishers got their name, and their different names across the world. The local kingfishers' behaviour suggests that one is sitting on the nest.
Chapter 5 May
He describes legends and stories about kingfishers and explains the halcyon quotes in Shakespeare, as well as the arrival in Oundle of an eighteen-year-old John Clare in May 1812 to train for the local militia. The local kingfisher should be fledging chicks at the end of the month, and he sketches what might be happening in the meantime. He visits the bluebells at dawn and makes a video and records a soundtrack to it, watches a sand martin going into a nest at the pond and observes a pair of cuckoos in the meadows. He meets and talks to villagers and wild swimmers, and marvels at the growth of foliage on the riverbank and the glorious smells of evening. Towards the end of the month the activity and sounds around the nest are calming down and it appears that the chicks have left the nest. They spend only four days being looked after by the adults before they drive them away, so he spends most of his waking hours trying to find them. On the last day of the month he at last spots one and hears others hidden close by.
Chapter 6 June
He spends a few days watching the chicks before they depart and describes the difficult time they face on their own because of the biological necessity of the parents starting a new brood straight away. He goes more deeply into the meaning of birdsong, looks into the work of pioneering recordist Ludwig Koch and listens to one of Koch's cuckoo recordings on a friend's wind up 78 rpm gramophone. Demoiselles and dragonflies start to appear but the butterflies are late. He meets a young entomologist by the river. There are signs that the kingfisher couple are at the nest again. He looks at the historic use of kingfisher feathers in costume and visits the Pitt Rivers museum in search of feathered jewellery. The butterflies arrive, and he discusses the influence of local conservationist family, the Rothschilds.
Chapter 7 July
He comes back after a week away to find that the bank containing the kingfishers' neat has collapsed, though they are still flying around the area. The butterflies are at their height. He goes to watch little owls at Stoke Doyle, near to where they were introduced into the UK in the nineteenth century by renowned ornithologist Lord Lilford. He reflects on the year he himself spent at Lilford Hall making instruments in a stable block workshop. He goes into a care home for the elderly to play them music and birdsong, and visits a friend who lives on a narrowboat in the fens that's next to a kingfisher nest. Back home, he's confused about where the new nest might be, but new chicks turn up on the riverbank and he spends a magical hour hidden in close proximity to one of them. They move on, and he experiences feelings of anticlimax and exhaustion.
Chapter 8 August
Sparrowhawk chicks and a cuckoo chick turn up along the river, and he watches the cuckoo being fed by a tiny reed warbler. More butterflies appear. He buys a canoe and takes it down the cam from Grantchester to Cambridge, musing on the ghosts of Syd Barrett and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He watches kingfishers from the canoe and goes to other areas to see them. He walks the upper reaches of the river around Northampton, and visits the church porch where John Clare sat on his trips out from the asylum. He enjoys the smells on the riverbank and discovers the word petrichor. He notes that birdsong is falling away as summer passes, though yellowhammers are still singing. He discovers the connection between their song and Beethoven's Fifth. He encounters wild swimmers, and has some thoughts about fencing and trespass and access to the river. He has thoughts about kingfisher colours and the colour wheel.
He walks the river Nene in sections between Oundle and the source
Chapter 9 September
He goes into the porch of Cotterstock Church in the footsteps of 1960s nature writer “BB”. He watches swallow chicks in a nest. Only a few days later all the swallows have left to fly south. He looks into passages in The Wind in the Willows, takes evening walks to listen to and record owls and watches a harvest moon. He finds a slice of yew tree and talks about how the timber was used historically in bow making and luthery. A kingfisher reappears at the lock and takes up residence. He nearly sets fire to the house doing experiments putting a match to a fungus called King Alfred's Cakes. He measures moon shadows and takes wet walks in the woods.
Chapter 10 October
There's a kingfisher at the lock every time he walks by. It's still warm, but mornings are chillier and there is a misty dawn with dew-dropped spiders' webs. He watches a kingfisher fly by with a large fish, comes close to a woodpecker, and listens to rooks arguing. He thinks about St Wilfrid, who died in Oundle on 10 October 709.He goes to the world conker championships at Southwick, and walks to John Clare's Cottage to find out more about the man and his landscape. He looks into Clare's use of natural sounds in his verse, and different poets' treatment of kingfisher themes. He walks past a dead badger on the path and is intrigued by the fact that it's moved to a different position every day for a week. He sees a kingfisher hover like a kestrel and looks at the reflections in a swirling pond. He enjoys a calm day, but the next day there's an almighty storm with lots of trees down in the wood.
Chapter 11 November
He watches kingfishers pairing up prior to separating for the winter. Leaves begin to fall, and he thinks about how autumn is treated in literature. He walks by the lakes at Titchmarsh and watches starling murmurations alongside a sparrowhawk. He plays in church at a craft fair, and as a very young baby reacts to his music he has a flashback to watching a kingfisher chick listening to the new sounds around it. He looks into the scientific study of a kingfisher's beak and how it was used in designing the Japanese bullet train. He watches an unusual tail display by a kingfisher, is buzzed by a barn owl and sees a stonechat. The fieldfares and redwings arrive and he analyses the late autumn soundscape. He finds a dead carp killed by otter, and a kingfisher takes up residence at the bridge and is challenged by a rival.
Chapter 12 December
The kingfisher's at the bridge every day. He thinks about how much better he is at spotting and hearing them, and how he's rediscovered ancestral skills that would have been important for survival. He has a close encounter with wrens and goldfinches, and is surprised when the river level suddenly falls due to works going on downstream. There are heavy frosts, and unwelcome shooters by the footpath. He drives to the mouth of the Nene to the Peter Scott lighthouse. Scott went to school in Oundle and started his painting and wildlife conservation work at the lighthouse. It was also the inspiration for Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose, which had a big impact on Nick as a child. The volume of birdsong is swelling again, and blackbirds are arriving from the continent. He spots a kingfisher flying through traffic at the top of the bridge and revisits the dangers they face. He's starting to think of the river as a living thing, and looks into modern animism. He has a dream on Christmas night about kingfishers coming alive from their carved images on the stone friezes in the Ancient Egyptian room of the British Museum. On the last day of the year he watches a kingfisher from the bridge. There's a feeling of release and sadness as the light falls, but that morning he'd heard woodpeckers drumming in the new year, and he's optimistic about the future.