She could barely tell a sparrow from a wren, and almost gave up bird watching. But now writer Nicolien Mizee effortlessly recognises a barred siskin or a dipper. Nicolien Mizee's Bird Book is meant to encourage laypeople like herself. 'You just experience so much more of your surroundings.'
How romantic: the wild swan brought writer Nicolien Mizee and her husband Rob together about 15 years ago. She chuckles as she recounts. 'Rob was one of the students who took a writing course with me here in Haarlem. He had written a story set in the Water Supply Dunes around here, and it featured wild swans.'
Wild
'After the tenth lesson, the course was over and half an hour after we said goodbye, I got an email from Rob: that those wild swans really existed and if I didn't want to come along to see them one day. I thought he was a nice and special man, so I said yes. One day in January we went into the dunes and at the end of the day we went together.' By the way, adds Mizee, 'a wild swan is not a swan that is wild. It really is a distinct species. You have mute swans, wild swans and lesser swans. Wild swans, which have more yellow on their beaks, are only here in winter.'
As smoothly as she parses that knowledge now, things didn't always go smoothly. When she met Rob, she knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about birds. 'When you go for a walk with a birder, you mainly stand and stare at a bird you don't see. The strange thing is that if you know nothing about birds, you really don't see them. It has touched me deeply that there is such a shell around the world that you as a human being hardly know anything about. I spent three quarters of my life just walking past those birds. It made me realise how blind we are. I also know very little about plants and butterflies, but I am starting to pay more attention to those too.
Is it difficult, bird watching?
'In the beginning I found it quite difficult, yes. That's why I started with waterbirds, because they lie still on the water and then you can see them well. So I got to know the tufted duck, the gadwall, the goldeneye duck. At some point you know: the one with the green stripe is a teal. And then you think: would there also be a garganey? A quick google search and, sure enough, there is also a garganey. Well, then you already have that one in the bag. Instead of looking for pictures on the internet, I decided at one point to draw the birds, because I would remember them better.'
'At one point I noticed: how crazy, I actually only draw the rare birds, but of course I should draw all the birds I have seen. So then I also started drawing the blackbird, the sparrow and the great tit. I look up the birds in a bird guide, and then I draw them. All those drawings are now in the book. With the help of photos, I also drew a few birds that I wouldn't recognise on my own, like the reed warbler; I keep forgetting that one.''
Did those drawings help?
'Yes, because by drawing them you get to know the bird better. But I must confess that after three years, I was on the verge of giving up. I can't do this, I'll never learn, I thought. Until one afternoon I was walking through the woods with a friend. She started chatting to me about her mother-in-law, and I wasn't too keen on that. "Look, a tree creeper," I pointed out to her. "And over there: a tree creeper." I noticed that I had really gained an eye for birds and was seeing a lot more. Compared to Rob, I still suck at it, but compared to others I already see quite a lot. That's what's great about it: you just experience so much more of your surroundings. It would be nice if this book helps others to become more aware of the world around them. Maybe it will lower their threshold if they notice that I don't know much about it either'.
Is birding contagious?
'Do I think so, because it becomes a habit. Of course, some species are harder to tell apart because they are very similar. But learning to see birds is like learning a word: you can't forget or undo it. It can take some time, as it did for me. A friend of mine walks her dog through the forest three times a day and has never seen a great spotted woodpecker, even though it is common here. But I am sure that once she has seen it once, she will keep seeing it after that.'
A curlew points to its fly
'That also happened on Texel, where we were together once. We saw a curlew, a rare bird. It can be recognised by its long, unusually curved bill: a curlew points to its fly. When we stepped outside the next day, she called out, "Look, a curlew!" At first I thought she was joking, but she had just spotted the curlew first.'
Have you ever had one of those eureka moments yourself?
'Yes, I remember it well. One evening I was cycling very fast to the station in Heemstede, because I had to teach. I passed a mud field at an ugly intersection along the ring road, and before I knew what I was doing, I hit the brakes, turned around and thought, "Huh? That's a hoodie!" While at the time I was not paying attention to birds at all, had never seen a hoodie before and knew they are not common in our area either, I was sure it was a hoodie. I checked my sighting on waarneming.nl, and it was right! From then on, I was definitely converted.'
Do you have a favourite?
'I most like birds with lots of colour or with a funny cap or crest. Like the tufted duck, which has a cute crest and a beautiful blue bill. Well, I have to say that I now look at the tufted duck with a little less love, because it is starting to supplant the mallard, which is also beautiful. I also really love the blackbird, the most beautiful songbird there is. The blackbird was badly affected by a virus a year ago; suddenly we didn't hear any blackbirds at all. Terrible. I suddenly remembered that I used to hang nets over our berries to protect them from the blackbirds. Now I find that something incomprehensible. It almost feels like I put up a barbed wire fence or built a wall. Because now I would really be overjoyed to have a blackbird in my garden.'
Is bird watching fun for everyone?
'I think so. Fifteen years ago, women hardly participated, but now it's really fifty-fifty. And children are doing it more and more too; some are really amazingly good. I once met a little boy who could only just talk, and he went with his grandfather. Terribly funny, because you could then hear him say in the same old-man tone as his grandfather: "Finch. Robin."
'When I worked for the magazine Zin had to make a report on the former penal colony Veenhuizen, Rob and I thought: we can score the monkey there right away. Two men were also walking around that place, looking like Van Kooten and De Bie characters, as if they were dressed up as 19th-century criminals. One had only one tooth left in his mouth, the other was a scary little man wearing a crook's cap. They saw us standing there, and one of them said, "There's a monkey over there. But you have to keep walking, because he gets nervous of you, he has a nest here." Incidentally, they turned out not to come for the monkey themselves, but for a rare and very unsightly moorland butterfly, found only in the area.'
Birding humbled her, says Mizee. In the botanical garden where she works every Friday with a group of volunteers, there was a young buzzard. 'Whenever we were working there in the field, a young, gauzy buzzard would come running around us like a chicken. According to an ecologist, the animal was not in good spirits, but I think he just thought: 'There's obviously something to get, I'm coming too!' Then I felt so honoured, as if he was an emissary from God.'
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