Singing for England

A master of disguise, inexplicably shy and unpredictably wild, the increasingly rare ring ouzel warrants giving any blackbird a second glance, says Mark Cocker

- Mark Cocker

Of all the charismatic birds breeding widely in these islands, one of the least known to the British public is the ring ouzel. That anonymity says much about the bird's appeal to devotees—I have been a fanatic for 50 years —but it also speaks eloquently of the creature.

Ring ouzels don't live on remote islands as shearwaters do, nor do they confine themselves to the darkness with owls or hide away in dense cover like crakes and rails. They live in plain sight across swathes of our uplands, even visiting many Welsh or English coastlines on migration. The problem is that they do it in disguise.

Meet a ring ouzel on some high fell on a May morning and you'll understand my point. The bird is a male perched atop the gritstone wall and facing away. He is singing: a short, plaintive, repeated, whistled note that often has the uncanny ability to sound far off, remote. Apart from long wings and frosted edges to some flight and back feathers, the vocalist looks for all the world like any blackbird you see in the garden.

Then he turns. Emblazoned on his chest is the singular distinction of all ring ouzels: a broad white crescentic patch (creamy in females). Instantly, he flies far away and you are left in that moment with the shock of the other, alongside a sense of deepest familiarity and a realisation that our commonplace garden favourite has this unknown feral twin.

The challenge of ring ouzels is that such meetings are rare. There are roughly 1,000 British blackbirds for each ring ouzel and you have to scrutinise scores of likely-looking candidates for every encounter. Even worse, the latter has now acquired the melancholy glamour attaching to population decline.