Give the nation a bird

Nearly a quarter of a million people across Britain have been taking part in a ballot to elect a ‘national’ bird in the past few months. Now don’t get me wrong, in principle I think this is a perfectly good idea. Many countries have such birds, the US the bald eagle, for example, France the rooster, Sweden the blackbird, Japan the green pheasant, and India the peacock.

But it seems a bit odd, in this era of devolution and sporting teams for Scotland, England and Wales, to talk about a ‘national’ bird for Britain. In any event, given the weighting of the population, we’ve inevitably ended up with a national bird for England.

It is, of course, the robin, well known as being territorial, chirpy, and aggressive to other birds. What does that say about ‘national’ character? Birdwatcher and blogger David Lindo, who had the idea for a national bird, attributed the robin’s success to Britain’s small island mentality.

So I think we need a national bird for Wales, a project that should be taken up by the National Assembly. But what bird should it be?

David Lindo organised a committee of experts who came up with a long list of 60 British birds which they whittled down to ten for the online vote. Four were common garden ones – the blackbird, blue tit, wren, and the triumphant robin. The others were a bit more exotic: the threatened hen harrier  (only three pairs bred in 2014), the barn owl, the mute swan, kingfisher, red kite, and puffin.

Pembrokeshire's Puffin should be Wales' national bird

It is interesting that the last two - ones most distinctively associated with Wales – came pretty well down the pecking order. At the top the robin had 75,523 votes. The red kite came fifth, with 13,922, and the puffin came in at tenth, with just 10,674 votes. I wonder how many of those were from Wales.

The red kite is pretty well qualified to be our national bird. Elegantly beautiful, it has a wingspan of up to two metres, a forked tail and chestnut red feathers flecked with white. Persecution meant it nearly became extinct at the end of the 19^th Century, only hanging on in deep mid Wales where their numbers fell to a few pairs. At that point a few dedicated landowners began a fight back. For the past few decades Chris and Dominque Powell at Gigrin Farm in the Elan Valley have been running a feeding centre for the birds. Today the red kite is relatively common.

For me, however, the quintessential Welsh bird is the noble, if eccentric, puffin. Equally at home on sea or land, it is given to binge feeding when the seasons allow, though it is also capable of living in tough conditions – puffins spend their winters out in the North Atlantic. And, of course, they inhabit superior and beautiful locations, none more so than Skomer Island off Pembrokeshire. Here you can find about 6,000 breeding pairs at this time of year, one of the largest and most concentrated colonies in the world. Puffins generally live for about 25 years, with Skomer’s record being 38. Now that’s a pretty good qualification to be our national bird.