Spitalfields Life

Today’s tour is sold out and those on Saturday 11th and Saturday 25th April only have a few tickets left, so I have added an extra Spitalfields tour on Saturday 18th April. Click here to book

Today music writer, Mat Smith, contemplates the pied wagtails of Bishopsgate. Please leave a message in the comments below if you have also observed these tenacious creatures

Bishopsgate

During the dark days of the recently-departed winter, I would see two pied wagtails fluttering and strutting their way playfully along Bishopsgate. They were usually to be found between the corner of Liverpool St Station and the entrance to Brushfield St.

Spotting them became an important part of my walk to the office each morning, just after 7am. Seeing them flying across the road or scurrying comedically along the pavement among the sleepy pedestrians was something I depended on to ensure my day started off on the right foot. They were as much a part of the street scene of my morning as Alleynaut’s poetry stickers placed mischievously on street furniture, or weary travellers being deposited from a bus bringing them in from Stansted, or the caffeine-fixated people waiting in line at Store St Espresso, or the construction workers attending to the remodelling of one of the Broadgate office buildings. These two birds were, during winter, part of my London.

Without them, London did not feel right. If I had not seen them by the time I reached the revolving doors of our office, I would begin to panic. I often worried about them flying across Bishopsgate into the path of a bus. Or getting squashed by an angry, over-tired traveller with a wonky trolley bag. Or becoming trapped inside the mechanism of the service lift clinging to the outside of the Broadgate building remodel. And yet, the next day, they were still there and I would breathe a quiet sigh of relief. All was right in my London and all was right in my world.

I noticed that people did not quite know what to make of these two plucky avian characters. One day, I passed a bus stop where a teenage girl in school uniform was idly watching noisy TikTok videos on her phone while sitting on the bench under the shelter. She had one eye on her phone screen and the other on the wagtail that was pecking occasionally at the strap of her rucksack, its long fan tail moving in concert with its inquisitive beak. It was as if the bird was trying to get her attention, and ever-so-slightly failing to do so. Another day, a guy in a suit stopped dead in his tracks as the two birds chased each other along the pavement in front of him. Another day, a street-sweeper in a yellow City of London high-visibility jacket was pushing his cart along when one of the birds landed on the edge of the cart furthest from him. The wagtail cocked its head to one side and allowed the street-sweeper to give it a breather from expending the energy it would have otherwise used tearing along the uneven paving stones outside the Bishopsgate Institute.

I have always loved pied wagtails. I think it is their tiny stature, their diminutive faces and short beaks, their ridiculously long legs and their monochrome colours. I attribute the latter to being a lover of minimalism but also because colour blindness has left me perpetually unsure of what colours I am seeing. Black and white things are, figuratively and literally, much more certain and solid for me. They inspire a sense of confidence that I can – occasionally – see the world in the same way that others are able to.

Whenever I saw this pair of pied wagtails, I would be reminded of two things. The first was a small book that my maternal grandmother gave me, a hardback volume from The Observer’s Pocket Series which surveyed the British avian population, devoting a page to each bird. I still have that book, and each page is often accompanied by sumptuous illustrations. Like most people, I have seen very few of the birds it describes. The wagtail, however, was one that I had seen. We had a regular visitor to our back garden where I grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon and it felt like a privilege to see it exploring the lawn. I do not remember seeing one anywhere else while I was growing up and that is why it felt special.

Much more than that book, seeing the Bishopsgate pied wagtails reminds me of my father, who passed away two years ago. As I come to terms with a world without him, I have begun to reflect on precisely what legacy he left me with. He never taught me how to hammer a nail into a wall, how to change a tyre, how to wire a plug, how to paint a skirting board, or how to wash a car. In fact, there are lots of things I wished he had taught me, but which he chose not to, for reasons I will now never understand.

He did, however, leave me with a solid work ethic, which explains why I can be found walking along Bishopsgate just after 7am each day to start my job, despite me living almost fifty miles away from London. The other thing he gave me was an ability to identify certain birds. He was born in a Warwickshire village after his mother had moved from her beloved East End during the Second World War. He had an undying love and passion for the East End – the area around Bell Lane, where she had gone to school in particular – and the kinetic hustle and bustle of London, all because of his mother.

But while his heart may have been forever yearning after the London he was never able to live or work in, his feet were very much planted on the ground of the Warwickshire countryside. He accumulated an enviable knowledge of wildlife, including birds, and this is undoubtedly one thing he left with me. It was my father who told me what the tiny black and white bird was when it landed in our Stratford-upon-Avon back garden. I am fairly certain I would not be able to name this species of bird today if it was not for him telling me.

And thus, whenever I would see this pair of pied wagtails on Bishopsgate, I felt a mix of emotions. I would feel joy and a lightness of spirit, the kind of uplifting, energising feeling that I needed in order to carry me through my day at work. It was like a shot of espresso carried to my lips on the monochrome wings of these funny little creatures.

For all that levity, the sighting of these two birds was also filled with a sense of enduring, poignant sadness at my father’s absence. They were a reminder that he will never again be able to excitedly identify a species of bird for me, that making my way in this complicated world is now all up to me, that I have reached the terminal limit of the knowledge he could impart to me.

As spring fought and then won its battle against the preceding season, I began to see the two birds less and less, until finally sporadic sightings gave way to a permanent absence. I assumed they were still there and still nesting nearby, and it was merely that the timing of my walk to the office from Liverpool St, and their morning routine, had become less synchronised. I did not want to think it was because of the myriad other fates that could have befallen them.

It occurred to me that their presence during the winter months, when the melancholy at my father’s absence was often at its heaviest, might indicate a sort of impending closure, that their disappearance might imply that the grieving process for my father was now complete. Maybe it is. Maybe it is not. I cannot tell. I will wait for the dark mornings on Bishopsgate to return when another autumn gives way to another winter and perhaps then I will know for certain.

From The Observer’s Book of Birds

James & Mathew Smith

Mat Smith is a music writer for Electronic Sound, Clash, Further. Pooleyville.city and Documentary Evidence. Mat has written sleeve notes for Mute, Cherry Red, BMG and Our Silent Canvas. Since 2019 he has overseen the collaborative arts project Mortality Tables