Tom and Thrush
It’s about seven thirty in the morning when I start taking down the mist nets. Not even a blackcap. So much for ringing, I think to myself, by which I mean the ringing of birds that I catch in my nets during migration. I don’t mean to harm them of course. It’s just part of my research. After all, the migration of birds remains a mysterious phenomenon. Yet in past years things haven’t been quite the same as when I started out. Last summer for example someone recovered a sparrow hawk in Portugal while at that time of the year you’d expect a bird like that in northern regions. It is rare enough to be able to catch and ring a sparrow hawk. But to get a recovery report from it from a place some 2000 km further south is quite something else. A recovery report means another ringer catches a bird you ringed, informs the government about it, which in turn sends me a personal notification. That way we can trace the birds wherever they go.
When I’m done cleaning up everything and just when I’m about to head back home, my phone rings. Annoyed I throw down the nets and poles and dig for my phone which is somewhere on the bottom of my shoulder bag. Missed call from an unknown number. No matter, I never take calls from unknown numbers anyway. After two minutes my phone rings again. I’m prepared and now the phone is within reach. I push the green phone icon. ‘Kenny Lust, good morning.’ On the other end of the line I hear the voice of a nervous guy. I can tell English is not his native tongue. He tells me his name is Tom and that he found my number on the website of the British Birds Rarities Committee. He asks me if I can spare 15 minutes. I tell him to go ahead. He tells me his grandma just died. His family is sorting some of her stuff to sell. In an old box he found a notebook with some notes on a certain thrush. The thrush has a rather odd name that I fail to understand. Tom asks me if I’d be willing to join him in Belgium and help me find this peculiar thrush. I tell him I have to think about it and that I will give him a ring later on.
That night I try to call him four times. The fourth time he finally answers. ‘You can count on me.’ I say, ‘When can I come?’ Tom is delighted. ‘Next week!’ he screams ecstatically. I guess I should have said yes the first time he called. There is something about this Tom that appeals to me. The sheer enthusiasm to find this bird. You can tell this fellow does not leave jobs half done. For one thing, he insists that I be his assistant. Apparently he had read an article of mine on the great grey shrike. Naturally I’d forgotten all about it. I mean, I can’t have written more than two articles during my career in the British Bird Committee. How they had managed to cross the channel afterwards was beyond me. Anyway, though I have calmed down over the years, Tom’s excessive enthusiasm is something I definitely can relate to. Doing this project with Tom may even prove to be a rejuvenating cure. O, you are probably wondering if I have the time to go to Belgium and travel back and forth the whole time. Well, as a matter of fact I do. After all, I am an ornithologist and finding a rare thrush seems a opportunity not to be missed. It just might turn out the finding of a carreer. God, for all I know I might end up president of the damned Committee.
The raison d’être of this reportage is no other than Tom himself. You see, he is a photography student at the Ghent Academy. The reportage will be an ornithological research project and a master project at the same time. A combination of science and art. At least, that’s what Tom calls it. I didn’t mention that the quest for this thrush – a bird of which we can’t even be sure it exists – is somewhat desiring in scientific methodology since we base ourselves on a note book from the seventies. I am in fact a little concerned I will have to disappoint him at the end of our adventure – that is if ever there will be an adventure. But perhaps this remark is a little too negative to end my introduction with. Better would be: ‘Tom, whatever happens, we’ll find something.’
Kenny Lust, 2014
