Nick Penny Call of the Kingfisher

Northants Telegraph

Nick Penny has written a book telling the story of the wildlife living along the River Nene over a year chronicling his walks from Oundle to Cotterstock

Transcript

00:00 My name's Nick Penny, I live in Owndal and I walk by the river down to Codstock every day and back.

00:06 I'm a writer, a musician, composer and I also record bird song and I've just written a book

00:13 called Call of the Kingfisher which really started with the walks that I take every day

00:19 and taking a concerted look at the river and its wildlife through the year, through a whole year

00:27 and going into some of the people that have lived in this area that have been very interesting,

00:31 they've been involved with conservation. Actually on the first day of the year I saw a kingfisher

00:36 from the north bridge in Owndal and watched it for a bit and I thought well I've been walking

00:41 this river for nearly four decades and I see kingfishers from time to time but I don't really

00:46 know that much about them and the way they lead their lives so I thought well it'd be really

00:50 interesting to actually follow them through the year. I didn't know at that stage whether I would

00:54 actually see them all through the year but as it turned out I did. They have a beautiful call but

00:58 it's very very distinctive, it's a very high piping sound a little bit like a dog whistle.

01:03 Sometimes I hear somebody blowing a dog whistle and I think that's a kingfisher and then I realise

01:08 it isn't but it's a very, it's not a beautiful sound like a blackbird or a nightingale or

01:14 something like that but a very very distinctive sound and of course what it is really good for

01:19 is letting you know that they're about usually I would say eight or nine times out of ten I hear a

01:25 kingfisher before I see it so I hear it and like a pointed dog I'm immediately looking at the river

01:30 and I'll see it flash past. This book is very much of its time and it's quite unique in that

01:37 there's a QR code at the front of the book which links to an online appendix if you like,

01:44 a page of sounds that I've recorded in the area so not just along the river but in the woods

01:49 around here we're very lucky there are nightingales in woods around here, cuckoos, all sorts of things

01:55 and then geese further up the river and down the river as well. These sounds tie in actually with

02:02 the book so in various places in the text there's little loudspeaker symbols and you can go online

02:07 and actually hear the sounds that I'm describing. I know it's very controversial whether it's nen

02:11 or neen the pronunciation or the river that's spelt n-e-n-e, interestingly Sat Nav says nene.

02:18 The river is about 100 miles long from its source at Badby down to the sea

02:24 in Lincolnshire at Suttonbridge and for about half its length it's pronounced nen and then for the

02:33 other half it's pronounced neen and the change of the point as I understand it is around Thrapston

02:38 which is probably about 10 miles up river from here in Owngal so I would pronounce it neen

02:46 at this stage but if I were to walk up river past Thrapston I would pronounce it nen.

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