Swahili Blessing For Buckton Birds!

Tue 22nd May, 2012

Around 20 people aged from a few months to over 80 years assembled on the cliff-top at Buckton, East Yorkshire, in a biting wind on Saturday for the official opening of the Heligoland trap there.

Renowned birdwatcher, writer and artist Ian Wallace had travelled to Buckton from Staffordshire to perform the ceremony. Mr Wallace, who was stationed in Kenya during the war, chose to bless the trap with a Nandi tribal spell in Swahili. Already sporting a jaunty beret, he added a tribal leopard-skin stole and with all the vim of a ham actor declaiming lines of Shakespeare, lifted his arms to shake them at the trap as he evoked a Nandi god to empower the charm. The onlookers latched on to the one word they understood in a torrent of Swahili: “Mega, mega!”

Having uttered the climax of the spell, Mr Wallace continued to follow tribal tradition by knocking back a hearty swig of waragi, Ugandan gin, before spitting it out vigorously in the direction of the trap, which was fortunately also the direction of the northerly wind. His audience accordingly remained dry while the trap received a fine spray of the tipple.

The trap, which catches birds by funnelling them into a structure the size of a small building, and in which birds can fly around freely, was built by volunteers for the purpose of ringing migrants, which are then released unharmed. Ringer Mark Thomas devotes many hours of his spare time to manning the trap, making a valuable contribution to bird research.

Mr Wallace announced that he hereby named the structure “Blyth’s Trap” after Mark and Jenny Thomas’s three-year-old son, who was present at the opening.

Plastic cups which had scattered in the wind were hastily gathered up and champagne was quaffed. The gathering then repaired to the Richard Burton Gallery and Tea Room, where coffee and cakes were served and Mr Wallace delivered a brief but colourful history of the Heligoland trap.

It is hoped that many a “mega” bird will make a future appearance in Blyth’s Trap.

The translation of the Swahili was: “Come here god, come here please!  [Oh, there he is! – on the top, at the end!] Welcome! How are things with you? No worries? Good! We want birds, many birds, but not only goldcrests! Bring quickly megas, because Mr Mark and other good people meet here in order to ring them. [Is he still there? Right!] Thirsty god, want a strong dram? Wait a minute .. [swigs and spits]. Goodbye, god! Carry on, Mr Mark and your ringers!”

A video of the ceremony can be viewed here.