The snowfields of Banstead

My perverse approach to birding surfaced once again as I elected to turn my back on multiple Iceland Gulls at Beddington and also treat the Holmethorpe Smew in similar fashion. Instead, I spent most of the day at my other local birding patch, Canons Farm/Banstead Woods.

The thermometer in my back garden was registering -8.8C at 07.00hrs. Instead of driving on the icy roads I walked to the farm, which only takes 25 minutes. Once on site I immersed myself in the task of counting everything that I came across. This is the sort of simplistic ornithology that I enjoy, meandering about fields and woods with a notebook in hand, counting the mainly common ensemble set before me. There were highlights: the two noisy Crossbills flew low to the east; a Woodcock was noisily flushed from underneath a Yew tree; a loose flock of 25 Great Tits that fed on the ground underneath beech trees just like Chaffinches; the vibrance of colour in the reflected light and the fact that the birds seemed to be celebrating the calm day with a surprising amount of song and display.

There were few winter thrushes here although suburban gardens not far away were still harbouring hundreds of Redwings and Fieldfares. They say that in London you are never more than six feet from a rat (or is it six metres?). Well, the same can be said for Surrey and dog walkers. Even in the middle of Banstead Woods, well off the footpaths, dogs would come frollicking up to me dragging its owner along in its wake. Before I'm accused of being 'doggist' I must point out that I am myself owned by a Cocker Spaniel...

Still blocking after all these years

Picture the scene, Old Father Time Steve is sitting in front of a public house's roaring fire, a battered copy of British Birds at his feet, a foaming glass of beer in his hand and a young, eager twitcher at his side...

Young twitcher: What did you do in the war when you went twitching Steve?

Steve: (Chortles) Oh we didn't have pagers and mobile phones then you know...

YT: (looks up in the air and tutts) Cut out all of that 'we had it bad' guff and tell me about the birds

S: Yes, well, er, most of them are commoner now you know. When I went to see an Alpine Swift at Fairburn Ings in 1979 it was an unblocker! Even the 'big boys' hadn't seen one. People still ran for Pallas's Warblers!

YT: (looking interested) Tell me about the blockers

S: (Glassy-eyed, staring into the distance with a smile) Ah, the blockers. I'm glad you asked me that. There are some of the old twitches that still have value now, that can get most birders all agitated and needy. Take the Cornwall Varied Thrush for instance...

YT: (visual gasp)

S: Yes, that was in 1982. Unblocked now for THIRTY YEARS

YT: Any others?

S: Oh yes (warming up to the theme). The year before I was on Scilly, when an Orphean Warbler took up residence. Nice bird that was... unblocked now for THIRTY ONE YEARS.

YT: Is there more?

S: Oh yes, the best. The best till last. Have I ever told you about the Wallcreepers?

YT: No! Did you use the plural there?

S: Oh yes (looking smug). After seeing one at Hastings in 1977 I went to a quarry in Cheddar and saw the wintering bird in 1978. Unblocked now for THIRTY FOUR YEARS

Older man standing at the bar: That's nothing. I was wandering down a country lane in Suffolk in 1962 when a Houbara Bustard ambled past. Unblocked now for FIFTY YEARS...

S: (crestfallen) oh...

YT: (ignoring Steve and speaking to old man) Can I buy you a pint?

Munro bagger for a day

A munro is the name given to a Scottish mountain whose peak reaches 3,000 feet or more. There are 283 in total.  Yesterday I had a grand plan - to climb all of them. To become a munro bagger and a munroist. This would combine my love of mountain flora and spectacular scenery. It would keep me fit. It would add adventure to my otherwise safe life. This morning I decided to look at this challenge in a bit more detail and started to consider the task a shoe-in, a done deal, not a problem at all. Then I came across this on Wikipedia:

"The usual ascent of the Inaccessible Pinnacle itself is by its long east ridge, a climb of 50 metres vertically involving two roped 30m pitches. Although graded Moderate (the lowest grade now in use in the British grading system), with good holds, the ridge is narrow and exceptionally exposed. This route was described by an early climber as "a knife-edged ridge, with an overhanging and infinite drop on one side, and a drop on the other side even steeper and longer". Some climbers prefer to tackle the much shorter west ridge (20 m), graded Very Difficult. It is usual to descend from the summit of the Pinnacle by abseiling off the west end, and a permanent anchor is sited on the summit for this purpose."

The Inaccessible Peak is a munro. Even the name sounds scary. I have seen a picture of it - it is scary! For someone who cannot go higher than a single storey on a ladder, it is the stuff of Room 101.

Today I have abandoned my plan to conquer all 283 Munros. I might manage 282 of them...

Of flowers and Ravens

I have just spent a most enjoyable and informative hour watching 'Bees, Butterflies and Blooms' on BBC2, presented by Sarah Raven. The aim of the programme (and series) was/is to highlight the plight of Britain's wild flowers - not only the fact that their decline is one that is an aesthetic loss to us, but more importantly the worry that our insect population are in freefall and that this in turn reduces the number of pollinators of many of our important crops.

It was a joy to see flower-filled meadows and actually have a botanist, on prime-time television, showing off the delights that such places harbour. I was immediately reminded to plug Sarah's latest book (pictured left). You could at first mistake it as nothing but a coffee-table book, but you would be wrong. Inside you will find stunning photography, particularly the habitat spread shots that will leave you looking deep into them for several minutes before being enticed away to read the individual species accounts, that are packed with useful information and personal observation. Sarah comes from botanical stock. Her father, John, was a well-known botanist who was co-author of one of my favourite botanical books, the New Naturalist volume 'Mountain Flowers'.

There is a lot that we can all do to help the plight of wild flowers and the insects that rely on them, and that is what this series is all about. No doubt tonights programme will be on 'catch-up' but if you don't have one of those new-fangled boxes plugged into your television set, then make sure that you watch next week's offering. If you are interested in wildlife then you really ought to...

Winter Heliotrope

Nothing gladdens the heart on a winters day more than a bank of flowering Winter Heliotrope (OK, I can think of several things that do, but for grammatic effect I will choose to ignore them). These plants were cascading over a bank of dumped topsoil close to Reigate Hill. Flowering was not in profusion, but plenty of the tassel-like flower heads were present. This species is naturalised in Britain and can often be found on roadsides, the large rounded leaves giving the plant away long before the flowers do.

Dream time

I regularly have this dream. I am at a bird observatory. Sometimes it is Dungeness and at other times it is Portland. If it is Dungeness, the observatory building is in an old house that has many levels to it and is quite well furnished. The habitat immediately outside the building is as Dungeness actually is, but the further I walk away from the sea it becomes luxurious woodland with grassy glades. If my dream is at Portland then the observatory building is a much smaller affair than it really is and it is situated on a massive cliff headland, not dissimilar to Gibraltar (the British protectorate, not the observatory in Lincolnshire). The fields are disected by deep rutted tracks. Most of the time I am just about to start my holiday at whichever observatory the dream is featuring, or just about to depart from it. Quite often I have forgotten my optics. There is never, ever, any birding involved. When I wake up I long to return to the observatory dream, maybe I have this longing because I spent so much happy time in my youth in such places.

My other natural history related dreams are few and far between. The most vivid of those few that do occur feature magnificent wild flowers that resemble nothing to be found in any field guide. Another dream featured an MV full of stunning moths, none of which I had seen before.

I can wake from these dreams with a feeling of disappointment that it wasn't real and these stunning species that I had been looking at are but figments of my imagination. Maybe, in a parallel universe they do actually exist, and it is also there that I dream of sombre brown moths and insignificant dandelions...

Davy Jones' pan-species locker

The pan-lister in me couldn't resist buying 'Great British Marine Animals' by Paul Naylor, its third edition having just published. This is a photographic guide to the commoner species found in UK waters and has already helped me add to my marine list (with a bit of retro checking of my Cornish rock pool pictures taken last August). What is sobering is the number of marine animal species to be found in the UK - go on, have a guess. 250? 500? It can't be over a thousand, can it? Yes it can...

Approximately 7,000.

Take sponges. There are in the region of 400 species of sponge to tempt the pan-lister, but Paul Naylor throws in a curve-ball by suggesting that microscopic examination is often essential to clinch an ID.

This book has caused me to adopt an ambition marine mammal, although I doubt that I'll ever see one. The Fireworks Anemone is big, spectacular and inhabits deep water such as the bottom of muddy Scotish sea-lochs. Another thing that is obvious is that the biologists that have given these sea creatures their English names have used the simple trick of looking at them, deciding what they resemble, and calling them just that - hence Strawberry Anemone, Dahlia Anemone, Breadcrumb Sponge, Chocolate Finger Sponge, Prawn Cracker Sponge (I'm not making these up). Now all I have to do is buy an oxygen tank, a pair of flippers, an underwater camera and start inroads into the 7,000 ticks on offer. Lundy, anyone?