One day at a time... for ten years

I quote from Neil Randon's latest blog post, posted yesterday after he went and saw Surrey's fourth record of Red-rumped Swallow:

"I got to Unstead in 40 minutes, and Johnny (Allan) was already in position, alongside Brian Milton, the guy who discovered the bird . It was a major coup for Brian, who is nearing a remarkable landmark. He is fast approaching 3,500 days of continuous Unstead patch watching - that's nearly 10 years without a day off! It takes all sorts."

I'm not going to judge Brian on visiting the same place to go birding on a daily basis for so long - what he does with his life is his choice, and as long as he is not indulging in anything immoral or illegal then we can all keep out of it. My first thought was that he must be remarkably patient and tolerant. When I have spent any time birding in one place I cannot easily do a week in succession, let alone ten years. My second thought was that if there is a significant other in his life, then they must be terribly understanding. My final thought was that he has obviously not been on holiday, or travelled away from Surrey any great distance in all that time. Instead of sneering at such behaviour I applaud it. He has obviously found something that is a passion and keeps on giving. Isn't that something that we all strive for?

The only person that I can recall who has spent a similar number of years working the same site on an almost daily basis is Gary Messenbird, who was as much a fixture at Beddington Sewage Farm  as the Tree Sparrows. Currently, one Mr Johnny Allan is at the same sewage farm on a daily basis (and has been for the past couple of years) in his quest to topple the Surrey year total record (that he also holds). This is after many years that he has spent regularly birding on the farm. And don't think that I have forgotten David Campbell who has been using his break in full-time education to haunt Canons Farm every day that he can (and he cannot only when he rushes of on a distant twitch).

I admire those naturalists that keep at it. I just haven't got the patience to stick at anything day after day. Even weekly visits to a site can pall.

Hats off to them all...

Comments

Graham James said…
Dead right Steve. These dedicated local patchers are the backbone of birding in the UK and I too admire their staying power.
Like you, I can only take so much of one area and have to takes breaks from it occasionally to maintain the little bit of sanity that I still have.
In fact, I have to take breaks from birding altogether from time to time just to keep everything in perspective.
9 July 2011 at 18:34
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more