Righteous

Well, my last post was a bit 'down' wasn't it. Feeling sorry for myself, wasn't I...

After a couple of days to cheer myself up - and even with a bit of naff birding included as well - I have come to a happy place once more. I've realised for some time that, if one wants to be all 'worthy' and plough the lonely patch-birding-furrow, then you'd better accept and put up with fallow periods. It's no different for those watching the coastal hot-spots, it's all relative.

I could get in the car and drive for 90 miles, go to Pagham or Dungeness, but to be honest why join the hordes already there? It isn’t a case of 'been there, done that' because if I lived close to those places I would, without doubt, bird them - but would maybe choose some of the lesser watched areas that can still be found there. Believe it or not they do exist even in the most ‘birdied-out’ sites. I've often mentioned this little gem of a quote from Bernard Venables, author of the Mr. Crabtree fishing books:

"there are three stages to the angler's evolution. To begin with, as a child, you just want to catch fish - any fish. Then you move to the stage where you want to catch big fish. And finally, with nothing left to prove, you reach a place where it's the manner of the catch that counts, the rigour and challenge of it, at which point the whole thing takes on an intellectual and perhaps even a philosophical cast."

 If you replace the word 'fish' with 'birds' then you might get what I'm striving for. Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go and lay my worthy head on a pillow. Righteousness is very tiring...

Comments

Dylan Wrathall said…
I feel your pain. As both an angler and birder, I empathise with this scenario, the ageing process does produce many parallel experiences? Surely it is so much more rewarding to discover the first Garden Warbler, on your patch, than to chase second hand news/sightings of a Sub-alpine Warbler?


28 April 2019 at 15:25
Steve Gale said…
Truth is Dyl, I quite enjoy this 'third stage' in the Mr Crabtree Scale of Fishing/Birding!
29 April 2019 at 08:59
Ric said…
Steve,
A wish to do things with a different emphasis would be nice but for the landscape changing and taking away the very things that drew one to it in the first place.
At times it seems the decline is taking us with it.
30 April 2019 at 07:09
Steve Gale said…
That last sentence is a bit too close for comfort!!
30 April 2019 at 10:43
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