NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

You would have to have had your head in a bucket of sand for the past few days to not be aware of the fact that a birder claimed to have photographed a Savannah Sparrow in East Sussex last week. The photo appeared online and sent "at least 40 car loads of twitchers" sparrow-bound. The trouble was, the whole thing was a hoax. The birder in question even turned up on site and showed those who turned up where it had been. What he (it was a he) didn't bank on was for a team of Poirot/Morse/Marple-influenced birders to get to work on his image and come to the conclusion that the sort of barbed wire that his Savannah Sparrow was perched on in his photograph was of North American provenance and not the type found in Europe. Said hoaxer quickly retreated, 'fessed up, removed himself from various forums and is currently enjoying the sort of public profile that is enjoyed by the likes of Jimmy Savile, Adolf Hitler and Fred West. My first reaction was to have a bloody good lau...

In a sensational interview given to North Downs and Beyond , a lapsed birder from Surrey has admitted to a series of rare-bird hoaxes that have fooled the nation. The middle-aged man, who wishes to remain anonymous, has revealed a series of stunts that has seen released cage birds, remote controlled models and even a child in fancy dress fooling the UK twitching elite. "I was fed up with the whole birding scene" he admitted. "I hated birds and I loathed birders. They just annoyed me, so I thought that I'd have a bit of fun to cheer myself up. I looked through the classified pages of Cage and Aviary Birds last autumn and purchased a Dusky Thrush which I released in Margate last November. Nobody found the damn thing even though it was remarkably tame and confiding, and then it went missing. I thought that little jape was over and forgot all about it. However, this spring it was found, only a few miles away from the initial release site. There are plenty of birders...