NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Most generations will claim their time and legacy as something of a golden era, particularly when looking back on their formative years. This is particularly true of any group of enthusiasts, whose collective memory will be bathed in sunshine and a shared nostalgia that brings back incidents and events with an almost overbearing clarity - there is happiness in the reconnection but a sadness that it has long gone and cannot be relived. The twitching fraternity of the late 1970s to early 1980s have a genuine claim to be a’golden generation’. The possibilities of what rarity could make it to our shores were being re-written with every passing year; the number of birders that chased rarities was increasing; more rarities were being found and the prowess in bird identification kept increasing. But maybe more relevant was the demographic of the twitching crowd - it was largely made up of young birders, mostly men, in their mid-teens to early thirties. Society was quite different back the...

This Yew has been teetering on the edge of collapse for some time now, the soil beneath its roots having been eroded by the River Mole. Sometime over the past few weeks it went beyond the tipping point, and now it lies across the water, ripped and bloodied. I always think there is something sad, but noble, when an old tree bows out. For those of you that don't follow the 'birding scene', an ultra-rare Tengmalm's Owl has been found on Shetland. This has unleashed the normal rum cast of twitchers to bunk off work take a hasty holiday and (largely) head north. The owl has been roosting in the conifers of a private garden. The owl has also, at times, been playing hide-and-seek. But there has been some kerfuffle. What has got the goat of many commentators on Twitter is that, in desperation, some people have been venturing inside the small plantation and have even been attempting (at times successfully) to spotlight the owl when it got dark. This doesn't surprise...

Mummy, why are all those people staring at our house? They're birdwatching Johnny. But why are they staring at our house? Because the bird that they have come to see is in our garden. Don't they have birds in their own gardens? Well they do, but the bird they have come to look at is rare. Why is it rare? Well, as far as I know, these birdwatchers keep a list of all the different types of bird that they have seen, and if a bird that usually lives in another country comes to our country, then they all get in their cars and drive to see it. Why? That's a very good question Johnny. Mummy? Yes Johnny. Why are they all men? I don't really know, but I'd imagine that most women have got better things to do. And why are they all like Uncle Ronnie? What do you mean Johnny? Well, they all look like him. I've told you before, we've got to be kind to Uncle Ronnie, he has difficulties with people. And hygiene. He cannot help the way he lo...

The following appeared on the website 'Welcome to Dungeness UK' on a post called 'Rare Bird and Bearded Twitchers'. I wasn't there so cannot comment on the behaviour of the gathered masses, but author dungieMike says the following: So the Arcadian (sic) Flycatcher hitched a lift from the States to Dungeness – and then evidently died. Relentlessly pursued by hundreds of bearded twichers it is little wonder it took the easy way out. These so called bird lovers (the Twitchers) seem to disregard normal behaviour patterns when chasing their quarry, with total disregard for private property. One poor lass threw open her bedroom curtains only to be confronted by four of these ‘persons’ leaning over the garden fence with binoculars trained on her very person. Me thinks they were after a different type of tit. I often wonder, when observing these rambling masses, what their reaction would be if we went to their home, tromped across their gardens with spyglass and camera i...

Only a couple of posts ago  I laid bare my Dungeness bird list on the back of my reconnection with the shingle peninsula. Although there have been 'Dungeness ticks' that I could have gone for in recent months, they have either not been terribly rare or highly mobile. So there really hasn't been the need or the opportunity to do so. Listing can be a corrosive infliction. If taken too seriously you can become irrational, tetchy and ultimately unfulfilled. It's all OK when the listing behaves itself, and you connect with all the possible targets, in that case life is brilliant. But when you dip, things can go dark. I wondered how I would react when a real stonker turned up at Dungeness. Well, at 10.00hrs this morning I found out... "Dungeness mega. Empidonax Flycatcher at the fishing boats now. Showing well" That little gem of information appeared on Twitter via Martin Casemore. I took it all in with more than a little wonder and a feeling of pleasure for the...

Back in 1976 I purchased 'Rare Birds in Britain and Ireland' by JTR and EM Sharrock, one from the T&AD Poyser stable. I was indescribably excited by this book, mainly because at the time anything pertaining to rare birds was generally not acknowledged by the ornithological mainstream. Rarities and twitching were still considered the pastime of the idle and unwashed, with the business end of such anti-social behaviour carried out in public telephone boxes and rough pubs. To have such a publication like this was in some ways an affirmation of what we did but also a tremendous read. I spent hours and hours poring over the records of all of the rarities recorded up until the end of 1975 - most of the species mentioned being just a wild fantasy to my teenage birder's feverish mind. 37 years on the book still makes fascinating reading. What is most striking is just how few records that there had been of species that today's birders would think twice about crossing the...

What with a deluge of decent species arriving on our shores, the 'birding' component of this blog is going to suffer comparison with any coastal-based blogger. My answer to combat this is to dig into the archives and thrust nostalgia upon you... My first visit to THE SCILLIES Straight away there's a mistake - officiandos of the archipelago never refer to the islands by that moniker. Scilly Isles is OK, Scillies not. Got that? Back in 1978 I hadn't. When I was offered a lift to go and twitch the Western Palearctic's first Semipalmated Plover (that had just been found on St. Agnes) I needed no persuasion at all. Those fabled islands had played havoc with my mind for the previous couple of years to the point that I just knew a visit would arrive sooner rather than later. I was soon wedged into a small car leaving London on a Friday evening along with four other birders, all long-hair, spots and combat clothing. Back in those days we didn't do suave. The Scill...

Seeing 'the bird' doesn't always guarantee joy, as I alluded to at the end of my last post. A poor view and nothing more can set all sorts of doubts of in your mind, such as 'was that enough to tick?' through to 'did I actually see the bird?' More than once I've come away from a twitch wrestling the problem of 'to tick or not to tick'. That scenario always ended the same - the knowledge that by asking the question in the first place really meant that the only response could be NO. Sometimes I've seen the bird really well and felt underwhelmed. Twice this has happened when seeing the rarest of the rare, a first for Britain.The Pallid Swift at Stodmarsh in May 1977 zipped around me within touching distance, but to my untrained eye I really did have to convince myself that the bird really was what the experts said it was. October 1978 saw me on St. Agnes looking at a Ringed Plover that I was being told was a Semipalmated Plover. I'd travel...

I couldn't help but experience a half-forgotten chill run down my spine when I read this post on Devilbirder's blog. It is a tale of dipping, magnified by the rarity of the species that he had hoped to see, plus the distance that he had travelled to see it. Increased distance (with a cost and time factor) does not always make dipping worse - a local failure can be far more personal and painful. I started to think back to the days when I too picked up the twitching baton and ran with it. Were all my dips as painful? And come to that, were all of my successes pleasurable? 'No' and 'no' were my concluding answers to those questions. Painful dipping The bird that hurt me the most was a Great Spotted Cuckoo at Dungeness in the summer of 1989. I was in the grip of 'Dungeness fever' and liked nothing more than a Dungeness tick. At the time, this would have also been a UK lifer. The call came through to me soon after the bird had been found, and at the ver...

If you don't know what I'm on about take a look here

I've just read this and, if it's true, I am disgusted. Disgusted at the lack of concern for the residents. Disgusted at the mean spirit of most those present (do the maths). Ashamed to claim to be a part of the 'birding' fraternity. If you can read the link and remain unconcerned, then I really do worry about our hobby - and a hobby is what it is, unless you are lucky enough to be paid to do it. Why don't those who are guilty just bugger off and take up less disguised social crimes such as vandalism and theft. Pathetic.

On the Surfbirds forum, in response to last nights BBC4 programme about twitching, Lee Evans posted an open letter, asking, among other things, whether or not he ought to pack it all in. He felt that his popularity was waning and the antagonism against him building. I did reply... Hi Lee, I am commenting on this situation as a lapsed twitcher and somebody that has only met you a few times, and that was back in the late 70s and early 80s. I am still an active birder and, although I rarely go to a rare bird, I know plenty who still do. You are correct in stating that you do have your critics, but I am sure that you would expect this when you set yourself up as a ‘policeman’ and ‘judge, jury and executioner’ to the birding world (I think that they were your words, and if I’m incorrect, forgive me). As you have never been elected, or asked to keep a watching brief on all the UK birders lists’ (as to accuracy and honesty), then again, you cannot be surprised when this causes offence or indi...