NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Even here in the normally sedate south-east of England the weather is kicking off. An unusually blustery west to south-westerly wind is making itself felt and, looking at the weather forecast for the next few days, will continue to be a nuisance. What it must be like to the north and west of us I can only imagine and sympathise with. Roof tiles, fence panels, tree boughs, garden furniture and moth-traps all going on unscheduled journeys into the air...  Now Christmas is over (in my book that is when Boxing Day finishes) I normally start to tidy up in readiness for the new year and look back at the past 12-months. 2023 has been a bit of a roller-coaster for me, some great highs and some nasty lows. As I'm fond of saying, if you experience the privilege of reaching an 'older' age then you need to accept that things will not always run smoothly - unless you are very lucky indeed. It goes with the territory. Enough said. I didn't travel far this year. Most of my birding was...

I normally come up with the title for a post after I have written it. If I'm feeling creative it will be some sort of play on words, or if I'm not then an all-encompassing word or two will do. As for this particular post, and with a few things to discuss, I've written the title first, inspired by having just read a feature about musicians who have used the title of an album as the starting point for their creative exercise. Here goes... Firstly, blogs - yes, this very medium that I am writing in and you are reading from. - what content they derive, the reason that the content exists and what the writer should (or should not) expect from any reader that visits the blog. This was brought into sharp focus by a series of posts to be found here, at Jono Lethbridge's excellent 'Wansted Birder'.   His blogging output has recently included detailed and entertaining reports on his recent overseas trips which have received a bit of flak from certain quarters. None of us b...

I am grateful to Gavin Haig (Not Quite Scilly) who drew my attention to an opinion piece, penned by Matt Phelps, which appeared in the November issue of 'Birdwatch' magazine, entitled 'Positive Approach', which I have now read. In it, he suggests that there is too much negativity being posted on social media regarding the state of our birding world, which is then acting as a deterrent towards a younger generation in adopting conservation and wildlife study. He also suggests that a lot of this negativity is being generated by older birders, and that these old timers keep banging on about the 'good old days' which isn't helpful in encouraging the youth to pick up a pair of binoculars and get out into the field. Does he have a point? Now, I am undeniably an older birder, and I am also guilty of having posted, blogged, written and spoken about the slump in bird and invertebrate numbers. I also like nothing better than to revisit my notebooks and share in the hi...

It might seem a simple question to answer. We tend to start off with a desire to identify what birds are in our presence and to record what we find by making a list. As time goes on we begin to make several lists, that of species seen within differing borders, at varying times of year and of many parameters. We identify and we collect. But, with advancing age - and experience - this does not cut the mustard. Our outlooks mellow, out age bestows upon us a certain sagacity (whether that is earned or not). We want more from what we have done, unquestioned as it might have been for many years. To 'just do' can become nothing more than a means to an end, something to fill in the time, to keep us amused, to act as a deterrent to stop us from wasting time that might otherwise be spent doing less meaningful things. Too much over thinking? Maybe, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a worthwhile exercise. I'm just about to hit 65 and have recently lost a few birding role mode...

I first met Mike Netherwood at Beddington Sewage Farm in early 1975, me being an ultra-keen and ultra-green 16-year old birder, he some 20 years my senior. Mike, together with Ken Parsley, were the remnants of a once much larger ringing group which carried out the trapping and ringing of birds across the open expanse of the sewage farm. Whenever I bumped into them, which I often did, they would both tolerate my many questions about what they had seen and trapped and listen to me waxing lyrical about my own observations. Over the coming months they showed me how they caught the birds, allowed me to witness the ringing and measuring of them and, if I were very lucky, allow me to help them out by holding mist-net poles, carrying bird bags or writing down (scribing) the data that they were collecting into notebooks. By the summer of 1976 I had joined them, proudly in possession of my trainee ringer's permit. For the next three years (until I 'defected' to Dungeness) I spent man...

By the time that the calendar creeps towards mid-November, there is a part of me that accepts that the year is on the way out. Even though there are still at least six weeks to go until that becomes a reality, something buried deep within me has always felt that way. From a schoolboy kicking through deep drifts of leaves to an adult scanning the skies for some late migrant thrush action, mid-November says decay, whispers 'end', suggests a last act before it creeps off 'stage right'. As morose and macabre as that sounds, these feelings are not those of death but more like a readying for a coming birth - that of a new year and a not-to-distant spring  - the pagan in me is alive and kicking! I've spent a lot of time skywatching from Epsom Downs over the past few weeks. And Colley Hill. And Box Hill. Even the back garden has had a look-in (although has not lived up to its previous successes). It has all been a little bit... meh (as the kids say). Apart from a couple of ...

This autumn has, so far, been underwhelming on the birding front. Sky-watching has failed to produce any notable movements, with thrush and finch numbers very low. My combing of the local fields and hedgerows has uncovered a lack - even a silence - of avian presence. It is, it must be said, depressing. What exacerbates this dearth of birdlife is that social media reveals that, elsewhere in the country, there are birders filling their boots with large numbers, variety and rarity. At times like this I am reminded that 'comparison is the thief of joy', so it is best to try not evaluate your own, albeit small successes, against what is going on elsewhere - there lies disillusionment, disappointment and madness. It is also a truism that such successes elsewhere are often localised, and increasingly only happening when weather conditions are ideal, which does not happen all that often. So, my local birding experience is not going to be anything other than a regular diet of mediocrity...