Legacy

LEGACY: the long-lasting impact of your actions on others...

I will soon reach a significant age, one that will allow me to claim a state pension and a free bus pass. Apart from greyer hair and a narrower band of hearing range it has also brought with it a certain amount of navel gazing: what did I do to get to where I am today, what have I done with that time and what - if anything - will I leave behind after I have gone? They are thoughts that are not unusual as we grow older. The answer to such questions are easier and more obvious if we have a family - any surviving partner, child or sibling will have their own memories of you that one hopes will be positive, that there will be some elements of your life that has informed them, touched them or even warned them off from replicating. Friends might be able to recall amusing anecdotes that you were involved in over a beer or a pot of tea. But as far as this post is concerned I am more interested in the afterlife of my natural history interests. Are all the years that I have spent observing and recording birds, plants, moths (and the rest) been nothing but a personal time-killing exercise, or is there an end result that goes beyond that? Is there, in fact, a legacy to it all?

I still own every notebook that I have used since 1975. From the juvenile scribblings of youth, the long descriptive narratives of my early-twenties and the shorter entries of later age, 'writing down' has always been a feature of my observations. It is something that I enjoy. 50 years worth of notebooks take up quite a bit of room. Some of them have been unread for years, many only opened if I have gone in search of a particular piece of information (and it is quite surprising how a seemingly insignificant day's birding back in 1978 can sometimes hold the very piece of information that you are keen to retrieve.) I have, at times, questioned why I have held on to them, but am so pleased that I resisted the lure of the paper recycling bin.

From these notebooks I have written a number of stand-alone reports/publications, heavy on narrative - an account of birdwatching in the 1970s; memories of Dungeness; birding trips to Israel and Malaysia; the Hawfinch irruption of 2017-18 to name a few. All have been printed out and spiral bound. I recently went through all 2250+ posts from this blog and selected those that I thought worthy of collating - this too has been printed and bound. All of these now reside in a box file. A box file that has become, by default, a legacy box. Such an action could be construed as egotistical, but is it? What is it that made me gather up the collected words of my natural history life for their preservation? And, by the way, as much as this sounds all a bit morbid and end-of-life I am hoping that many more words will be added to that box in the years to come. 

When I look back at my 'natural history' time I can trace those 50 years through a series of people who had helped, influenced and energised that journey. Some were just initials in a dusty old bird report, others close friends. Most of them are not aware that they played such an important role in my development and enjoyment. It really takes very little to 'speak' to a similarly-minded individual in a way that enhances their own interests. With me, in those early bird reports that I avidly read and re-read were windows on to what it was possible to see with a bit of time and effort. Those who regularly found the good birds, counted the highest numbers and recorded the earliest and latest migrant dates were rewarded by having their initials printed against the relevant record, and I knew who those initials belonged to, each and every one of them. Those faceless (for they were, to me, largely faceless) people became role models, birders who I strove to become. They were the whispering voices by my side who encouraged me out, drove me to look and look harder. Thus, the more I went out into the birding world the more people I was influenced by, either in their skillset, their manner or their helpfulness. I took small bits of influence from some, large dollops from others. I can still name them all, but won't do for fear of missing somebody out.

What do I think my legacy could be, if indeed there is one?

At the very least, I like to think that the box file of my collected writing will be read in years to come by a relative, even if it is briefly flicked through and gives them some understanding as to what it was about the natural world that had taken up so much of my time. It might inspire them to dig a bit deeper or possibly pick up a pair of binoculars (maybe mine!) and have a look. I'm sure some of my hundreds of books will have survived the charity shops and can act as a ready made library to help them along the way. I'm always mindful of the letters that my wife's Grandfather sent back home from the war, that had subsequently been kept in a folder and were then read by a perfect stranger - me - donkey's years later. They weren't written for the education and entertainment of future generations but have ended up doing just that. This blog has hinted at the power of the written word beyond what I, as the author, foresaw or intended. I've met up with people who have thanked me for the blog, either as a tool to track down a certain species of plant, through experiencing a vicarious thrill via a bird post or as a stimulus to start up writing themselves. It is a humbling experience when this happens.

Being of a certain age also means that the youngsters that I've bumped into along the journey have now grown up into fully fledged adults, some even creeping into their mid-fifties! It is in conversation with them that you soon realise that the way you treated them 'back in the day' did have an effect, either through inspiring them or easing their passage along the learning curve - and to be honest, many has been the time when the table was turned and these 'youngsters' did indeed inspire this old man!

For every DIM Wallace, Peter Grant or Killian Mullarney there are thousands of others who, while not having the brilliance of those named above can still chip in with identification snippets and their own blueprints for a birding life that will be ornithological gold-dust to others. In all seriousness, if you've ever spoken to anybody in the field, sent your records to a database, or just passed the time of day with a neighbour waxing lyrical about the Blackcap coming to your feeders, you will have been influential. When non-birders know you are a birder, you are inundated with questions on a regular basis, normally starting with "I've just seen this bird..." Many of these non-birders end up as passive back garden observers at the very least. From acorns might oaks grow!

Our records populate bird reports, are the dots on maps of breeding surveys or species distribution, can be footnotes to papers on all sort of subjects. Without you knowing it, there could be a few dozen people who now birdwatch, look at plants or run a moth trap because of something you did, or said, to inspire them. After all, something helped you on your way - a written word, an encouraging push, a superb photograph or a wonderful piece of art. It may have started with an encounter with wildlife, but most people need a leg-up to progress further.

Legacy. You don't need to chase it. It's already in place. That box file is really just a belt-and-braces approach to ensuring that it happens, even though I will not know if it is ever opened. Maybe a great-great-grand child of mine at the end of the 21st-century will be reading from it and exclaim "He saw how many Hawfinches?!..." and feel inspired to go out and find their own.