NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Monday 12th April 1976 was when I first trod on the Kentish Dungeness shingle and walked through the front door of the world famous bird observatory (pictured above). I had arrived to become a participating member of an RSPB residential course which was being lead by the society's investigations officer Peter Robinson. Little did I know at the time that I was about to embark on a lifetime's infatuation with all things Dungeness. I have written an awful lot about my time at Dungeness, much of it scattered throughout this blog, so will try not to replicate it here. There was a time when there was nowhere else on Earth that I would rather be and although such manic devotion may have cooled down in recent years it is still a place that causes me to feel a swathe of emotions - happiness, inspiration, longing and, if I'm being really honest, a bit of sadness. My choice of visiting Dungeness was purely by chance - had the RSPB chosen to run that course at Sandwich Bay or Portland ...

Now here's the thing. Most of us who profess to being birders, botanists, coleopterists, dipterists, naturlahistoryists - call it what you like-er-ists - are more than aware of climate change. As observers and lovers of 'all that is wild' you would think that it would be an easy thing to cast aside anything and everything that would add fuel to the collapse of the environment as we now know it. We look, we observe, we record. It is blindingly obvious that our weather is all over the place; that the world's species are responding to this (and mostly in negative ways); that the human being is responsible for such an acceleration in this change; that only sudden changes in the way that we behave can slow this behemoth down. And even then such changes might not amount to anything other than being able to manoeuvre a dire outlook into a bad one. It needs 180 degree turns, lifestyle changes, a reassessment of what we do and how we do it.  Yet... How many of us can honestly sa...

When I first visited Dungeness Bird Observatory I became aware of a band of birders that were unlike any other birders that I had so far met in my formative years of birdwatching. They were all a few years older than me (mostly in their late-20s and early-30s) and appeared streetwise, long-haired, exotically dressed and could pepper their ornithological pronouncements with industrial language. I was impressed! I sought out their company, craved their approval and was slowly admitted into their orbit. But there was one of their number that was not present, who had drifted away from Dungeness to pioneer the vis-mig watches on the east-Kent coast at St. Margaret’s Bay. His name was Tony Greenland. It was not until 1979 that I met him, when he returned to visit Dungeness Bird Observatory (DBO) on a number of occasions throughout that year. I was slightly wary of his colourful reputation but we immediately got on like a house on fire - in fact he took me under his wing. That summer I was ac...