"It's not going to put your girlfriend in a coma is it?"

Image by gussifer | thecolorawesome.com via Flickr

Three things I have learnt of late.....

The amazing:
Once they are born, swifts can fly for up to four years without ever landing. I include the words 'up to' as although I swear this is what they said on Springwatch, a certain male close to me decided to check that particular fact out with 63336, who replied that it was two to three years. Yeah, whatever. Maybe that's just the lazy ones.

The bad
I was listening to Stephen Moss and Chris Watson on Radio 4 earlier presenting a programme about water birds. Apparently sailors used to kill kingfishers and hang them upside down because they belived they would then point in the direction of the wind. What the..?! A travesty!


The downright weird (but very amusing!)
Chris Packham is a cheeky little chap isn't he? According to two of my friend, L & D, who are big Morrissey fans, Packham spent the whole of Springwatch sneaking the glum ones' lyrics into his on-air patter. Check this out - it really is true. Particularly love the way Kate Humble appears to have no idea what he's on about except for her give away right at the end of the series when he gives her the flowers. Humble: "It's not going to put your girlfiend in a coma is it?" Packham: "No, some girls are bigger than others". Pure genius. Nice one Chris! Just choose a better musician next time....


I have been getting back to the books (and the web and the mags) to get up to scratch gradually on birds, wildlife and conservation related issues.
Thanks very, very much on that front to the wonderful ladies at the Wildlife Trusts who were good enough to take time out in their lunch hour to share some lovely sandwiches with me and talk about birds. We had a stroll round the beautiful Camley Street Natural Park, which I highly but reluctantly (sssssh! These things are best kept a secret. Or am I starting to display twitcher like tendencies?! See previous post) recommend if you haven't been already. They are about to embark on a project to encourage kingfishers to land nearby, which I await in eager anticipation.

I have also signed up to LearnBirds, which is a real beginner's tool but for me absolutely brilliant as I love studying, even if it is largely 'click and drag' bits of birds and listen to their songs! I was torn between learning via the books or online, but this is interactive so I think it will keep me engaged.

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Close encounter with a cormorant

Image via Wikipedia

It was a beautiful warm, slightly muggy evening last week when I nearly cycled into a tree. I spent too long staring at what I thought was a black bin bag hanging from a branch. On closer inspection (brought about by stumbling off bike trying not to end up in the river) I realised it was a cormorant. Just sitting there in the middle of town, keeping an eye on the river from its perch in the tree. It seemed oblivious to my fumbles with my bike just a few metres away. I swear there was a slightly weary look in its eye as it eventually turned its head to look at me as if to say: 'Yes, and, your are staring at me why exactly?" I picked up my wheels and made my exit.

On the domestic front I have been watching a wood pigeon make a nest in the tree at the end of our garden. Pigeons may not be the most fascinating birds but my interested in this particular specimen can be found in my determination to cry 'but I have!' to this age old question. Thanks Max Wurr for your slightly patronising but useful answer.

I have also made pals with a robin. He follows me when I dig in the garden and will come right up to my spade. I know they are not shy but this one is a really friendly chap. I am going to get some mealworm if I can and follow Simon King's tips on hand feeding them. He made it look quite easy, as though you just chatted to it a few times and it came to your hand for dinner. Surely not?! Anyone ever tried this - am I wasting my time in the summer when it already has lots of lovely grubs to feast on??

ps fellow bloggers, I have just started using Zemanta when I blog and, even for the technologically inept like me, it's a pretty nifty tool.

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Off the record: why twitching is as sad as they say

Not spotted: The Hermit Thrush

I was reading through a copy of Birdwatch earlier this week and I was shocked. Not by news of a rare bird but by a double page spread half way through the issue under the headline 'Off the record'.

The piece was written by Nigel Pepper, a birdwatcher from Essex, who in 1994 'found' a rare Hermit Thrush near his home. The find was submitted to, and accepted by, the Rarities Committee (which itself, appropriately for this story, sounds a lot like something that would not have been out of place in 1984).

The article is a confession; a confession 15 years later by Pepper that he had in fact made up the find. But why? What he recalls I find fascinating.

As he explains in the piece, he starting birdwatching in the 1980s as a "relaxing way to spend time". What started out as a harmless hobby gradually became more serious. Pepper received annual reports from the Essex Birdwatching Society and became increasingly frustrated about the birds that, despite being in his own county, he had missed. In his words: "The same finders' names cropped up time after time, belonging to an elite self-appointed circle of observers who had decided to keep this information private, while hypocritically using reports provided by other birders to attend twitches."

He goes on to say that Essex has been responsible for some of "the most outrageous episodes of suppression in the annals of British birding". He found himself ashamed of the county. He became increasingly angry and decided to "make a point". So he waited for the right time of year and conditions and 'found' a Hermit Thrush.

The episode has haunted him ever since, he says, as he has faced never-ending questions about his 'find' - and friendships with other birders have become strained. The article was Pepper's moment to 'fess up.

My feelings after reading this article were dismay and then something slightly short of anger. Birdwatching is one of those pastimes that many people regard as 'geeky', on the same level as train spotting or, say, metal detecting. I have always joked about it myself but at the same am always keen to set the record straight and point out that the fascination with birdwatching is in appreciating the world around us that we fail to notice enough in our every day life (I don't feel the same way about trains. Or metal.)

Programmes like Springwatch do much to promote this idea and have gone a long way in bringing wildlife watching to the masses (even if Chris Packham is a bit of a geek...).

So this idea of birders - or twitchers in this case (there is a distinct difference) - going around like bunches of immature teenagers 'suppressing' information about where they have watched a rare bird is frankly at best, sad, and at worst destructive of the ethos of bird watching. Seeing something amazing or unusal in the natural world should be shared with other people, not hidden. I strongly suspect that the idiots who do this look not unlike the stereotype of a trainspotter. I also suspect they are sad, lonely individuals who find themselves suddenly 'powerful' when part of, what is probably mainly, a 'boy's club' of other sad individuals.

I don't condone what Potter did. To be honest I couldn't really care less, except to say that it sounds like he has acted in just as sad a way as the people he is trying to 'make a point' to. And how it backfired. But what does bother me is that it puts people like me off from pursuing an interest I have always enjoyed.

I shall be avoiding the men, and women, in anoraks like the plague.

"Like a crane on steroids"

Pic: orientalbirdimages.org

I have joined some odd groups on Facebook, but perhaps none as odd as the Great Bustard Group. This strange looking bird, described by the man that has recently reintroduced it to Britain as "like a crane on steroids", has just hatched chicks in this country for the first time in 177 years. I'm following the Facebook group in hope of seeing updated pics of the birds as they grow. I was also interested to read that the white-tailed eagles I was so privileged to see on Mull last year, were also once extinct from this country and only reintroduced in the 1970s. I wonder what will be next?

Big Garden Birdwatch time!

Long-tailed tit: where for art thou? Photo: RSPB

I'm not sure if someone put something in the water near me over the weekend but all the swans seemed to have given birth at the same time. Two separate lady swans I see on the way to work were being followed by, in one case four, in the other five, signets this morning. 

In more important news today, the RSPB has launched its summer garden wildlife survey. This involves spending an hour this week writing counting the birds and any other wildlife that visit your garden. If anyone has done the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch, now in its 30th year, you'll get the gist of what is required. 

I've been doing Birdwatch for the last two years and I'm sure the feathered ones have conspired against me and hidden deliberately on those days. I've had to submit counts that total something like 'two blackbirds and a sparrow' or, worse, 'one wood pigeon'. Then you read the results and half the country have seen long-tailed tits in their gardens.

This year I won't be spotting bees. We recently knocked the shed down and found a bees nest underneath it - so the council are coming today to take them to a better place (a hive, not Heaven...).

First trip to the Hide

Image: Grey Heron, Cley, 6th August 2006 (Steve Gantlett). From Daukes Hide.

It was drizzly this morning and so I sat on my kitchen step, drinking my tea and watching the birds in the garden until it had stopped. I do this every morning before work. It's always blackbird central in our garden but today started particularly well because I saw a wren and a blue tit, two of my favourites, which I took to be a good omen before my first trip to The Hide. Then I saw a magpie but I didn't let that put me off.

I cycled to the hide, trying to avoid killing the eight million slugs that had come out post-rain. On the canal the coots were out in force. The first one I saw had three chicks, which make an incredible noise for small birds. Further along I spotted what I had been been dubbing 'evil ducks' but I have learnt today (my first lesson) that they are in fact tufted ducks. It's the yellow eyes I'm not keen on. Then I saw my first ducklings! Not ever, obviously. But the first ones this year. I can't understand why there are so many bloody ducks around this summer and never any ducklings. So that ticked a box.

Then it was Hide time. I got off my bike at the viewing point. There were birdwatchers there already - looking like birdwatchers. I chortled inwardly at their overly large waterpoofs, walking boots and enormous backpacks. I prided myself on not looking like one of them. Then I noticed my right trouser leg was still tucked into my sock from cycling: I looked like one of them.

I struggled to open the gate to get into the Hide, which was a bit embarrassing as I then had to pretend to be examining a sign near it when the Birdwatchers walked by so they wouldn't realise I wasn't a pro. Then I was in - and it was brilliant.

I couldn't believe how close I was to the birds - and I was the only one there. I watched one of my all time favourites, the grey heron (see pic) for quite some time. It was so peaceful. I was scribbling in my note book, my movements followed by some sort of moth and the only sounds coming from the birds outside.

I tried the next Hide. There were men with big lenses in there but I tried to act like I was a regular - except I couldn't get the flaps of the Hide open. They politely ignored that.

My spots for the day:

• at least a dozen cormorants
• three or four grey herons
• common terns, dipping and gliding over the water
  
• evil...oops, tufted ducks
• 2 x lapwings
• 2 x greylag geese
• a swan with four lovely fat fluffy signets
• hundreds of swifts catching insects on the wing (could be house martins...it's early days for my swallows v housemartins v swift identification)

Not bad for day one.