Grumpy Old Birder

(This article first appeared in the December 2014 edition of Birdwatching magazine)

Birding has gone all hi-tech lately, with apps and software, anti-shake bins and pictures taken through your scope by mobile phones, but have the essentials really changed?

I started birding with nothing more hi-tech than eyeballs. Sitting by a lake fishing, unable to move due to a freak roller-skate accident (sadly true) the first birds I noted swam into my field of vision or hung about in the trees and bushes around us.

The big white things that annoyingly swam between my fishing float and me often pulling the line and dislodging my bread paste bait were easy; they were swans. A decade later I started calling them Mute Swans, although they were very vocal if I discouraged them with a pebble plopped into the water close by. Dad – my fishing companion – would allow nothing to hurt any of nature’s critters, and I followed suit appreciating natural beauty.

More than fifty years ago the Great-crested grebes that danced over the water in spring were a sight seen only by the privileged, they were not the everyday birds they are today. On the other hand the Spotted Flycatchers that flitted out for their mosquito meals were guarantied everywhere, not in today’s desperate decline.

Swallows and Swifts scooped aerial soup over the lakes, Tufted Ducks dived for aquatic insects and a lanky Grey Heron could be seen in the secluded shallows spearing small fry.

A few years on and technology helped me to tell a Redpoll from a Siskin high in the distant Alders if I could hold the binoculars to my eyes long enough. Old Russian Navy 10×50 bins took some hefting, making up for in magnification what they lacked in clarity, just good enough to tell a Royal Navy Corvette from a Soviet Battleship. I grew into them by the time I lay on my belly on a bank overlooking mudflats distinguishing between godwits or in Minsmere Marsh Hide following a fly-by Marsh Harrier.

Fast forward to the early 1980s and I swapped some heavy Bresser’s for Swift Alpins the lightest binoculars I could find to ease my aching back. A few years on and I developed the usual birder’s need for a scope… Kowa obliged with what then seemed unsurpassable brilliance.

I reluctantly abandoned Alpins on finding that Swaro’s were an order of magnitude better. Not as light but such clarity, colour-true and crisp image right across the lens.

About then was my one and only proper twitching year and I’m surprised at how encumbered I became wielding fieldguide carriers, tape playback machines, waterproof clothing, scope slings and all, you name it and I acquired it, convinced that all were birding essentials.

In my incipient dotage I have necessarily paired back. Sometimes I take the scope, but mostly I sling the bins over a shoulder and thread the lightest weight waterproof jacket through the strap and I’m set for a morning in the field.

They say that once over 42 you can no longer take in new technology… not quite true as when I’m overseas I upload the relevant fieldguide to my iPad and they weren’t even invented when I was that age!

How about you, apart from the bins or scope what are your essential traveling companions or must have tech?

A while back I had a couple of problems when birding overseas. When returning to my hotel from Queensland’s Cairns foreshore I dropped my tripod handle. When I looked for it later the grass had been mechanically mown… only mangled ironmongery remained. In South Africa I pressed the quick release on the tripod head and springs flew in all directions. So I spent three weeks with my scope permanently tied to the tripod.

So now I have one other essential high-tech gadget when I am abroad, a 12-inch dowel wrapped in Nylon cord, together they meet my every hi-tech need!

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The post GOB 58 – Shoes, Ships & Sealing Wax… appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the November 2014 edition of Birdwatching magazine)

It astounds me that those who have get more, and those who haven’t often get that taken away! Stars attending galas leave with goody-bags and the rich proclaim their superiority through the gifts their party guests take home. The richer you are the more you score for free what the hoi polloi dream of affording.

Birding is no exception… the best beloved may carry expensive optics given by those promoting their products. If you lead bird tours ‘familiarisation trips’ paid for by a tourist authorities etc. come your way. If you write about the birding world, that world may spread its wares at your feet hoping to impress you enough to review favourably.

Readers often assume that anyone who pens a few lines or has co-led a group will be inundated with exotic birding luxuries. It’s neither that simple, nor that bountiful.

Optics companies want their ‘review’ gear back after a while, only giving away optics to struggling third world NGOs, which is how it should be. Publishers send books, apps, videos and recordings to reviewers, which you might think a great way to build your library. But it’s not so great when they pile up screaming for your time and attention. My shelves filled long ago so I sell the surplus for Birding For All. Ones integrity gets in the way too – I tell it like I see it so some publishers regret sending me books, one even stopped altogether when I didn’t praise a book that bored me to sleep on page ten!

I have been invited on quite a few ‘fam’ trips and even managed to go on one or two. So why on earth would any of the above make me grumpy?

Well, while I’ve had lots of trip invitations that number has immediately dwindled when they realised that I have mobility issues.

Some immediately ask if I can send another member of my ‘team’. I first have to disabuse them, as my entire team consist of just me and Hawkeye, and she goes nowhere without her spider spotter and I go nowhere without my snake shoo’er. Some make no further mention of my mobility issues hoping that I will quietly go away. One immediately sent a mail back to me brusquely withdrawing the invitation.

I personally ran the gamut of emotions from anger through disappointment to a resigned sigh. However, as someone trying to represent less than fully fit nature lovers I was livid.

How dare governments, national birding organisations and eco-lodge owners baulk at tailoring trips to those who cannot walk the mile to their lodge though the rainforest, nor the couple of uphill kilometres to an oilbird cave! Their attitude, no matter how they wrap it up, boils down to a one-word riposte – tough!

On my own trips I have found that a little extra work by guides or tour operators would net the hard of walking all but the toughest of ticks. In five weeks in southern Africa I dipped out just one bird – Dune Lark – there was no way to get me, to it, without my agony or unacceptable disturbance.

However, I have missed loads when tour organisers could not be bothered with sussing secondary sites or think about different access.

The person monitoring Fernandina Woodpecker nest-sites in Cuba took me in his usual vehicle. A guide in India took me to three different Malabar Trogon sites at different times of day. I saw Painted Bunting on backyard feeders in Florida from someone’s lounge and Bachman’s Sparrow because my guide rang a guy doing a two-year study who then took me the prime viewing spot.

Many ageing birders find walking harder. Someone should tell the chambers of commerce, tourist boards and eco-lodges that ‘grey’ birders are a vast untapped market… and I’m the man to trail blaze – albeit very slowly with a limp on short trails!

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The post GOB 57 – Jollies, Junkets, Freebies & Fam Trips appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the October 2014 edition of Birdwatching)

When an old mate of mine got his newly retired dad into birding some of the birds he saw were a surprise. Before he ticked Swallow he had seen Alpine Swift and he clocked Pallass’s Grasshopper Warbler before seeing Dunnock. Smelling a large rodent eating a ripe kipper my mate took his dad birding otherwise his dad would have dipped on immature Greenfinch having instead ticked Dark-eyed Junco!

They were not Hastings Rarities, deliberately perpetrated by a taxidermist to satisfy customers, but inexperience combined with poor Field Guide use.

Nowadays newbies don’t take notes; they thumb iPad icons or pour over field guides ignoring distribution maps and seasonal indicators, many twitching before mastering common species. With pager and satnav one can genuinely see a Grey-cheeked Thrush before your first Redwing, a Nutcracker before a Nuthatch. Foreign trips add exotics before prosaic patch birds.

Misidentification is not confined to novices we’ve all seen stick species and bag birds. Cheating happens and self-delusion can prevail, some people value integrity less than being considered top listers. But sticking an extra leaf on a three-leafed clover won’t change your luck. One self-proclaimed arbiter of listing, judges reported observations using his own scoring of the birders skills and reputation.

Sightings are reported differently for different purposes. If you see a rare or unusual bird then news services put it out there for twitchers to chase down. But county recorders want to hear about it too. The processes and outcomes are quite different.

When twitchers go for the bird they may corroborate the news or not, and if only one person sees it that too is known. Occasionally something misidentified is re-identified by the throng or a brave birder telling the emperor he’s naked.

Reporting to the county recorder is quite different as you have to send in a description and a panel accepts or rejects the record. Whether reputations effect outcomes is hotly debated. Why is a description wanted? Maybe I see a point when Black Kites and Young Marsh Harriers are commonly confused, which may be important if Black Kite might potentially colonise. But individual records only help to expose trends, so why do descriptions matter? One record, right or wrong, is not scientifically significant. Anyway reporters can just copy a description from a book so they don’t help with evaluation.

Why am I whining on about this? Isn’t it transparently obvious?

Recently I was standing one side of the car searching the air above a lake for hawking Hobbies when Hawkeye banged on the windscreen to point out a bird flying low toward us. I did a double take hastily thrusting bins back to eyeballs… a massive raptor hove into view bigger and bulkier than a Buzzard on steroids. It tried to land in a tree but was seen off by half a dozen Jackdaws and a Kestrel… wait a minute, make that Rooks and a Sparrowhawk, this raptor was awesome and then some!

It turned right around the tree flying to within 50 feet of us, then took another right turn and flew back into the ring woods, lazily flapping away completely disdainful of the merciless mobsters.

It was without a shadow of doubt a Short-toed Snake Eagle; cousin to the ones I’ve seen in central France and across Iberia or maybe the one I saw weeks before in Turkey.

I rang a friend who sometimes works for a birding alert service to ask if the Ashdown Forest Short-toed was wandering to be told yes, but to Hampshire not Kent! He asked if the bird was immature and I ran the internal reel again… I guess so, its chin was light tan not chocolate. Could there be two of these mega rarities in the country? Well, I’m here to tell you there was.

Have I sent a description to the country recorder? Honestly, I can’t see the point.

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The post GOB 56 – Record Breakers appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the September 2014 edition of Birdwatching)

I enjoy watching boxing. I feel that brute force and athleticism combine, creating choreography no less fascinating than the ‘beautiful’ game we English get so over in a World Cup year. However, I think boxing is barbaric and should be banned. It damages the pugilists and makes me see beauty where I should see only blood and pain. There is a chasm twixt head and heart.

I supported the hunting ban. The debate pitches pest control and country tradition against cruelty to wild animals. One of my objections to hunting with horses, beside the distress or worse for fox or deer, is that it brutalises the participants and onlookers. The forces that ‘enclosed’ common land to make it private property are the same as think they own wild creatures.

Where am I going with this apart from having a justified dig at those who set out to kill wildlife?

Now here’s the thing. I went fishing a while ago for the first time in about five years. I cannot justify the practice of hooking a fish as it must cause pain. Of course fish are returned to the water and evidence shows that some carp have been caught repeatedly over decades without long-term harm. Anglers do try to do as little harm as possible.

There are more of us who participate in this pastime than almost any other. I was talking a fellow birder the other day whose only reason for not voting ‘green’ was that he was afraid they would ban fishing for pleasure. With five million people regularly fishing and a huge tackle and bait industry that seems unlikely.

I enjoy pitting my considerable human wit against the small brain of a cold-blooded creature and mostly coming off worse! But the enjoyment has little to do with the fish. Golf may be ‘a good walk spoiled’, but it is a focus for exercise. By the same token angling is a way to enjoy nature occasionally interrupted by a fish outwitting you. My late father-in-law fished for nearly ninety years and was unbothered if he caught nothing because he loved angling’s tranquility.

So I sat by a lake occasionally catching small fish. It helped that only a bank separated the lake from a nature reserve. During my seven hours of virtual mindlessness I watched a dozen Marsh Harriers and a party of Willow Warblers appropriately in a willow ten feet from me. A stentorian Cetti’s Warbler burst into song three feet from my ear amid Rosebay Willow Herb popping out to look at me. I watched a beautiful grass snake swim right passed my fishing float. A cuckoo called and flew into a dead tree to make sure I had noticed and a Green Woodpecker looped across the lake yaffling the while. In the afternoon Swifts gathered overhead then Swallows dipped beaks into the lake to skim a drink. A Beautiful Demoiselle thought about landing on my fishing rod then fluttered away. The sun shone in a clear blue sky and the world’s heartbeat seemed to slow while I lost count of the number of ‘bites’ I missed distracted by quiet, unhurried nature.

When a childhood accident prevented boisterous play for many months Dad decided to teach me to fish. He parted reeds for me to see a Sedge Warbler nest full of chicks and pointed out Greater Crested Grebes’ mating dances. If ever near water now I think of powerful Tench pulling my float through the Lilly pads while Spotted Flycatchers feed from a bough and Woodpigeons call in the quiet time before dusk.

I’ve rarely met anglers immune to bird song or a butterfly’s beauty, and most are convinced conservationists. Angling made many of us birders by introducing us to the beauty of the countryside. Fishing may have the hunting instinct at its centre, but at its heart is a love of nature.

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The post GOB 55 – Gone Fishing appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the August 2014 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

Which is Britain’s largest nature reserve? Is it in Wales, or Scotland or perhaps East Anglia?

Look out of your window…yes folks, there it is!

Our gardens (there are millions of them) are the most important areas for wildlife for any number of reasons and we can all enjoy them as well as become individual wildlife wardens.

Maybe it’s my recent ‘retirement’ or my increasingly debilitating arthritis, but I just don’t get to bird reserves as much as I used to. I usually go overseas when the weather is worst at home and find that birds are both abundant and varied. When I return to a drab blighty I find it difficult to motivate myself to actively bird, spoilt I guess. Then as just Spring creeps across my corner of the country and the outward bound urges start to come back I get a ‘rheumatic flare’. The spirit becomes most willing when the flesh seems most weak.

Fortunately, lately I have discovered the micro-world. My garden does not over tax my hips… it is possible to complete a circuit in about twenty paces! It’s no Minsmere of course, but it is always full of birds because I put out feed by the sack full. The stars are Ring-necked Parakeets that come to the apples we string up, with a supporting cast of Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Starlings and House Sparrows. Red-letter days are when a Long-tailed Tit or Siskin pops in, but these are really infrequent. My garden list, in fourteen years has reached just 44 species, they are mostly fly-overs, including a lost Guillemot an Osprey and four Storks kettling high over sunny Margate spotted by my wife when sun-bathing. However, I’ve seen seven Firecrests in the garden, but just ONE Goldcrest in all that time – southern seasides can have an odd avifauna.

But even in my postage stamp patch I can do my bit.

I’ve never used chemicals and am content to see plants stripped of leaves by hungry caterpillars and flowers eaten by beetles. I never set out to be organic and wildlife friendly, I just wanted urban tranquillity and something pretty to look at. When we moved in we had a concrete yard, a few wall pots, one skinny border of roses and some hedge bushes. Our garage is down the hill and dug into the garden and it had a gravel roof. In one area was a sterile fish pond and a concrete ‘rockery’.

Over the years we tiled the garage roof and fenced it turning it into a pot covered patio. We dug up half of the slabs and crazy paving and now all the walls have climbers, and 80% of the paving is covered in every sort of pot you can imagine.

After a decade it has gone from grey concrete to rainbow hues every month of the year. Recently I’ve started looking at non-avian fauna and have been shocked at how many different bees and wasps, flies and hoverflies visit my flowers. In early June this year I watched two species of damselfly emerging from the now plant rich pool. I’m get a dozen species of butterfly and the moth list is growing thanks to visits from my moth-trapping son.

My insignificant few square meters are the difference between life and death for countless insects. One winter a tristis race Chiffchaff fed for two months off insects it picked off my pots. Just imagine what a difference you all could make if every garden in these islands banished chemicals, dug up the car’s hard standing and disassembled the decking! At the very least all of you could plant some of the top ten insect-friendly plants! 

Of course it would be even better if farmers went back to old methods of food production instead of scouring the land… but don’t get me started on that again!

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The post GOB 54 – Nature’s Wonderland appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the July 2014 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

If, like me, you grew up in 1950s England you will probably have a love/hate relationship with the French. The French have been our allies for generations, yet many of our former enemies stand in higher esteem. Perhaps it is like sibling rivalry – simply a matter of proximity.  Supposed to love our neighbours we find it easy to fall out with them.

The enmity does not preclude our love of French wine and cheese, nor stop us raving about French cuisine and we admire their prowess in matters of the heart. We may get annoyed in a French traffic jam caused by noisy, ‘work-shy’ protestors, but we envy the wages and pensions such protests win. Despite all our misgivings we are more likely to holiday in France than anywhere else in the world. Even the worst of Francophobes will concede that ‘la belle France’ is indeed a very beautiful country.

Enjoying the freedom of their half-empty toll roads we head south in our millions for the fine weather, or head inland to the quaint villages, chateaus, lush oak woodlands and majestic mountains. If we get really lucky we might spend a weekend in Paris with a lover.

It seems that, after all, we find a great deal to admire once we get passed a Gallic shrug, a few sneers and their chauvinistic distain of the English language. So much in fact that France is our first choice for an overseas second home.

But wait a minute! Don’t they shoot everything that moves and delight in feasting on larks and buntings? Well, no doubt some still do, but nowhere near as many as once did. Moreover, there are far more wild places than over here because France is twice the size of the UK with a roughly similar population… so they have twice the space that we do.

While we have been paving over the southeast, turning our fields into chemically farmed wildlife no-go zones, and cladding the hills with Lodge Pole Pine the French have been becoming increasingly ecologically aware.

Conservation is not just a subject for conversation, it is ever more real with large national parks and wildlife reserves now well established.

The European Common Agricultural Policy was actually invented by the French to ensure that their small dairy farms and family vineyards would survive to fuel our cheese and wine desires. By contrast in the UK it has been an excuse to rip out hedges, fill in ponds and cynically set aside fields in the short term rather than let some areas permanently revert to the wild. What could have been used to help wildlife and preserve the environment has put fuel into some large landowners Range Rovers and lined the pockets of city investors with land banks.

These same large landowners have prevented the modest reintroductions proposed in Scotland. Some forestry owners rant about the destructiveness of beavers. Rich city folk fuel the unfounded fear of wolves despite all the evidence. A landowner with a couple of Elk is castigated by the same people that encourage the overpopulation of red deer; an imbalance that only serves the stalkers’ guns.

But almost unheralded the ‘chauvinistic, self-preserving, song-bird eating, wild critter shooting’ French have bought back lynx, wild boar, wolves and bears to the Alps and Pyrenees and re-introduced Marmot, Beaver, and Otter. They have even expanded their eagle and vulture populations.

Meanwhile some of us humour loving and courageous British; we denizens of a proud land unconquered for a thousand years are famous for our love of animals and our million RSPB members. Yet some noble Englishmen still stomp on Hen Harrier nests, some notoriously inventive Scotsmen use their ingenuity to hide their poisoning of eagles and kites while some Welshmen still steal Peregrine eggs.

Damn it, we can’t even leave our foxes and badgers alone!

Vive la France!

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The post GOB 53 – Do Bears Sit in the Woods? appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

 (This article first appeared in the June 2014 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

There must be many ageing birders who use their mind’s eye to travel back to their birding roots. They say that, once you are past thirty you think about death every day of your life. Birders, past fifty start to remember the ‘good old days’… and this month I ‘celebrate’ incipient dotage as I hit the official retirement age, so my birding is increasingly ‘virtual’.

Sometime before WW2 John Players issued cigarette cards called ‘Curious Beaks’. When I was about 8 I found them at my gran’s house and that was the spark that became the burning passion of my adulthood. The spark was fanned alive by hunting for ‘ouzels (Blackbirds) eggs’ and ‘bottle tit (Long-tailed Tits) nests’. Even today the sight of such a nest of feather, moss and gossamer curiously moves me.

I often say that my love of birds began the day a kingfisher landed on my fishing rod and used it as a perch to catch a fish, but in truth that day the slow burning embers burst into glorious flames

I became a birder as a teenager… by which I mean I started noting what I saw and began going out specifically to see birds, rather than just getting to know them incidentally on country walks or fishing trips. I recently uncovered my 1960s birding notes – what birds I saw where. At that time, on summer evenings I accompanied my parents to a rutted farm track running alongside a wood. Dad carried a gallon bottle of water in the car boot to fill one of the dry ruts creating a puddle that we could see when we retreated into the car. Soon The rut soon became fringed with sipping Tree Sparrows and Redpolls and awash with bathing Yellowhammers. From the Sweet Chestnut coppices the evening air was a delight of Nightingale song. Corn Buntings rasped from a fence post and, if we were lucky a Little Owl would perch to preen on the same fence.

I wasn’t yet a ‘birder’. On our last family holiday, we passed Chew Reservoir where a ‘proper’, khaki-clad birder pointed out a Temminck’s Stint, but I was far more enchanted by a family of Kingfishers. They screamed up and down a feeder stream then lined up on a pipe under a bridge to dive for minnows.

My birding days came slightly later when visits to family in East Anglia included outings to Minsmere and Walberswick. My ancient tea-stained RSPB checklist then has new lifers underlined and year ticks given a circle. I never chased rarities but started going where I could build my lifelist. Moving to Scotland extended it when I saw my first Ospreys and Golden Eagles.

My dalliance with twitching was brief. The 1980s culminating in a sort of junior ‘big year’ when I set out to see as many birds as I could subject to the constraints of a more than fulltime job. I’ll still ‘twitch’ in my county for ‘world lifers’ – I travelled the 1.5 miles to get the Margate Dusky Thrush last year… but I’m mostly back to just enjoying birds.

I managed to get a few of those ‘Curious Beaks’ over the years like Hawfinch and Puffin, Spoonbill and Flamingo. Maybe I can still hope to get the rest of ‘the set’ if providence allows me, although I think Huia and Great Auk will stay beyond my reach unless time travel becomes possible. How many others like Shoebill, Bristlebird or Spoon-billed Sandpiper are on their way out too?

As for the commonplace birds of my youth a lot of hard work now might save them for my grandchildren, but fundamental change is needed for them to be around to delight their children. We must stop tying to exploit or tame nature and instead find ways to share with her… she is, after all, our mother, not our enemy.

Hear the Podcast

The post GOB 52 – Curious Beaks appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

 (This article first appeared in the May 2014 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

Arching my eyebrows I concentrated as my guide cupped hand to ear and repeated:

“Columbus Red Wobbler”

I shook my head again when he pointed to the LBJ that sang from the reeds, then light flooded the dark recesses of my brain…

“Ah! Clamorous Reed Warbler?” I opined.

“Col-am-brus Reeed Wobbler”, he chuckled, nudging me with his shoulder.

Again he had heard and identified a call, immediately found the caller putting me onto the bird in nanoseconds. His all-round birding skills finding, identifying and pointing out birds are legend. Ask anyone who is the best guide in that corner of the world; it’s no contest.

But legendary skills do not mark him out. A week earlier I was guided by a young man with perfect English who could pick out any singer from the chorus line and direct my eye to it. He too made faultless identifications. He got me to sites for hard to find local specialties despite my lack of mobility. He was personable, although rather serious and totally dedicated to birding having been a birder since he was six years old (twenty years ago). When not guiding he was out looking for new sites for target species.

What separated them was not age or experience, or even the older man’s sense of humour, but was revealed during my first conversation with the lad. He told me that unlike other guides he never argued with his clients or ripped them off. He said he was a bird guide, not an administrator… he left all that to the tour company.

He has yet to learn that guiding is not all about birding talent; that needs underpinning with social and administrative skills.

If you set up for local daily hire your remit is to show visitors as many of the top birds there as you can, you just need to get clients to the birds making sure they know what they see. But if you are taking clients from place to place over several days you need to be a trouble-shooter too.

Through world travel I have found that hoteliers often lie about their facilities, transport companies under estimate journey times (often by 50%) and an ‘a la carte’ menu turns out to be take the set meal or leave it. Most are not deliberately misleading, but combine a desire to agree with the client with a totally different perception of what is acceptable.

Good guides help their clients get around such problems, whether it’s the lack of a vegetarian option, an alien concept of time or that ‘luxury’ accommodation is not just a big room without rats!

I’ve recently took my fourth birding trip to the Indian sub-continent. It has ended my love affair with the area. Gujarat refusing to hand over Asiatic Lions to other states shows that they value tourism above conservation. Cows eating from middens in every village and city street belie their sacred status. Millions of dumped plastic bags decry environmental concern. India has entered the space race and nuclear club and produces half the world’s IT graduates, yet leaves children to beg for food and sleep under cardboard. Is there progress if poverty is ignored?

More selfishly I found it frustrating and depressing that after travelling hundreds of miles we had to face yet another argument (when what was promised in accommodation or facilities was not forthcoming). Moreover, arriving weary and dishevelled then having to confront problems alone for two thirds of the trip took the edge off the wonder of the birds and mammals we saw (well nearly – Indian Pitta, Sri Lanka Frogmouth and Malabar Trogon can make up for a lot!).

Thankfully our second guide took lots of pressure off us… and, seemingly, was never riled by being asked three times in a row to repeat bird names like ‘Wide-eyed Buzz Hard’ and “Wearable Wet Ear”.

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The post GOB 51 – Columbus Red Wobbler appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the April 2014 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

It is time we started to tell the truth about cats and dogs and how they impact on wildlife. For far too long we have been apologists for our pets… perhaps because we British are so besotted with them!

Myths abound and are often given credence by the very people who should know better… a short while ago the steam rose from my ears when I heard an RSPB spokesmen say that while cats killed millions of birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals we need not worry as habitat loss is a far bigger problem.

Instead of hearing the problem, most cat owners just hear that they need not worry. But the fact is that our wildlife cannot take another hit from anywhere as it is under so much pressure from habitat degradation and loss, disturbance, deliberate persecution, human hazards like light pollution and litter – so everything else that decreases their numbers needs to be addressed! One might just as casually and irresponsibly say that Chinese medicine has always used tiger bones, so it is not that which is leading to their imminent extinction.

In many parts of Australia cats must either be kept indoors or confined to escape-proof runs in gardens. In the US cats are now acknowledged as the leading cause of passerine fatalities. But in blighty we bury our heads, ostrich-like, so deep that we are in danger of suffocation.

Of course that analogy is based on a myth about ostriches… but no worse a myth than that ‘Tiddles wouldn’t hurt a fly’ and ‘my moggy is rubbish at hunting’.

Fact – Cats wander miles from home and many nightly use strangers cat-flaps and eat their food, hunt in the surrounding countryside and rarely bring home what they catch. No corpse on your doorstep is no evidence, not proof of innocence. They may only kill the same percentage as they always have, but do the math! There are now 10 million cats in the UK (twice what there were a generation ago). If 5 million cats once killed 10% of 10 million thrushes, then twice as many cats are now killing 20% of 1 million thrushes, which has a great deal more impact!

Fact – at least seven different neighbourhood cats come into my otherwise cat-free yard. Lion manure, high pitched sound and all sorts of physical barriers do not keep them out. They kill birds and deter them from visiting my feeders. But I am allowed no recourse at all! If a dog were to do the same I could take extreme measure to rid myself of the pest and prosecute its owner.

Fact – most of us have told our children they can only have pets if they take responsibility for them, but we adults feel under no such obligation.

Dogs are not innocent – they are often encouraged by their moronic owners to chase waders along the tideline and are not restrained from covering me in muddy footprints or scaring me off a public footpath. I am sick of being told that they are only being playful. I doubt a well-placed Wellington Boot from me would seem playful to their owners! Dogs disturb birds… studies show that bird density is less in footpaths where dogs are allowed than along footpaths where they are banned.

Dogs, on the whole, do not kill wildlife, but they are expected to be under the control of their owners who are legally responsible for their actions… even on their own property, let alone on mine or in the local country park.

Where does that leave us?

Well it must not be blithely ignoring the problem! It is time for legislation that obliges cat owners to be responsible for their pet’s whereabouts and behaviour. They should be under control. KEEP CATS INDOORS (or escape proof enclosures). Moreover, ALL pets should be licensed and identity chipped!

Hear the Podcast

The post GOB 50 – The Truth About Cats & Dogs appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the March 2014 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

Mrs Grumpy and I are fans of Van Morrison and whenever we sing along to ‘Give me my rapture today…” we change rapture to raptor as we are even bigger fans of birds of prey.

My regular readers will know that ‘Hawkeye’ is second to none in her ability to spot distant raptors, twice getting raptor ‘lifers’ for our tour guides!

On a Scottish moor she managed to spot no less than seven raptor species in 10 minutes, when the only other birds we saw were two skulking meadow pipits!

Her skills ensured success yesterday searching grazing marshes for overwintering and resident raptors – 30 birds of eight species… not counting raptor-shaped distant dots.

Raptors top many birders’ wish lists, but why when they are red in beak and claw and rapacious, so just what we hate in humans! Being top of a food chain makes for superlatives… to catch prey they have to be faster, more agile and energetic than their quarry. To fail is to starve.

A harrier harrying shows more stoicism and persistence than even the hapless moorhen that is fighting for its life. A peregrine stoops faster than superman saving Lois Lane from Lex Luthor. A bewildered starburst of startled pigeons avoid the feather flurry that was a brood-mate which succumbed faster than thought itself.

Raptors are majestic, magnificent and awe-inspiring; feather-clad poems of power and beauty.

So how prosaic must one be to poison eagles or stamp on harrier eggs?

The answer is ‘as prosaic as a banker loving money above all else’. What other motivation can there be to foster an industry geared to those with more money than sensitivity.

When I was a boy wandering the woods that were, no doubt, on private land, I once came across a ‘keeper’s larder’. If you have never seen one this is usually a barbed-wire fence on which a keeper hangs his kills. There is a wall of rooks and crows, weasels and foxes, desiccated or fresh to mark the passing weeks. They are there for one reason alone – to show the employer that the keeper is doing his job by eliminating any creature that he believes is a rival to rich sportsmens’ guns. Any living thing must go that might reduce the number of pheasant or grouse that they can enjoy blasting out of the sky.

Make no mistake, no keeper would pick off species against the express instruction of his master. He would not lock illegal poisons in his hut if he had been told not to by the boss man, nor use them to lace a carcass to kill a fox without knowing full well that it could claim the life of a Hen harrier or White-tailed Eagle just as easily. A shocked look on a landowner’s face when a pole-trap is revealed may be real enough, but not because they were ignorant. It will be shock that their practice has been uncovered.

Gamekeepers know a great deal more about wildlife than their masters… although some also hang on to misinformation just as tenaciously. They are paid to do a job and the paymaster will make it clear that he brooks no competition to the guns.

BUT IT NEED NOT BE SO!

Bird a winter grazing marsh that is farmed more for the pheasants and partridge than the cattle; a properly managed one, and raptors abound! Of course they take some birds as prey, but it will be the most sickly or least likely to survive the winter. Plenty of ‘game’ birds will be left for those who enjoy their ‘sport’.

Wildlife crime is pernicious, ignorant and selfish of course. But it is also theft… raptors cannot be owned like land, they are held in common, belonging to us all. Birders should help stop those who steal from us all!

Hear the Podcast

For Birders who want to help make a difference see: Birders Against Wildlife Crime

http://www.birdersagainst.org

The post GOB 49 – Give me my Raptor today… II appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.