Grumpy Old Birder

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

I’m waiting for the perfect winter raptor day to dawn bright blue, crisp and frosty – a clear day when I can see far across flat fields.

Hard winters bring too much snow between my goal and me. Mild ones, which have predominated for a decade, seem to stretch wet autumn through soaking winter into damp spring. I don’t drive in the snow as my maritime quarter has had no more than a dusting or two in my fifteen years here. Inland it can get a foot deeper with every extra mile! The cold can be kept out with winter wear and a flask of coffee… but the Scotch mists’ fine penetrating rain seems to pass through every layer, under the skin into your soul. Icy winds may turn your nose blue, but perpetual drizzle turns you blue inside.

The raptor haven raises a quandary. Winter visits there can produce Common and Rough-legged Buzzard, Hen and Marsh Harrier, Peregrine, Sparrowhawk, Merlin and Kestrel. The raptor roll call can also include a near full set of owls. Little Owls sit on a tumbledown cottage, Barn Owls drift along the hedges, Short-eared hunt below me in a deep ditch and Long-eared roost in a scrap of orchard. I dare say staying a while after dusk could add Tawny to the Tally. Once, a couple of years ago I added another three raptors seeing a wing-tagged Red Kite and two ‘foreigners’… a Harris Hawk dangling jesses and an unshackled mystery bird… perhaps an escapee Sharp-shinned Hawk, tearing apart a small duck.

The North Kent Marshes are one of our growing conservation successes half from luck, a part from effort and another chunk by serving entirely different interests.

Centuries of flooding stopped house building until the profit fuelled madness of the nineteen nineties. The recession, a dash of sense and the withdrawal of insurance have stopped that rush. A few farmers kept to tradition either knowing nothing better or from ‘noblesse oblige’. RSPB campaigns and common sense stopped airports and wholesale development. Latterly the RSPB has begun to buy strategic bits of drained land to restore and so join up existing reserves with their vision of geographical scale conservation. Good luck and good judgement have combined to give hope for a uniquely important place.

But here’s the rub. Slap bang in the middle of all this conservation is an area with no protection, yet that is the raptor Winter Palace. If you drive the stop start route glimpsing many other species along the way you will have to pull over every so often to let by a shiny 4×4. Behind the wheel of which will be someone in a flat cap, green wellies and with their checked shirt collar turned up outside of their green wool and suede waistcoat… and that is just the ladies on their way to pick up their banker spouses and broker buddies. When you sit atop the raptor watch-point you will look over shores of uncut maize, piles of protective hay bales and sapling copses. If you didn’t know how the land was used before it will soon become obvious when you hear the discharge of a Purdey or Perazzi. Out of sight I imagine a retriever clumping over the unploughed stubble to pick up the shattered corpse of a French partridge or the warm body of a purpose bred pheasant.

Shelter, feed, cover and copse are all there to help poults turn into shootable adults, not feed Corn Buntings or keep up the Short-tailed Vole numbers for Short-eared Breakfasts.

In the channel that makes this an island many a winter morning echoes to the sound of wildfowlers’ guns taking the pintails or widgeon that grace the flood.

So what do I do? Do I withdraw in disgust or gaze in awe through rose-tinted optics? I cannot lie because I’ve been seen there too often.

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The post GOB 48 – Rose-coloured Binoculars appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

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

January 1st may be ‘hangover day’ for many, but for me it always marks the start of the year list so its barely light when I open the blinds. This scares one of the neighbourhood cats out of my tiny blessed plot and I get on the road heading for a couple of my favourite places.

Two minutes from home is the seafront and I glance out at the massive array of turbines set in the silver sea and wonder how many tired migrants their blades swept up this autumn.

I reach the edge of town where the demi-paradise of ‘set aside’ was replaced by a vast fortress of greenhouses. The thin soil was scraped away as hydroponics need level ground. Captured rainwater is insufficient so the nearby marsh is slowly being drained of every drop of groundwater.

Magpies were scarce birds when I was a lad, but these days they seem to suit every habitat. As I drive down the dual carriageway they are evident on every road kill. The fields on both sides of the road are always full of weed-free cabbages because the land is scoured with acid after each harvest, re-ploughed and immediately re-planted with the same crop year after hapless year.

Closer to my destination are roadside orchards – every tree too artificially stunted and thin to develop nest holes. Rejected by the supermarket buyer, the fruit lays on the ground picked over by flocks of winter thrushes. Just as well as the nearby unfenced fields and are already greening with winter wheat – no berry hedges or stubble clad, seed rich feeding grounds here.

Soon I am nearing my goal… the remnant grazing marshes that may again stretch along the entire coast of my county to the envy of less happier lands – if they stop building cramped and crowded houses on the flood plain. But first the road takes me over the very spot where I cast my novice fishing line. Where carp sucked snails from the underside of lily pads now lies tarmac. The other carriageway swallowed up the place I first saw a troop of Long-tailed Tits leave their moss and gossamer home.

Its now fully light and I can see across the hedgerows to the exposed mud of the estuary. A robin sits and rasps out a song atop the ‘Private – No Entry’ sign where I roamed as a child. I park in a layby and step across the burnt remains of a mattress to plonk my scope between a soggy cardboard box and the unmentionable detritus left by a couple who should have got a room. On the far side of the creek a black and white line of 150 avocets shows what can be done if we care for this earth… they were not here when I was young.

My year list is thirty something long when I move on to my next destination… where winter raptors abound and seed-eaters thrive thanks to shores of sunflowers and maize planted as cover for the gun-fodder French Partridge and Common Pheasants.

Last stop of the day is a haven of what could be, if all the farmers gave up agri-business and went back to farming. The only privately owned National Nature Reserve in this realm positively bursts with Peewits and Pintail, Greylags and Golden Plovers. I am there in hope of Short-eared and Barn Owls.

Watching an owl silently drift across the marsh in fading light gives me hope that this sceptic isle will be re-built against infection by nature herself if helped by the hand of man.

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The post GOB 47 – This Other Eden appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the December 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

In the Bahman Yasht, the book of the oldest monotheistic religion – Zoroastrianism, the end of days is…

…a time when the sun is more unseen and more spotted; the year, month, and day are shorter; and the earth is more barren; and the crops will not yield the seed. And men become more deceitful and more given to vile practices. They will have no gratitude. Honorable wealth will proceed to those of perverted faith. And a dark cloud makes the whole sky night, and it will rain more noxious creatures than water.

That’s a bit dark, even for me, but I won’t pretend that I will not be happy to see the back of 2013. For reasons unrelated to birding, this has been my worst ever year.

It has also been one during which I have not birded overseas and, since I began recording these things, I’ve clocked up one of my poorest year lists too.

When I was in my twitching salad days (can salad twitch?) December would have been a month for trying to catch up on the winter specialties that I dipped out on back in January or February. To be honest it’s been a while since I bothered with that.

Oddly, at dawn on 1st of January I know I will not only be reinvigorated and determined to clock up my longest year list ever, but also listing will seem important again. For how long I don’t know as every year the will to list and the enthusiasm to chase rare birds seems to diminish. This year it had gone by March, who knows, next year it could end before January is out.

Don’t mistake this for a lack of enthusiasm for birds or birding. I am still obsessed and still love to see birds that cannot be classed as ‘every day’… but the urgency has gone to drive eighty miles to see a willow tit just because I haven’t seen one since last year.

It’s also less important to see birds in the UK that I’ve not seen here before, especially if I’ve seen them elsewhere. I still haven’t made it to 400 UK species, and, you know what? I don’t care any more. This year it was a thrill to get to 300 for my county with the help of the cemetery thrush… a twitch that took me to the very edge of town, nearly two miles from my door. Truth is I am not sure I would have bothered had it not been a world lifer at the same time. To see something in the natural world that you’ve never seen is always worth some effort. Nothing can be more satisfying than seeing a bird on your own turf that ticks all the boxes for county, country and world.

Having said that, observing behavior that you’ve never witnessed before can be much more enjoyable, no matter how prosaic the species.

I’ve been lucky enough to travel and have seen around two and a half thousand bird species worldwide and think that I can probably tell you the exact place and circumstances of my first sighting for most of them. In a few cases, of some longed for or iconic species, I can probably tell you the second time… I don’t think a third viewing of any species is etched on my brain ‘though.

On the other hand I can tell you about every time I’ve heard a starling ‘murmuration’, seen a peregrine stoop or harriers pass food from mate to mate.

The older I get the more incredible the wild world seems to me, not just in its incredible variety, but also how the jigsaw all fits together to make a stunning and literally awesome picture.

The older I get the more I am fearful that we are witnessing the end of days for this richness. As people take up ever more space and take more from and give less space to nature, it sometimes feels as if the apocalypse that is foretold by so many religions is just around the corner.

As I drove through town today, taking an unfamiliar route to the sea in the hope of a loafing diver or passing gannet I was struck by the old and new houses I drove by. Here and there are flint-walled cottages isolated among a sea of bungalows and Elizabethan buildings surrounded by modern flats. I let my minds eye filter our anything built since the First World War, it left me with a few cottages and churches among the fields, orchards and untilled land.

You used to be able to walk to the end of the street to hear larks sing or see hares running…. Now its one hell of a trek to the end of the street, and from there you’ll be able to see the edge of the next town

Perhaps it’s just me feeling like this because it’s December… …when the days are shorter; and the earth is more barren; and the crops will not yield their seed for months to come.

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Postscript…

I took this picture (I really, REALLY did) out while birding this foggy December morning… perhaps I should get out more after all!

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

12-12-2013

The post GOB 46 – The End of Days appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the November 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

Thomas Hood famously wrote:

No sun – no moon!

No morn – no noon –

No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member –

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! –

November!

Well, Hood’s prophetic poetry still holds for the most part, except for the intervening variable of global warming.

In anticipation of the storms of October and the murk of November I tidied up my garden. I trimmed back the dead foliage and flower heads and upped the ante on fat-balls for the feathered visitors. The untidy corners are deliberate nature havens, not, as the boss says, evidence of indolence.

Storms certainly came… I watched the forsythia bush at nearly seven feet high touching the pavers with its topmost leaves as it bent double. I wondered if we would still have a fence by morning… last time it went missing I only found one panel in our street the rest is most likely still English Channel flotsam.

My shed roof already leaks. I pondered the possibility that it would not be a problem because the whole roof might blow away.

When it finally stopped raining some days later we put back the fragile feeders and thanked providence for an intact fence and bushes with flexible foliage.

November dawned drearily… then the sun shone and our four feet high osteospermum is newly smothered in its third batch of bright yellow flowers. A few hoverflies are still picking over it.

Then the wind again blew, it rained and the temperature dropped ten degrees only to bounce back at first overcast then sunny.

The storm had bought on my sun-envy and I started arranging my annual trip… I still think of it as annual despite the fact that circumstances have conspired to keep us in blighty for over two years.

The drear continued and it rained, and it rained and, in between times, it rained some more. Then it waned. A November day dawned like the perfect January day… crisp and cloudless. Cool but bright. Through my office window it could have been high summer… gulls soared and drifted, doves purposely crossed the clear blue sky in every direction. Seven parakeets looped in a line towards the park ignoring our strung out apples. (Who isn’t strung out in these stressful times) The sparrow hawk pair drifted low over the garden at my eye level. On the feeders it was like spring as tits and finches, starlings and sparrows noisily queued, squabbled or fed.

A robin rasped and posed for his Christmas card photo session.

In the pyrocanthus bush a wren moved like a woodmouse while dunnocks vacuumed the floor under the feeders. A ‘brown cap’ found the minute insects that inhabit the flowerpot microverse. I took the day and stored it for when the wind lashed rain next obscures the view.

My son visited and braved the rain to take the grandchildren to our seaside ‘amusements’. We stole an early morning hour or two together to check the storm-tossed sea. It was neither stormy nor tossed but flat calm. Distant gannets were gliding in sixes and sevens a mile or two out passed the enormous array of wind turbines and we mused on what avian harm they might do. He laid on the beach to photograph Rock Pipits and we trailed inland to see if the winter thrushes were yet stripping berries, but the hedged fields were bare of birds.

November – no birds? Hardly. But they take more finding as increasingly November is the switchover month that October used to be.

The agri-desert is still our environment’s worst news… farmland birds continue to decline and we can only save them by caring more about them and less about profit.

But there is good news for November.

A newly published report shows that the vast majority of seabirds and migrants have little to fear from turbines as they tend to fly between two and five metres above the sea. Tall turbines can be a problem for gulls. They fly lower than many migrants but higher than virtually all other seabirds.

High flyers always escape adversity unscathed, low flyers know how to get by even in the worst times and places. It’s the middle classes that seem unable to cope in hard times.

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The post GOB 45 – November appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the October 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

Country File Investigates… …my fat backside!

I used to watch country file every week because, in the old days, sandwiched between sheepdog trials and hedge-laying there was a snippet or two about conservation or birdlife. Things changed a while back when it seemed to have turned into a programme about middle class city folk doing extreme sports in the wild corners of the British landscape.

Thankfully it moved back from the bungee jumpers’ brink and now straddles the fence between being the Archers without a storyline and ‘…hey ho, lets look at pretty flowers and butterflies.’

I still tune in to Radio 4 for my daily injection of government propaganda…

“’ello Ruth Archer, what you be a-doing of them me deerio?”

“Well, lovable old rogue and cap-touching peasant, I’m just ranting about how badgers are ruining my livelihood by spreading TB and undermining the slurry pit!”

Country File gets its injection of ‘farming today’ via the most articulate farmer since the late lamented Ted Moult. Through him we learn all about rare breeds and GM crops from someone who loves the land… although I see no great move on his part to pare back on the chemicals unless it is to make farming cheaper and profits greater. He does eloquently make the case for many farmers, especially about tenants being at the mercy of supermarkets, international pricing and the Common Agricultural Policy.

To us great unwashed viewers it did appear that John Craven had been merely shuffled into a corner of his own to ‘investigate’ the larger questions of the day in oder to soften the blow of his lesser role. However, to my mind that slot is as toothless as a mediaeval crone with scurvy. We tend to be told about something having four digits and a thumb on the one hand and having five fingers on the other… all very balanced and bland. More worrying to me is that in its balance it is, shall we say, rather more ‘Daily Mail’ than ‘Independent’!

I have been moved on occasion to wonder if the programme holds shares in a multi-national agro-chemical business or is a card carrying member of the Countryside Alliance. You certainly do not get the impression that those associated are Hunt Saboteurs or even weekly subscribers to an organic food box.

But even in the context of a string of episodes beginning to look like ‘Mr Bland wears beige when he walks down the middle of the road’ the last one I watched hit a new low.

(This is where those of you waiting to discover the pertinence of the title of this piece are rewarded for your patience.)

Having discovered through the ‘investigation of the facts’ that domestic cats were responsible for the demise of as many as 25% of some species of birds, the presenter concluded that cats were no threat to our native birds!

What was even worse was an RSPB spokesperson backing this up by saying that we don’t have to worry about cats because the real problem is all about land use!

Anyone who watched the way that some village cats were shown on a recent documentary to wander miles into surrounding countryside every night might now be assured that this is no problem. All those apologists who dismiss Mister Fluffies’ antics as ‘just part of nature’ when he deposits the headless corpse of a house sparrow on their doorstep will now feel completely vindicated.

Would we be as myopic if we were told that poachers only killed 25% of baby pandas every year? Would conservationists sigh with relief if told that only a quarter of bee colonies succumb to the practice of moving hives from farm to farm?

Any cause of mortality adds to the overall problem.

If its really no biggie then we should not show concern or even tut let alone change how we keep our pets. If its not a problem because it only effects 25% of a species then surely these greater concerns must account for the loss of a greater percentage. Lets say its only another 25% – this still means that half the birds are dying because of us… if you add this to all the truly ‘natural’ causes of death it can mean only one thing – a disastrous decline!

Guess what folks, our birds are in disastrous decline! Just because the flood waters are about to engulf our house is no reason to stop worrying about our neighbours’ house being on fire!

Do you remember being a kid and asking friends how would they rather die – by drowning or burning to death. Even as kids we knew that either way we’d be a goner!

And, just in case anyone out there thinks it is just this lone grumpy old sod banging on about cats again wake up and smell the house burning as a four year study by Canada’s scientists has concluded that the human related bird mortality in Canada each year amounts to 269 million bird deaths.

Moreover their report concludes…

Cats appear to kill as many birds as all other sources combined… …Feral and pet cats are believed to kill more than 100 million birds per year in Canada. Bird species that nest or feed on or near the ground are especially vulnerable to cat predation. As these findings confirm that huge numbers of Canadian birds are killed by cats annually, further research and conservation efforts are needed.

So don’t just take my word for it!

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The post GOB 44 – Squaring the Circle appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the September 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

The minister squirmed away from the BBC interrogator. The question, which he failed to answer three times, was ‘…how big a reduction in Bovine TB is going to show that the badger cull has been a success?’

Instead of answering this, he said how culling ring-tailed possums in New Zealand was successful in reducing TB there, as had culling water buffalo in northern Australia – failing to point out was that both of these are invasive species… not native to their respective countries like the badger is in the UK. He also never mentioned that bovine TB had ‘jumped’ to fallow deer in New Zealand. What will be the next target if TB jumps to another species here?

Earlier in the interview he mentioned that a full 16% reduction in Bovine TB had been recorded when infected wild animals had been culled. In other words the reduction is marginal.

He then tried to pluck at listeners’ heart strings by reminding us that infected cattle have to be slaughtered just as they had been in their tens of thousands during the last outbreak foot & mouth disease. He related how many farmers had suffered.

I’m not sure exactly when my blood went above 100ºC, but my primary reaction was consternation. Clearly right thinking people should weep over cows while dismissing badger lives as inconsequential. The delicate sensitivities of farmers must be respected, but the anger, frustration and sorrow of wildlife lovers everywhere is just not relevant.

The intervening variable is, of course, money. Government pays compensation, farmers lose money, trade suffers as our beef cannot be exported.

The same government has claimed that the risk of catching the illness from eating infected meat is ‘extremely low’ – just as well as it is the practice of DEFRA to sell on the meat from TB infected cattle, that are slaughtered by Government directive, to catering firms, processors or supermarkets, without providing any warning labels. Presumably to re-coup the ‘up to £1,700’ per animal compensation paid to farmers.

Moreover, when asked about what monetary value was put on the badgers he ducked the question and instead revealed that he was one of the few people who had kept badgers as pets as a child. Clearly he is still firmly stuck in Victorian morality where the ONLY value assigned to anything in the wild world is its real or potential use to humans.

What about the pets of those of us who are not estate owning millionaire tory politicians? Well, cats can pass on bovine tuberculosis to their owners, according to vets. They may catch the disease during their exploration of badger setts, but they can also pick up bovine TB directly from cattle or infected milk.

Cats are given special privileges by most of their owners so there are many millions that, uniquely among pets, are allowed to roam at will.

I doubt that ANY politician would dare suggest control, let alone culls of domestic pets, even if they were proven vectors. Shame really as that would stop the cats slaughtering millions of songbirds, small mammals and our tiny population of reptiles.

Tree-huggers, new-age travellers and vegetarian feminist nut cases object to the slaughter of wild animals. Sensible farmers, financiers and other capitalists see the need… or at least that is what a press largely owned by the friends of the privileged rich and powerful, would have us believe.

I may not wear purple tie-dyed smocks or bedeck myself with blond dreadlocks, beads and crystals, but I’d rather hug a tree than a tory minister. Some of the most sensible, and sensitive people I know are vegetarian feminists and we can all agree on one thing at least. The badger cull is fundamentally wrong.

There is plenty of evidence to show that if, for example, you keep the land in good heart by traditional or organic farming, and keep livestock in a traditional way you are likely to have healthy wild animals on your land. If those animals are slaughtered the vacuum created will be filled by wild critters from over the hill. If, over the hill farm animals are tight-penned, neglected and factory farmed the wild critter incomers may well be infected!

But the cull is not just wrong-headed in this practical way; it is also a triumph of narrow economics. Looking after the countryside for wild animals and plants, even in strictly financial terms adds up. If we see it merely as a repository of food or fuel we are rushing headlong over the cliffs like the over-populated lemmings we seem to want to emulate. Sure, our largely urban population wants good, inexpensive food, but they also want many millions of leisure opportunities afforded by the countryside. They want to walk, fish, birdwatch and otherwise enjoy nature. If you undertake a cost-benefit analysis it will quickly become clear that this financial worth is far greater than the current cost of slaughtered cattle.

What is more, our attitude to bacteria is plain wrong. Our forebears used to ‘eat a peck of dirt’ and it kept them healthy. If we stop exposing ourselves to the microscopic agents all around us we just create a generation of kids with allergies

There is, it seems, a chill wind blowing through the willows of Albion. Mole can be trapped and skinned to make gamekeeper’s trousers. Ratty barely hangs on in the face of invading mink and even Mr Toad has to be helped across our over busy roads. Mr Otter may be on the up, but for how long will his fish-eating habit be tolerated by game fishermen and salmon farmers? As for old Mr Badger it seems he is as poor as a church mouse, and has no value… or at least no monetary value in the narrow eyes of government or the weasel words of its ministers.

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The post GOB 43 – Weasels Take Over the Wild Wood appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the August 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

At the Bird Fair a couple of years ago I had a bizarre conversation about hunting with a very well known American writer on the natural world. He tried to explain to me the ‘spiritual nature’ of the moment of the kill. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now.

This idea seems common among hunters and is likened to indigenous hunter-gatherers virtually deifying the food animals they depend upon and paying homage in prayer on each game hunt. Some hunters ‘justify’ their pastime by espousing this credo without understanding the difference between living off the land out of necessity and killing things for the sport of it.

This is what I cannot come to terms with. This is why I am opposed to all forms of the ‘sport’ of hunting.

I could justify my opposition purely on conservation grounds… killing wild animals can seriously deplete their numbers. But this argument doesn’t always pass muster. Game preserves often ensure a supply of target species through good conservation. Ensuring a plentiful supply of game allows other wild things to flourish incidentally. Of course, it doesn’t hold true when ‘competitor’ species are ‘culled’. Grouse moors may have more pipits than those left to nature, but they sure as hell don’t have more Hen Harriers. Hunting preserves are full of songbirds as well as deer, but you won’t find many wolf packs

The UK shooting fraternity often argues that land managed for pheasants has benefits for many other bird species… and that argument holds a lot of water. Land is managed for wildlife that might otherwise be intensively farmed which detrimentally affects farmland species. Of course this is ultimately sophistry… it would actually be far better to organically farm and deliberately conserve and protect wildlife. Greed is the intervening variable as you can certainly make more money with a pheasant shoot than you can with an organic farm or even a traditionally farmed holding that encourages wildlife. Grouse moors are not going to create much revenue without rich people shooting the grouse.

That this pays homage to our Victorian ancestors is not readily understood. They believed that animals, along with the rest of nature were put on earth by god purely for our exploitation – a homocentric view that most of us today do not share. More and more of us believe that every living thing has as much right to exist as every other. We might wage war on bacteria because they are waging war on us, but we seek to preserve spiders and venomous snakes even although they frighten the pants off most of us.

I’m rehearsing all these arguments for a reason. Hunting cannot be argued against purely on economic grounds when that lobby points out, perfectly reasonably, that in many cases it does more good than harm.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I need to make it clear that I am not opposed to all killing. If you are trying to preserve a species driven to the very edge of extirpation by human intervention through, say, intensive farming, you may well have to ‘control’ some predators. Many waders need grazing marshes to nest on and because most marshes have been drained and ‘improved’ you need to encourage artificially high numbers on the remaining patches of habitat. Some species such as hedgehogs can be relocated to places where they cannot decimate ground nesters by eating their eggs, but foxes, magpies and carrion crows, for example, also must be reduced in numbers and this means killing them.

Nor am I against killing domestic animals for food. I choose not to eat them, but that is about politics not animal welfare, I don’t eat meat because fewer of the world’s people would starve if land were farmed for vegetables rather than cattle.

I am opposed to killing for fun because of what it does to the human spirit.

Watch a documentary, or a fictional programme about serial killers and one thing becomes quite clear. People who kill lots of other people do it as it exercises the ultimate power. We are told that when one sees the fear burning in their victim’s eyes, and then watches the light go out, they delight in their control over their prey’s life and death. This, we are told, is often the motivation behind the predator torturing their victims… they are showing them that they have total power over them, they can let them live or make them die. Such serial killers feel like gods.

Most hunters deny that they enjoy killing and that the fun of hunting is in the chase. However, if that is the case why don’t they hunt with a paintball gun or shoot with a camera instead.

Why do they campaign to restore hunting with dogs as fox control when shooting foxes more effectively keeps down their numbers? Would there be this continuing pressure, or the blatant flouting of the law, if a drag hunt gave the foxhunters the same pleasure?

Wildfowlers and other hunters insist that they only kill for the pot… so what? If eating what you kill is sufficient justification then Hannibal Lector should not be condemned for merely keeping his larder stocked!

We can readily see the inhumanity in bear baiting and dog fighting. People who get pleasure from digging out a badger sett to watch their dogs tear the badgers apart disgust most of us. Most of us would be thrilled to go on Safari and see big game and the majestic predators of the African savannahs. But there are those who will pay £2,000 to shoot a giraffe or £15,000 to kill a lion, and many of those same people would happily see local poachers shot to stop them killing the same beasts!

The unpalatable truth is that many people enjoy killing things. They and we should face up to it. The ‘sport’ of hunting is killing for pleasure. It diminishes the human spirit and desensitises the hunter to killing and it is wrong!

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The post GOB 42 – Serial Killers appeared first on Grumpy Old Birder.

(This article first appeared in the July 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

I have been known to cite my arthritic condition as the reason behind my birding method – patiently waiting for birds to just turn up. I am not one for yomping miles across the wilderness in the hope that my footfalls flush skulkers into view. Even were I able to yomp; to stride out unshackled by ageing bones and weakened flesh, such a tactic is unlikely to be in my canon. Even if my corpulence was negated by toned muscle and strength of will, I would still not be a contender in the latter stages of a marathon. There would be no sad staggering through the finishing tape, let alone a Mobot celebration. No the prosaic truth is that I am afflicted with an ill that is so profound and debilitating, so dyed-in-the-wool and devastating as to deserve the same sympathy and understanding as my ill-health.

From an early age I have suffered profound and chronic indolence.

This terrible affliction has been my constant companion for nearly six decades. I blame my grannie. She managed to bridge three centuries during her 105 years. Had she wished it I am sure she would still be around. She told the nursing home staff that she was ‘checking out’ because she was fed up with being surrounded by old people! Her dictum sowed the seeds of my lassitude, It was: ‘Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down!’

It may be that her long life and lack of disease (I don’t think she even had a cold during all those years), was borne in her genes. Some might posit that they combined with her life-long labour as a market gardener. Heavy physical work all day, every day, kept her so fit. But this is mere science! I dismiss it in the face of my belief in her expressed wisdom. Like a Scientologist confronted with the fiction devised by their founder, I am not moved, even although I am pretty sure she never took her own advice. My abiding images are of her manhandling her ‘rotovator’ here plot, preparing Sunday lunch or, aged 94 tottering about my dad’s garden feeding his chickens because he was slacking off.

I have added a further codicil to this family dictum… never run when you can walk, never walk when you can ride.

Today I was in my suddenly sunny garden watching the bees visit the flowers and wondering if I can switch to ‘bugging’ as it may require less energy than birding. Sadly, my sixty-four year old eyesight, coupled with my seemingly eighty-four year-old brain has difficulty telling a hornet from a hoverfly and a cuckoo bee from a cuckoo! Birding it will have to remain.

On days when I have angered the gods of Mount Olympus’ poor cousin – Mount Arthritis, indolence plays no part in my immobility. Its thunderbolts can confine me to bed… or shuffling upstairs on my backside unable to trust my hips not to throw me to the floor. I once had such divine intervention while out birding and had to crawl to the car!

On my best days, with the sun on my back, wind assisted, and stopping from time to time to ‘un-lock’ my joints, I can get the two hundred yards to a ‘viewing ramp. But only if ‘dobbin’, as she calls herself when called upon to tote my scope, assists. There I can sit on a handy bench and watch the swifts and swallows do battle with hobbies. On bad days my hobby is embattled by the ‘Arthritians’ who ensure I can barely walk to work. As my office is next to my bedroom, and ‘dobbin’ supports me all the way, my restriction becomes clear.

This combination of fate and inclination put an end to my twitching career.

Many years back I sped the 150 or so miles from where I was, to where the first mainland Red-flanked Blue-tail was found. The walk of a kilometre or more to see it nearly did for me. I was wheezing and trembling as well as twitching. The journey back to my car, assisted by my young, fit son had me so pale, shaky and agonised as to invoke fear and sympathy even in him.

The very next ‘mega’ to present itself was duly ignored. Unless I could be certain that the trek was brief, on level ground and dotted with rest areas, I just didn’t go.

I resolved to be a county twitcher only. If a bird turns up within the county boundary and I know, or can find out, what the access is like I might go for it… hips permitting.

Otherwise I visit favourite, accessible sites like Dungeness, or Oare. Overseas birding tends to be better as so often vehicular access is favoured. Tropical paradises offer the possibility of literally hundreds of birds from a Lodge veranda or a drive and stop, drive and stop along a forest track or through the savannah.

All of which explains why my county list has so long stagnated. I have been becalmed in the 290’s for several years… adding one or less birds a year… my World List has grown more quickly just from the ‘armchair ticks’ of taxonomic re-shuffling.

But, as they say… all things come to he who waits…

The day that my oldest mate left my place and headed off to East Anglia in search of rarities, the birdlines overheated with news of a mega a stone’s throw from my house.

A car journey of about a mile got me to a parking spot at the very gates of a cemetery. A walk of 14.5 meters got me amidst two hundred pairs of eyes surrounding the UKs first twitchable Dusky Thrush in fifty-four years!

My three hundredth Kent tick, on a plate! What’s more, it was a UK and World lifer added ideally indolently.

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(This article first appeared in the June 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

A week or two back I looked out to see seven Ring-necked Parakeets on my washing line. They may not belong in the UK, but they certainly belong on my washing line. We hang out apples for them; clothes have to hang out on radiators.

One male was biting lumps out of an apple. He was also biting lumps out of any other parakeet that tried to eat his apples. This alpha male had his soft side. Alf was feeding chunks of apple to Annie, the next parakeet in line.

Generally parrots are fastidious eaters; they nibble at what they bite off and shed the peel as deftly as a surgeon’s scalpel shaves an Adam’s apple in a gender re-assignment operation. Beneath the apples the tiny peel pieces pile up on the paving.

Doves are only one step below parrots on the phylogenetic scale. They too can find a living in a vast variety of habitats. Doves, however, lack charisma. Parrots look clever and alert. Doves look dopy and dozy. The doves sort through the peel pile hoping that a decent bit of apple flesh may have dropped from the parrots’ table.

Alf took his eye off the ball and Bill tried to oust him from the apples. All hell broke loose as Alf pecked at Bill, Bill flew back into Charlie and Betty and the whole troop took off in all directions.

Dozy Doves are so successful because they freak out at anything that might be a predator. When the parrots scattered the spooked doves panicked.

They too flew every which way, but one way was the window of the garden shed. Dicky, the doziest dove, left a perfect outline on the glass in dove dust. He sat a while, dazed in the dianthus, blinking before shaking his head, ruffling his feathers and flying off.

I’ve always considered myself more parrot than pigeon. I feel at home in an Indian woodland and I don’t eat meat. Now I’m not so sure.

We stayed in a hotel by the airport to catch the early flight. I rose early and purred in the warm water of the shower. There was a seemingly predatory incident when the shower suddenly went cold then boiled a split second later. I leapt away and crashed into the tiles leaving a perfect outline in Bo suds. My head sought out and found the only available danger – the sharp corner of the toiletry basket. I slumped some seconds. I slipped down the rabbit hole then out into the light barely retaining consciousness. I exited the cubicle.

The warm water running down my face wasn’t! It was a red liquid better kept inside my inner tubes. I awkwardly dried myself while clamping a towel to my throbbing head. Despite my improvised pressure bandage the gore gushed on. I felt a momentary pang of regret for the laundry, as the pristine white was painted pink.

I pulled on my pants and rang reception asking for a sticking plaster.

A response team arrived at my door armed with bright blue first aid. I took a handful. An ambulance was offered and declined. A concussion discussion followed.

This year has been the worst in my life including bereavement too painful to share. It has left me emotionally fragile. Maybe the physical trauma was worse than I thought, maybe it was the fragility, but I could not stop shaking, like a frightened bird in the hand.

I spent some hours with a blue cross on my forehead… either a target for poking fun at, or a heavily discounted item in the department store sale. Maggie opined that the gash needed stitching. I’ve seen her sew up a skirt hem as even as a pot-holed road. I declined the offer.

Now I look like Harry Potter’s Half Brother with a gash in my forehead marking me out as the survivor of a freak shower accident. I’ve looked at the statistics for accidents in the home. Shower hospitalisations are almost as common as bizarre trousers incidents, which are surprisingly close to the top of the list.

We missed the flight; we lost the fare money and the cost of the hotels in Scotland. More important I’ve probably lost friends. I’ve certainly lost face; figuratively and literally.

I went from a showman to the no-show man because I am a dozy dove not a clever boy.

When I got home two swifts screamed over my house and flew north dragging the season with them. One swallow may not make a summer, but one swift will do it.

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(This article first appeared in the May 2013 edition of ‘Birdwatching’)

Having a large international birding website, its hardly surprising that I get asked for ID help from around the globe. While the right response probably ought to be: ‘how the hell would I know’, what I usually ask is: ‘where are you?’

The thing is, that if you have a page for every country and state, and people mostly use ‘their’ page, they somehow assume that you live in the same area as they do.

I don’t always need to establish the location, for example, when someone emails: ‘…there’s a big pink and blue bird in my garden, I’ve never seen one before. What is it?’ I say ‘…is it bigger than a blackbird with a streaky head?’ The thing is I’ve already figured out that they will affirm as, believe it or not, this is the classic description of a Jay if you don’t bird. Yeah, it is sort of pink I guess but the tiny blue wing flash looms very large in a non-birder’s eyes. Its one of those questions that mark out an English birder from the rest of the herd.

However, more often the question will be… ‘There is a big green bird in my yard… what is it?’

This is where I do need clarification, asking: ‘Where are you?’ I may have to add a rejoinder depending on their response. I’ll say: ‘Yes, but Victoria where?’

I already know that there is such a town in Malta, another in the Seychelles and one in Newfoundland…. At this point I learn there is one in Texas. This means I can jump to the conclusion that they have a Green Jay at their feeders – the lucky birders!

Lest I become blasé I remind myself of one such exchange about a bird in a municipal park in the UK, which after much quizzing of the enquirer I still had to conclude that it was a Blue Magpie; it should have been gracing a tree in Sri Lanka not a bush in a Midlands playground.

Apart from such escapees and I have also accumulated a file full of obscure photos. They are usually rather blurred parting shots of a bird’s backside, with the rest of the critter hidden behind a branch. I can usually combine experience, a pretty comprehensive field guide collection and my acumen as a devotee of the Times cryptic crossword to get a handle on the avian conundrum. Sometimes my confidence is later boosted by feedback. It turns out that Jane Doe of Middletown, Montana asked her cousin, whose workmate chairs the local Audubon club and he dropped by and confirmed my ID.

You can usually tell a birder from a gentile… er um grockle… errrr gadjee? What is the term for a non-birder – seeing the all the terms I’ve come across for people who are not part of the exclusive group seem to start with a ‘G’ maybe we should call them ‘girders’?

The way a question is phrased is the great divide.

I don’t mean that you get asked to help tell one species from another by the length of the primaries or the colour of fringes on the coverts. However, no birder would simply ask what a big brown bird is. Nor would they ask about one that is about the size of a crow but with a bright red chest as I was recently asked.  On a bit of prodding I found out that the bird was rather smaller than first said and that it had a nice grey backside that the enquirer could see well as it plucked the berries from a hawthorn. Anyway, Fieldfares always seem to set out to fool girders. A birder is more likely to hazard a guess at the species and offer some help with elimination… They will say: ‘I know it’s not a Sparrowhawk as they regularly sit on our fence plucking chaffinches, so I wondered how I can be sure it’s a Goshawk?’

Of course we birders can get size wrong, or even describe colour in an odd way, but we are tuned-in to salient features… we cannot help but look for eye stripes and wing bars, flight modes and how a bird walks across the lawn.

I was watching ‘Pointless’ on TV the other day and wasn’t shocked to see a Cuckoo identified as a Song Thrush, but I was taken aback by someone not recognising a Puffin! After all, they are everyday icons that are part of our cultural landscape regardless of our avian leanings. It’s not about familiarity necessarily. With the birds that share our gardens, most people would recognise a Blackbird and a Blue Tit, which are everyday visitors, but many of the uninitiated would probably struggle with a great tit or greenfinch when they should be equally familiar.

Some birds are ghosts in the cultural machine… Robins grace our Christmas cards, Swallows do a summer make, and Grey Herons and Mute Swans have forced themselves into our collective consciousness by virtue of their size and even distribution. However, ‘Girders’ will probably also recognise ‘bluebirds’ and ‘roadrunners’ thanks to American animators. What is more, most non-birders often lump whole families into one general species such as ‘seagulls’, even the term is a cultural marker drawing a line in the sand between birders and girders.

Back at the computer face, when regaled with requests, it becomes clear that we birders seem to incidentally identify much of what we see by what we call, risking giggles from American schoolboys, JIZZ.

The overall shape, size and general presentation of a bird in everyday pursuits allows us, once we put our birding eyes on, to automatically eliminate 99.99% of species without any conscious effort. We narrow the field further with a second glance, still JIZZ fuelled, as the bird bounces or loops away, soars on unbending wings, or rises skyward then descends in song. Long before we start to look for eye-stripes and wing bars, let alone primary projections, or the fringes of the outer coverts, we recognise it as a thrush or corvid, hirundine or warbler.

Only then do we plumb the bottom of our brains, or flip the pages of a field-guide, to narrow down which particular member of the finch family, or tit troop, we are watching. It may not be natural, but it certainly does become second nature, long before we even buy a baseball cap in a reserve centre, or smother our scopes with stickers.

Many years ago Hawkeye and I were drifting along a canal into the open waters of Caroni Swamp on Trinidad as dusk fell. We drifted into the mangroves as Snowy Egrets and Tri-coloured Herons started to bedeck the bushes, before they were joined in the roost by truly outstanding and iconic birds, hundreds of Scarlet Ibis.

As we marvelled at the Christmas decorations draping every tree a non-birder in the back of the boat whined, and not for the first time that evening… ‘now… what’s that big red bird again?’

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