Rediscovering the Joys of Birding

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - Rediscovering the Joys of Birding

As mentioned in the blog description, at the age of 44 I've recently come back to birding after an absence of about 30 years. That's not to say that I didn't watch birds at all during this time, just that it was more of a passive thing: if I happened to see something interesting whilst out and about I'd look at it but I wouldn't go out with my bins specifically to look at birds. Anyway, whilst on holiday last summer up in Sutherland (the far north-west of Scotland) I did take my bins just in case there was something to see and I managed to see a few birds I'd never seen before, namely a black-throated diver on a loch, a flock on about 20 ptarmigan on top of a 2,500 ft mountain (Arckle for those who are interested) and several Merlin. Now I know that particularly Merlin are not very rare but at the time when I'd given up I'd not come across one so it was a first for me. Anyway, I came back from holiday thinking how nice it'd been to see some new birds but left it at that.

Now this year I'd taken up going for a run in the morning after taking my younger daughter to school (I've a 12 year old daughter and a 10 year old and an 18 month old boy). As I live in Oxford, I would always run on Port Meadow which is close by. This year because it had rained so much during the summer there was flood water on the meadow even in September - usually it's not till the middle of winter that the meadow gets flooded. Anyway, whilst running I happened to notice some Little Egrets on these floods - at one stage I saw 9 of them. I was pretty excited about this because in my youth these were pretty rare though now of course they are more common (classified as "Local" on BirdGuides). So the next time I took my bins to have a look and not only saw the Egrets but also some snipe which I'd not seen for a long time and some other waders that I couldn't identify - after all those years I'd lost the finer points of wader identification and also my field guide. There happened to be another birder there so I asked him what they were and he said they were Ruff. He also mentioned that he was looking for a Pectoral Sandpiper which has been seen there. I went home to look this up as I couldn't even remember ever having heard the name. In googling for it I came across BirdGuides and some great photos of them (there were two birds) that had been taken on the meadow. So I went back at lunch time to have a look and saw some interesting waders that I again I couldn't really identify. I also saw someone lying in the mud with his bins and a telephoto lens looking at something so I took a chance and asked if he was a birder (he was) and if he could point out the Pec. Sands. which was actually only 30 feet away. This was pretty amazing I thought: to be able to see a posting of a bird on a web site and then go and see it was so much better than when I'd been a boy (before the internet) when one had no knowledge of what rarities were around). Anyway I signed up for BirdGuides's Bird News Extra service so that I could see what else was around and I soon saw a posting for a Grey Phalarope on the Meadow. I went straight down and sure enough there it was. I also have seen the Little Gull there, again posted on BirdGuides.

This autumn we went on a family holiday down to the end of Cornwall: the Penwith peninsula beyond Penzance which is a regular holiday spot for us. I'd not realised though that it was also a birding hot-spot with all sorts of rarities regularly posted there. Whilst there I was numerous Black Redstarts (not a first for me) and a couple of Chough at Land's End which were firsts. I also saw a late (it was October) swallow which could have been a Red-Rumped Swallow but unfortunately I wasn't able to get a positive ID as I only saw it momentarily and from the front. It seems to me that to be a good birder you need to know the finer points of what to look for in a bird off pat so that in that split second you know what to look for rather than just getting an overall impression of a swallow that "looks a bit different". In a similar vein I saw a probable Richard's Pipit which flew overhead calling at Gwennap Head. If I'd had my MP3 player with me (see below) then I'd been able to check on the call.

I've started exploring the internet and found various other sites of interest. Locally I use Farmoor-Birding (http://farmoor-birding.com) which is a great site for birds on Farmoor reservoir and the Oxford Ornithology Society (http://www.oos.org.uk) which posts sightings in Oxfordshire. These don't have to be as rare as on BirdGuides and it's a great way of learning about new local birding locations. It was through this that, for example, I discovered the Ewelme cress beds and saw my first water rail and first green sandpiper.

Anyway, I've decided to keep going with this re-kindled interest. I've got myself the Collins field guide and am going to get a scope and some decent bins (I'm still using my 35 year old Boots 8x30's!). I also bought the BirdGuides iDentify CD of bird calls which is really a great innovation as you can take all these calls out with you on your MP3 player to ID bird calls in the field. I thought that I'd keep a year list this year and a blog to so that I have "someone" to talk birds to - the rest of my family thing I've gone rather nerdy and my eldest daughter calls me a "bird nerd" now. However, I've discovered that I can earn brownie points whilst out birding if I take my son out with me so my wife has a break from looking after him. So I've been going to Farmoor and pushing him round the reservoir in his push-chair. I also take him down to Port Meadow to see what's about. So I'm particularly interested in push-chair friendly birding locations.

So that's how I got back into birding. My life list is rather stunted being largely that of a 12 year old so I've got some catching up to do but that's no problem. The interesting thing will be to see whether this new-found interest carries on for any length of time or whether I lose interest again. Only time will tell.

About Me

I used to be a birder in my youth but rather lost interest in my teens as other things became more interesting. However recently I've rediscovered this interest and would like to share my sightings and thoughts in this blog.