Birding - The beginning - Part 3 - Optics

The initial months of 'being a birder' were without any optical aids but luckily a friend had access to a pair of 7×50 individual eyepiece focussing binoculars which we were allowed to 'share' although curiously NOT allowed to alter the right ocular which made for one eyed viewing!!

An unexpected and not entirely appropriate birthday present that first year came from my grandfather  - a pair of brass (well brass looking) 4×40 opera glasses and these were packed into the ex-army gas mask case along with the Observer's Book of Birds, flask, sandwiches and Mars Bar for all outings for the next few months.

Luckily, my parents realised I needed something better and that Xmas (1967) saw the 'main present' turn out to be a pair of Prinz 16×50 binoculars from Dixons I think - basically  junk by today's  standards but at the time the single biggest improvement to my viewing experience to date.

Within a few days I'd seen Red-necked Grebe from the road bridge and a cracking male Velvet Scoter from the old Tudor Sailing Club.

Over the years another handful or more of binoculars came and went either sold, part exchanged for an upgrade or sometimes used to destruction - the old porro prism binoculars were always being dropped, knocked out of alignment or fogging up with damp incursion.

Half a dozen scopes came and went starting with a Nickel Supra funded by my degree grant which, being drawtube, eventually seized up  - in hindsight I don't  know why I didn't  go for the Hertel and Reuss a much better instrument.

Luckily things are better now although if someone had said to teenage me that in 50 years you'd be paying £2,500 for a pair of binoculars and over £3,000 for a scope I'would have broken down in fits of laughter!!

A couple of more butterflies...

At the park finally, a couple of male Chalkhills (my first this summer) made it to the 'tree dump' area presumably searching for females and/or horshoe vetch, whilst around the pond a couple of fresh Holly Blues and my first male Southern Hawker and Figwort Sawfly. Unlike this time last year precious few hovers and little Wild Carrot to attract them; presumably the early, hot and extended spring has had a detrimental effect. All insects seem to be hard to find.

Red not grey..

('Red' Knot and seven of twenty Turnstones using whatever perches were available)

Male Volucella zonaria, Black-tailed Skimmers, a brief hawker spp and a flyby fritillary spp were the only decent  insects. The Avocet family down to two chicks, lots of birds on the scrapes but once again the Roseate Tern proved elusive, although it was reported later. Sadly, in two visits pre- and post-lunch no other scope-toting birders just camera users so no help there! With so many white birds all dozing on and around the causeway it was like looking for a needle in a haystack and the view from the third hide is compromised by the height of the vegetation. Roll on crap weather to thin out the crowds and parking. On the bright side few other hide users and all 'socially distanced'.

Birding - The beginning - Part 2 - Books

Books at home were few and far between growing up although the local library provided plenty of kids stuff. Two volumes of the Narnia chronicles, one a school prize and  the other a birthday present from a grandfather that same summer, an old and already battered copy of Jacques Cousteau's Silent World and John Hunt's Ascent of Everest was pretty much it. However there was an old Reader's Digest compendium which featured a chapter or so from Fred Boswell's fictionalised tale The Last of The Curlews which I found fascinating - until then I thought extinction was for dinosaurs and mammoths!!

Like most people my first birdbook was the Observers book which got thumbed until it disintegrated. However, it didn't take long to realise the limited number of species and 'victorian' style artwork made it mostly useless. The Observer's Book of Bird's Eggs was more useful early on!

Although having been available for a decade or more the Fitter and Richardson and Peterson guides were still not easy to find. The former came to me first ( a pocket money purchase? a just-because present?) but peer group suggestions were 'get the Peterson book, it's better'. So, like many people, that was my default ID guide for ages and again was thumbed until it fell apart. A cousin found a pristine copy inadvertantly left behind by a birder and promptly  sold it to me for 50p (or was it a quid!!). But by now, aged 14, it was made clear by more experienced birders that only 'dudes' carried a field guide; if you wanted to be taken seriously leave it on the bookshelf and take a notebook and pen it its place! So that copy of Peterson lasted much longer.

The other main work for UK bird identification was the already well out of date Witherby's Handbook - and well out of financial reach of someone who didn't even have so much as a paper round! But luckily the main library had a copy in the reference section  - I did consider slipping it under my coat volume by volume!!

Another glorious book was the rather wonderful House on the Shore by Eric Ennion - the tale of setting up Monk's House Bird Observatory, littered with lively paintings and tales of ringing nets and traps ; all of interest to a newly-taken-on trainee ringer. I can't remember if that's where I got the design of my chardonneret trap from!!

Some more inspiration came from the library in the form of Guy Mountfort's  two books Portrait of a Wilderness and Portrait of a River both published some years before I started birding but so exciting to read. Not sure how I missed out on Portrait of a Desert ; maybe its not too late to find an old copy.

I guess the final offering in those first few years was the weekly publication Birds of the World, edited by John Gooders and which gave a rock solid weekly fix of exotic and mostly unheard of birdlife for a couple of years. I well remember the back page being typically devoted to a single species painting by one of the many 'old masters' of ornithological art and in one case, Laughing Falcon. Not sure why but I was particularly transfixed by that one. Nearly twenty years later, stepping off a minibus in Costa Rica and there it was, the real life version and a species I'd not thought about in the intervening years. If I could have one birding moment over again from the last half-century that would be it.

Butterflies

Quiet in recent days, although the TH Roseate Tern has dropped in again and hopefully might show itself at the next visit.

A first visit to SC on their reopening day was pleasant. A Yellowhammer was audible from the car on the approach road and a family of Marsh Tits were calling on arrival. A Silver-washed Fritillary was dashing about and a number of Six-spot Burnet moths were along the bottom path whilst the large patch of Buddleia had as many Red Admirals as I've seen this year.

The following day the usual short walk at QECP produced fourteen species of butterfly, although I didn't attempt to check the small skippers to species. I'm sure a walk across to the west side of the road would have added Small Heath, Common and Chalkhill Blue if I'd had the time.

Below Dark Green Fritillary (not completely pristine), tatty Small Tortoiseshell and a male Brimstone.

Birding - The beginning - Part 1 - Inspiration

Growing up in a city in a two--up-two-down which opened out onto a treeless, and for the most part still carless, road with a tiny yard come back-garden meant that birds were absent from life up to 10-11 years old. I have absolutely no recollection of sparrows, starlings or any some such, either at home nor on the walks to respective infant and junior schools.

The first sign of an interest in birds was an old black-and-white snap from a Cornish holiday in 1962 standing with a macaw on one arm and a parrot on the other, sadly neither identified to species!!

With an absent services father, a non-driver mother and little spare money TV formed the backbone of most evenings at home and here the combined works of Hans and Lotte Hass (underwater), Armand and Michaela Denis (safari) and of course early David Attenborough were preferred viewing after the usual kids programs. A little later these were bolstered by Jacques Cousteau and of course the much more 'offbeat'  Animal Magic with Johnny Morris. And of course this was all in wonderful black-and-white. Some other memorable inspirations came from family and school visits to London Zoo and Natural History Museum - after the former I remember being horrified at how small the vulture cages were and after the latter the uncomfortable feeling that all the old and faded stuffed birds would have looked so much better alive in the wild. 

In North America they have a term - spark bird- to describe a species which can be directly linked to the inspiration for a life with birds, In my case it was a trip to Scotland where an albatross was in the middle of a turning circle in front of a great-aunt's prefab and Capercaillie in a nearby field - and both just outside the Gorbels-dominated Glasgow!! It didn't take too long to figure out the albatross was a black-backed gull species; the Caper a pheasant? a pigeon? or just a figment? Who knows? Either way there was now a definite interest in and awareness of birds.

The next 'spark' was a house move prior to senior school and this during the 1966 World Cup finals. I well remember sitting on an upturned, empty tea chest cheering as Bobby Charlton's long range shot rocketed into the back of Mexico's goal!! The garden birdlife was still 'slim pickings' but the local pond held plenty of exotic wildfowl - Wood Ducks, Mandarins, Rosybills, Red-crested Pochards and so on. The domestic Muscovy Ducks were less attractive. Beyond this pond an old allotment patch was covered in collapsed sheds and corrugated iron which provided a great hunting ground for an 11 year-old looking for Bank Voles, Common Shrews, Slow-worms and newts. And also the start of a very short phase of egg-collecting, starting with a Lesser Whitethroat and only extending to half a dozen eggs of the same number of species; after just a few weeks I realised this was wrong.

Beyond the allotments was 'home' for the next six years, high school and views across to the harbour. One teacher commented in an old end-of-term report - ' Russell appears distant and in a world of his own' - probably too busy watching the Pied Wagtails running around outside or the Kestrel which used to sit prominently just outside the English classroom.

Finally, the streaming process put me, the youngest, into the same group as another fledgling birder seven months older than me and hence seven months further down the birding road and an ideal companion for the next few years if only because of his father's binoculars.... but more of that later.

Another TH visit...

(Some of this year's Avocets Marmalade Fly, Gatekeeper, Bluetailed damselfly)


... before non-members are readmitted next week.

Typically pretty grey on arrival with the weather improvement  coming just after arriving back home!!

Last visit's single small Avocet chick was nowhere to be seen but a family of five featured three even smaller chicks. Much the same otherwise although two Green Sandpipers were on north scrape and it was nice to see three fresh and fledged juvenile Sandwich Terns flanked by juvenile Common Terns, Med Gulls and BHGs. Two Buzzards were dive bombed by a Kestrel and a Sparrowhawk flushed out of a trackside tree - but still no Hobby nor Marsh Harrier and, despite looking, no sign of yesterday's Black Terns nor MF's Roseate. A surprise find was a male Phasia hemiptera on the footpath which I think is the first I've seen here.

Bits and bobs

Flat battery and no spares at PHP Friday so no photos and just Gymnosoma rotundatum, Chrysotoxum bicinctum and a few Ectemnius spp. No birds of note.

Monday at TH with the above insects -  Paracorymbia fulva, Rutpela maculata, Conops quadrifasciatus, Eriothrix rufomaculata. An Ancistrocerus spp was trying to land on the camera whilst photographing the latter and the tachinid Phania funesta popped up again.
Birdwise singles of Knot and Dunlin, 100+ Black'wit, one 'fluffball' Avocet chick plus sixty odd adults and full-grown juveniles. Four Sandwich Terns exited the reserve but no sign of the Roseate Tern. Brief chats with IC, MF and IM.

110 and a dip

Today was just a local walk with the Tufted Duck still tending three ducklings which I wrongly assumed had been predated, singles of Cormorant and Grey Heron and a return of the Barnacle Goose in the company of fifteen Canadas.

Yesterday was a return to TH after 110 days (all well organised and socially distanced with a second visit booked for next week) which saw a dip in the shape of Roseate Tern found by MF on the scrapes after lunch and after I'd been defeated by gout/arthritis and not able to visit the west side. Over sixty Avocets present  on the reserve and a handful of Turnstones on the beach but little else.

Below Smessex Skipper, skippers on ragwort, first Common Darter of year, Rutpela maculata, Ringlet, Vollucella pellucens, Peacock and Broad-leaved Helleborine).

Rolling and Tumbling

Rollin 'n tumblin' by Cream from way back, when music was on fire here

At QECP a Raven overhead, with a couple of Buzzards sharing air space,  joined a second bird and put on some aerial gymnastics - only the fourth record this year and the first for five months. The pond Moorhens had two youngsters probably less than a week old.  Nothing else of note but a flyover Siskin.

Five Slow-worms were the first this year; no sign of any interesting tachinids nor indeed much else and just loads of Marmalade Flies typically on Ragwort, Bramble and Viper's Bugloss but bu**er-all other hovers.

Below Cinnabar caterpillar on Ragwort, Marbled White, Mignonette with Honey Bee, White Campion and Slow-worm.

100 days in...

Today, Wednesday, saw the lockdown reach 100 days. The next few days will see some further relaxation but personally I'm sticking to '2 metres plus' for the foreseeable future. Since the last entry the weather has been variable, typically windy and pretty uninspiring. Unless suppressed there appears to have been little of interest within my usual 40 mile radius of home. Sadly the influx of Red-footed Falcons, Blyth's Reed Warblers and Rosy Starlings didn't reach Hampshire nor Sussex west of the Arun.

A few Swifts over locally moving south were nice to see but the many tens of thousands south past Yorkshire coastal watchpoints  in recent days looked spectacular. Locally, it seems as if the Tufted Duck brood failed to survive and three broods of Mallard are struggling. A Reed Warbler was singing from the island rather than any patch of reeds and was just about audible with the song drowned out by vehicles and the strong wind.

The butterfly track still held a fair few Meadow Browns, rather more Small/Essex Skippers than last visit including this Essex above and a surprise Marbled White - common enough in various areas off island but this was the nearest to home I can recall. A few Tree Bumblebees, still some Andrena flavipes and the above unidentified species but little else of note.

The numbers of Swollen-thighed Beetles are falling and being replaced by Rhagonycha fulva (above) commonly known as Hogweed Bonking Beetle!!

And finally, checking the south-facing and sheltered hedge of Squirrel Wood produced the first two Volucella zonaria of the summer, both males with one above and a Helophilus pendulus.