WHY A LOCAL PATCH MED GULL IS GOOD FOR YOU (WELL, FOR ME AT ANY RATE)

The sun was out today. It was warm, the light was noticeably brighter, the days are getting longer.

It’s the time when thoughts of spring migrants flocking to our shores fill us with hope and expectation.

By now, most of the interesting winter migrants have been seen and logged, apart from, in my case, one or two I haven’t gone out of my way to look for, like a Bittern, Jack Snipe or Mealy Redpoll.

I could have gone to Barnes this afternoon to see a Bittern (and maybe a Jack Snipe), and perhaps wandered around Leith Hill in the hope of finding a Mealy, but the truth is I couldn't muster the enthusiasm.

Instead, I went over to my local patch to see a Mediterranean Gull that was happily swimming around with some Black-headed Gulls close to the sand spit on Spynes Mere lake. It was only a relatively brief visit, but one Med Gull, a couple of Shelducks and a Goldeneye were enough to keep my happy, and I could get on with the rest of my day contented and relaxed. As birding outings go, it was better for my spirit than a long-haul twitch to see a bird for the first time.

But I nearly ruined it all. I made a vow at the end of last year that I would never make a specific journey to see a Firecrest. A beautiful little bird, I admit, but a nemesis to me. It’s been two years since I saw the last one – on Banstead Gold Course – and I’ve been many times since to try and see another one. I’ve failed every time – not even heard one, let alone see one of the little blighters.

So, seeing as it was a lovely day and I’d already seen the Med Gull, in a fit of pique I went to Banstead once again to see if I could find a Firecrest. One had been reported earlier in the day, so I thought I could, at long last, break this bad run. But no. Didn’t see one, didn’t even hear one.

I’ve now made yet another vow. This time I’m not going to go to that bloody golf course again. I have developed a genuine distaste for it and the footpath that runs alongside it (sorry, David). A Firecrest will have to come to me in future. I can live without one. It will remain off my year list for the foreseeable future.

I always seem to end up Surrey listing but even then I’m not pathological about it. No, really! If a really interesting bird – one I haven’t seen before – turns up locally the chances are I’ll find a good reason to get in the car with my scope, binoculars and camera and set off in search of it. Otherwise, I’m more likely to stay where I am or go somewhere to see birds I prefer to watch instead, like Short-eared Owls, and amazingly (a quite recent fascination) gulls.

The Parrot Crossbill, just over the border in Sussex, is one such bird I ought to go and see, but for some reason I haven’t. The same goes for the Paddyfield Warbler on the coast. Both aren’t that far away, and yet I haven’t gone to tick them off my life list.

Originally, I was put off the Crossbill because of the doubts about whether it was a Parrot or not, but I have spoken to many experienced birders since and they all say categorically that it is one. The Warbler was apparently elusive at first (another excuse not to travel down to Pagham), but is now showing well.

So, what is it with me?

I think I’m still trying to find my position in the birding scheme of things. Some people are twitchers, some are patch birders, some are neither. I am neither at the moment, although my patch is increasingly becoming more important by the day.

I like going on the odd twitch, like I did in January for the Dark-eyed Junco and Spanish Sparrow, but it has to be a bird that, for whatever reason, captures my imagination. Both the Paddyfield Warbler and the Parrot Crossbill tick that box, so why not go for both?

I think it is the threat of disappointment twitching can brings as baggage. I hate the idea of going somewhere on a specific journey, to see a bird that doesn’t show. People keep telling me that is what makes birding so fascinating, but I can’t think of anything worse than turning up somewhere not to achieve the purpose of a visit.

If you love football, and Chelsea in particular (I’m not a fan, by the way – this is just an example for geographical purposes) you don’t invest time and money to go to an away game – say to Sunderland – only to arrive to find they won’t let you in. If you went to many such away games and the same thing kept happening, you’d soon become despondent and eventually opt to stay at home and watch the game on the telly.

After a few experiences like this, negativity inevitably seeps through. When the chance to travel to Milan for an away leg of a Champions League semi-final is on the cards, for example, what would you do (if you were me)? You'd find a reason not to go, wouldn't you? Well, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

What I should have done, when the Parrot Crossbill was first announced, was to hop in the car and get the twitch over and done with - whether I saw it or not. Having deliberated endlessly about whether to go, there was always the risk the experience wouldn’t be enjoyable whatever the outcome. I delayed going for the Tundra Bean Goose at Thorpe Park recently, and by the time I decided to go for it, it was too late. The Goose had gone.

I don’t know how some twitchers keep their sanity. The birder Tom McKinney calls the Kerry Katona of twitching and one of the birders featured on the BBC documentary 'Twitching – A Very British Obsession', Garry Bagnell, has seen more than 500 birds in Britain and Ireland. He has managed this feat in a relatively short space of time, just ten years or so. He even had to give up plane spotting to achieve this. Imagine that! He must have dipped at least a third of these birds during that time. I couldn't cope with that.

A remarkable feat then, but what happens now? After a frenzy of twitching, Garry now has just a handful of birds he can see each year that he can honestly say he has never seen before. Presumably, he now has to create a new list category simply to wet his twitching juices. From reading his blog, he has managed that.

It's all about finding a balance and getting things in perspective. I’m actually quite happy to bide my time. I’m going for the long haul for the next 20 years. If it is convenient to go for the Slender-billed Curlew on any given day, well, I might consider it. It depends…

SHIP-ASSISTED BIRDS AND THE ANTHROPOCENE EPOCH

I've been reading Tom McKinney’s brilliant blog novel thriller online called The Greatest Lie Ever Told. The story is based on a secret organisation called the Bristow Chapter dedicated to conning twitchers into believing that vagrant birds are genuine when in fact many of the Arctic and Northern vagrants are being shipped over and set free on the British mainland. When this large scale ornithological fraud is about to be exposed, a number of people are murdered to cover it up.

It’s a great read - particularly if you like extreme violence and plenty of swearing - and, as is always the case with Tom’s writings, it is extremely funny.

What the novel has also done, apart from make me laugh, is get me thinking about my visit to Hampshire on Monday and rare birds like the Dark-eyed Junco and the Spanish Sparrow and whether we should care if birds have arrived in Britain partly by artificial means – by which I mean they didn’t fly all the way here.

What the novel has also made me wonder is whether the fraud in the story should be classified as a fraud at all.

It’s a well-known fact that many long-range migrant or vagrant birds inadvertently or otherwise take a breather on their journey to Britain. To the east, birds will perch up on a North Sea oil rig for a rest, and some will land on a ship that is heading this way. To the west, long-range vagrants such as American and Mediterranean/Asian Sparrows will end up perched on a boat, and then fly off once land has been sighted or when the boat docks into port.

It is, therefore, no coincidence that many rare birds are discovered near ports or coastal areas close to shipping straits such as the English Channel.

A Dark-eyed Junco or a Spanish Sparrow is unlikely feel the natural urge to travel thousands of miles away from their breeding or wintering grounds to Britain in normal circumstances. The main reason they end up here is because they have been blown off course by a storm and need to take a rest to recover from the ordeal. Dark-eyed Juncos, for example, can be found right across the United States, many are permanent residents, while the remainder migrate from the States to breed in Canada for the summer.

Both the Hampshire Dark-eyed Junco and the Spanish Sparrow are likely to have arrived in Britain via a ship that docked into Southampton or Portsmouth. That in itself is not a problem from a listing point of view, and according to the BOURC (British Ornithologist's Union's Records Committee) 'ship-assisted vagrants may qualify for Category A* provided that they are not fed, watered or receive any other direct human intervention during their journey.'

The question then is how can you prove a bird that has arrived in Britain has done so without the direct intervention of a human being? The answer is, you can’t.

One of the BOURC’s main tasks ‘is to assess the likelihood of a species occurring naturally in Britain.’ They do this by studying where the bird has been seen, at what time, what the weather was like when it was first sighted, patterns of migration with the species and its vagrancy potential.

Ship assistance ‘is not necessarily a bar to inclusion on the British List, provided the bird was not confined, sheltered or provisioned during its journey.’ They also consider whether the bird could reach Britain without hitching a ride. But I wonder if any of this is actually relevant.

The inescapable truth is the human race and its activities has had a hugely significant impact on the environment. We change the environment faster and more dramatically than any other natural factor.

The 4.5-billion year history of the planet is divided up into major eras, which are split up into periods, and then divided up into epochs. These, for the past 4.5 billions years, have all been time zones based on geological or paleontological events. Humans have altered Earth so dramatically during the past 200 years, however, many scientists now believe a new epoch in the planet's geologic history has already begun.

It is called the Anthropocene epoch. It is our epoch - Anthropo- (human) -cene (new). We started it.

Since it began 200 years ago this man-made epoch has caused rapid changes in sediment erosion, global temperatures, the carbon cycle (the natural production of carbon bi-products such as oil and coal, which are generated over many hundred millions of years, and are now being exhausted by human beings in a matter of decades), the acidification of the sea and changes to migrant patterns. We’ve done it all. And incredibly quickly. Whereas before it took millions of years to change the landscape and the environment, now it takes decades. A click of the fingers in geological terms.

Take my local area of Redhill as an example. Where once there was a hillside, made from Lower Greensand sandstone from the Lower Cretaceous age that took more than 60 million years to create, Fuller's Earth was mined for more than 130 years until 2000 and the hillside had disappeared. Now, just 12 years later it is being recreated again with landfill.

So, taking this information to its logical conclusion, any bird in Britain is influenced in some way by human beings. Whether it is because it has landed on a boat or, as in The Greatest Lie Ever Told, because it has been stuffed in a cage by an Icelandic criminal and set free as soon as the person in question has stepped foot on British soil, or because it has been part of a re-introduction programme like the Red Kite or White-tailed Eagle, or decimated by intensive farming techniques, or fed seed on a bird table - most birds are where they are because of us. We are part of the natural cycle of events.

With that in mind, go out there and enjoy watching your birds with a clear conscience wherever - or however - they turn up.

(On other matters closer to home, I saw the Smew at Mercer's Lake this afternoon, to take my Surrey list to 86.)


* Species recorded in an apparently natural state at least once since 1 January 1950

DARK-EYED JUNCO AND SPANISH SPARROW TWITCHING DAY

Today was the only guaranteed sunny day this week, and having had to abort Saturday's trip I took a chance and went down to Beaulieu and Calshot this morning.

I don't normally do twitching trips and it didn't start off that well. I got up later than I wanted to (we had had a bit of a late night) so didn't get out of the house until 6.50am. The traffic was horrendous. It took 45 minutes just to get on the M25, and then another hour to get on the M3. Terrible. Then there was an accident on the M3, so I didn't really get going for another ten miles. It was like wading uphill through treacle.

It meant I didn't get to the New Forest until 10.30am - more than three and a half hours after I had left the house - by which time I decided it was best to go to the Hawkhill inclosure to see the Dark-eyed Junco first, and then travel over to Calshot for the Sparrow which, I was led to believe, shows well at the front of the house on Calshot Close along a hedge from between 8.00-9.00am. After that it goes walkabout for a while before returning to the back garden later in the morning.

The Junco setting was great. I haven't been to the New Forest for some years and I had forgotten how beautiful a region of Britain it is. It wasn't long before the Black-eyed Junco appeared. A beautiful and striking bird, it liked to socialise with a flock of Chaffinches and Reed Buntings. It flew into the trees, fed on the ground, hopped onto tree stumps and a fallen pine tree. While watching it a group of six Crossbills were in conversation in the trees including a couple of handsome bright red males.

Eventually I had fantastic views of the Junco feeding on a tree stump just a few metres away. I couldn't have asked for more. It made a long journey worthwhile.

Because of the delays I could only stay for about 45 minutes before I left to head to Calshot. Only about 15 minutes down the road, I was soon walking to the house, where there seemed little activity. There was a bucket for donations to the local children's hospice, which I bunged a few quid into, and then I peered inside.

In an earlier post, I ranted on about how I wouldn't be seen dead queuing up outside someone's house to see a bird, but here I was, mindful to take off my shoes (the first time I have ever done that at a twitch), walking into someone's house to see a Sparrow.

There were only a few people inside including the man who found the Sparrow and put the news out. Bruce Green, I discovered, is a very generous and knowledgeable birder who lives with his girlfriend in her house on the Close, and couldn't have been more helpful.

When I arrived the bird had just flown off, and to cut a long story short, I kept missing it. I was with Bruce down at the end of the row of houses watching another feeder when it reappeared in the back garden, but when I got back, a cat came in and it flew off again. It would be seen at one site when I would be at the other one. Highlight in the garden at this point was a female Reed Bunting feeding on the ground.

It was getting to the point where I thought I was going to dip it. Time was getting on and I was waiting during a period when the Sparrow tends to lie low for a few hours - between 11.30am and 2.00pm. It had all gone quiet. Bruce even suggested - to save some time - I should get my car, which was parked down at the seafront car park, while he'd stand outside if the bird reappeared.

In the end, it all worked out fine, as after a wait of nearly two hours, I picked up the Spanish Sparrow as it flew into a honeysuckle plant at the back of the garden. It then dropped down onto the deck and fed close by for some time before flying back up into the bushes again. What a relief!

A smashing little bird that will probably hang around for some time, maybe even months or years, while it breeds with the local House Sparrows, producing plenty of hybrids. A satisfying end to a good day.