The Biggest Twitch

While I do enjoy birding, twitching (the act of travelling a long distance purely in order to see a particular species of bird) has never been my thing. The closest I’ve ever got was a couple of years ago when reports of Waxwing sightings in Tufnell Park prompted me to go and have a look to see if I could see them; I didn’t, but I did spend an enjoyable couple of hours hanging around a street a couple of blocks from the Tube station (where several of them had been seen the previous day) in the company of several like-minded individuals who I’d never met before, and haven’t seen since. Doesn’t exactly count, really.

Similarly, as far as travelling to watch birds in general goes, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for birds wherever I am but it’s more a case of going somewhere for other reasons (work, holiday, etc) and then checking out the local bird life, not travelling somewhere specifically to see birds. Sure, I have favoured venues in or near to places I go to often (for example, when I’m in Toronto I will at some point go to High Park, and when I’m in Suffolk a visit to Minsmere is more likely than not to be on the cards), but I do my birding at places I go to, as opposed to going to those places purely for the birding. 

So naturally, a recent read was about a couple who travelled around the world purely to see as many birds as they could. 

Alan Davies and Ruth Miller worked for the RSPB — until they decided to quit their jobs and spend a year (and a fair chunk of their savings) trying to break the record for the most birds seen in a year (in fact, their target of 4,000 species was somewhat north of the previous record, and the record they set has since been surpassed). Their odyssey took them to Australia, Peru, Ethiopia, India and many other places. It’s an enjoyable read for the most part; they alternate chapters and their contrasting styles work well together — Ruth more humorous and down-to-earth (and already familiar to me from her articles in Bird Watching magazine), Alan more clinical and descriptive. 

Their birding adventure has its moments but there are points where the story drags somewhat. Travel literature invariably has passages about the protagonist(s) getting sick at some point and this is no different, to the point where it’s impressive that they both made it to the end. Especially Alan, who appears to get seasick every time he so much as looks at a boat. At times it seems like an extended plug for the birding travel company they made extensive use of. And there’s one point — rather early on in the story — in which they speculate on what the book sales will be like, which to me was more jarring than the occasional mentions of Ruth and Alan’s sex life which seems to have annoyed other reviewers. I do wonder, though, about the ethicality of “playback” (the playing of bird calls by the guides from the afore-mentioned birding travel company in order to get the birds whose calls are being played to appear before their clients). 

Sometimes when I read travel lit, I come away wondering (however idly) about how I would go about embarking on such a journey. This was not one of those, although I did get the occasional vicarious thrill about some of their sightings, and their talk of legendary American birder Kenn Kaufman did make me want to check out his book Kingbird Highway. One for another time. 

The Blue Tit (birds of East Finchley, part 5)

This little garden bird, several of which I can hear calling to each other as I sit in the garden writing this, has always been one of my favourite birds. Back when I first got into birding, the Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruelus, internationally known as the Eurasian Blue Tit to distinguish it from the almost-identical African Blue Tit) was the one that, with its colourful blue and yellow plumage, really stood out among the sparrows, finches and starlings. I was thrilled whenever I saw one on the bird feeder then, and I still am now.

Perhaps it is this bird’s somewhat cheeky reputation; when I was a Young Ornithologist (back then, the RSPB’s youth wing gloried in the rather long-winded name of the Young Ornithologists Club, and had a very smart badge depicting a Kestrel) it was known to be in the habit of pecking at foil milk-bottle tops to get at the cream underneath, although I don’t recall ever seeing any evidence of this myself; the rising popularity of semi-skimmed milk in the 1980s put a stop to it (no cream to be had under the red foil caps) even before home milk deliveries were all but killed off in the early 1990s when supermarkets were finally allowed to sell the stuff. 

Perhaps it’s also because the Blue Tit is a clever, adaptable bird (the milk-bottle top thing is an example of this more than cheekiness, from the bird’s point of view at least). Another birding memory from the 1980s is of a BBC TV documentary called Bird Brain of Britain in which a young Simon King showed how Blue Tits (and Great Tits as well) could solve simple puzzles in order to get food; for example, figuring out that if they tapped the top of a small box, a peanut would come out of the bottom. 

It’s also one of few birds whose call I have always been able to recognise. I once had a cassette of bird calls and songs; I never got very far with it but the Blue Tit was the first one to be mentioned on the tape, so it stuck! 

So yes, the Blue Tit. Definitely one of my favourite birds! 

Waders and rewilding in Edinburgh

This week I went up to Edinburgh for work. Usually I stay in the New Town, which is lovely, but this time (mainly because I drove up rather than took the train), I stayed down by the old docks on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. Rather like London’s Docklands, Edinburgh’s dock area has undergone significant redevelopment in the past few decades; the former industrial dock area now boasts modern apartment blocks and so on. Leith has, by all accounts, been gentrified. 

I was staying at the approximate point where Leith meets Newhaven. As I was there for work and work is further along in Granton, my commute became a rather nice seashore walk.  I was glad I took my binoculars and bird book.

Down on the shore were various waders; those very distinctive Oystercatchers, a dozen Knots in winter plumage (surely a bit late for them?), a few Turnstones looking for food among the gulls, a couple of Redshanks and a few small ones which weren’t Turnstones. Waders aren’t my strongest suit by any means, but I was determined to figure out what these ones were. Black legs and bill, grey-brown back, white underparts. Dunlin, I reasoned — like the larger Knots, still in their winter plumage. 

Close to my hotel was Lighthouse Park, located on the small peninsula of land that was originally the western breakwater for one of the docks that comprises the Port of Leith. By the early twenty-first century this was the site of some property development comprising of apartment blocks, presumably rather pricey. This development, called Western Harbour, stalled in 2008 as a result of the financial crisis, with some of the planned sites undeveloped save for some access roads and half-dug foundations. Fascinatingly, nature has taken over at these places, now known as the Western Harbour Ponds. I spotted a Mute Swan, a pair of Mallard and many Goldfinches. 

Fenced off, these areas have rewilded — what were would-be building sites are now a cluster of small wildlife havens, within easy reach for local residents keen to appreciate nature. Two of them are in fact ponds, while the other two are wooded. Alas, a sign on one of the fences proclaimed that they are currently at risk — property developers are once again interested in the area, for obvious reasons. But it looks as though some local people would like to keep the Western Harbour Ponds as they currently are — and a good thing too. Green spaces are an important thing in the modern city. 

The Friends of Western Harbour Ponds website describes the Ponds as “a wonderful example of urban rewilding — a haven for native plant life, insects, bats and waterfowl … It has also become a very special place place for local residents and birdwatchers, who come to reconnect with nature, watch the wildlife and enjoy the tranquility of this ad-hoc blue-green space in an otherwise densely populated part of the city”. This visitor from London certainly enjoyed a few moments of tranquility before walking to work. I signed the online petition on the spot.

But my birding was not over yet! Looking out to sea, I saw something white and swimming. Another gull? There are many, many Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls around! But this looked to be something different. Always worth a closer look. Good job I brought my binoculars. 

Turned out, it was a male Eider! Fantastic spot. His female counterpart surfaced while I was looking. I have only seen Eiders once before, and that was a couple of years ago and not far from Edinburgh (just along the coast at Yellowcraig Beach), but I had not thought I’d see a pair at Leith docks. The following morning, just to show that this was no one-off, there were two pairs of Eiders swimming in Newhaven Harbour. 

 

A rewarding visit to a part of Edinburgh not previously explored! An area I’d definitely like to return to; I just hope that the Western Harbour Ponds will still be there when I do.