I’m not happy!!

There is a limit as to how long I can go on bottling up my frustration, but I think it is time I came out on the issues that are rocking my boat.

Bird lists, particularly annual lists.  Who said that I have to start my annual records on January 1? 

Why pick a day when sociable and amenable people will be nursing the mother and father of a headache from celebrating the end of the calendar year, Hogmanay or whatever excuse you like, and which usually drags on to 1 -2 in the morning. It was not that many years ago that the Government of the day decreed that Jan 1 should be a public holiday, but I did not hear the BTO, the WWT or the RSPB come out in sympathy. No it’s here we go again…..it’s Jan 1 so we must start counting.

I tried to challenge the system in 2014. 28^th March was our Golden Wedding anniversary, so I decreed on that day (to myself) that the next 12 months would be MY golden year for birding, and I would record from 28^th March 2014, to 27^th March 2015. Didn’t do any good – I still missed the 200.  

So I have a cunning plan.  I intend to start MY birding year on and from the date that I get a Mega. Imagine if that happened on the 31^st March, what a wonderful start that would be for the next 12 months, starting on a real fast track at the summer migration time. (I will probably still do the conventional Jan > Dec to cover 2 options!)

A long standing issue – I just get the feeling that the some of the letters you read from time to time, about birders not sharing info have got a grain of truth.

My first gripe is about talking birds in shorthand. What is a Sprawk? Or a Gropper, or an LRP? I wouldn’t even think of talking in bird-speak for those people on my walk for beginners. They have enough trouble with a Hedge Sparrow, which isn’t a sparrow, a lapwing, which Grandpa calls a peewit, a mute swan which isn’t, and an Egyptian Goose which isn’t a goose. So give the non-pros a break – you can write what you like in your diary, but at least give newbies a chance by saying birds by their full names.

And on the subject of names, for goodness sake, why is a Purple Gallinule in Majorca a Purple Gallinule, but in the Humber Estuary it’s a Swamp Hen?  It is in fact a Rail but for sure it aint a Hen.

And why did the perfectly satisfactory name Fan Tailed Warbler (which I saw in Cyprus in October 2000) now become the extraordinary name a Zitting Cisticola?

I rest my case.

Last Tuesday, I had 3 hours birding with Chris at Attenborough. Lovely morning and 36 species with a good helping of waders. I keep hearing that migration is running late this year, but we had Dunlin, Snipe, Ringed Plover, Ruff, Knot and a very viewable Black Necked Grebe.

Started off seeing a Mute Swan near the centre with a red ring with white lettering on its left leg, numbered Y619. I have reported it, and I’ll let you have any feedback I get.

Unfortunately, (here comes another gripe) we did the middle loop to come to the tower hide, only to find the steps were (rightly-) closed due to a collapsed step. A notice at the car park saying the hide would be closed would have been helpful, an experience which equally irked me last time at Blacktoft, when we found the Marshlands hide was closed for maintenance, only when we got to the hide.

The word on the street is that quarrying has now finished at Attenborough, and Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust hope to take on the whole site. (Interesting because final quarrying was at the end of the conveyor belt, in Derbyshire.) It would be great if they can.

What I will miss will be the reminder of a good birding friend and fellow smoker, Ivan Dring. Ivan, who died a few years ago, loved Attenborough, but his ambition was to have a job driving the tug from the quarry to the works.  He loved building boats and sailed them in his bath. I told the mourners in my eulogy about his hobby, but said that he should have waited until Hazel was out of the bath.

Busy month, eh?