Twenty years

I've lived in Chateau L for over 20 years. A mere blip in the history of such an esteemed residence of course, and who knows what came before, but in this, my 21st year, an important milestone - perhaps the only possible milestone - has finally been reached. 100 birds.

The full garden list is here, and of course normal rules apply. That is to say that this is birds seen or heard from my garden, rather than birds in my garden. Otherwise the list would be about fifteen. It's an important distinction - if I can see it or hear it from within these four walls turrets then on it goes. So mostly it is flyovers, and some birds have flown past just once in those twenty years, or at least just once when I've been here to see it happen. Then again is Osprey a daily occurence? Likely not.

Gratifyingly the 100th bird was one of my top predictions, a Great White Egret. A southern European species that has been steadfastly moving north, it was only a matter of time in my view. It took 14 years to see one at all, but since 2018 I've now seen nine here. Most of them have been seen whilst I've been out birding on Wanstead Flats, elation as still a rare bird by any standard, but often tinged with disappointment knowing that had I been at home the bird would have easily been visible from the battlements.

Finally, this weekend just gone, the inevitable happened. I was at home, or rather back home, having already returned from a pretty mediocre visit to Wanstead Flats. Minding my own business in the kitchen I noted my phone beeping. It was the local birding WhatsApp group, the ever-alert Tony informing us that a GWE was flying west from Alexandra Lake towards Coronation Copse. West is key, it means the bird is coming towards Chateau L. East and it is already too late. 

I grabbed my bins, still on the side from my recent outing, and charged up the stairs like a man half my age. Gazelle-like, possessed, three at a time. How long had it taken him to type the message, should I look out the back or the front? Would it carry on west, would it veer north? Crucial decisions that I've got wrong before, Oystercatcher remains to this day 'heard only'. I threw open the french doors to the balcony. No, it felt wrong. Back to the front, to the tried and tested method that has in the past netted Osprey and Raven, standing on the toilet with my upper body fully out of the velux and thus able to scan 180 degrees unimpeded.

Boom! Perhaps 30 seconds later it actually flew down the street, or at least over the gardens of the houses opposite. Lazy but deliberate, floppy yet controlled. I drank it in as it disappeared north-west towards Walthamstow. It felt like forever but was probably through and gone in a just a few seconds. No time for the camera but that is always a secondary consideration. That  one view is all you need for a garden tick that will remain for time immemorial. Here's what it looked like (though the bill was black on this one), one of my photos from somewhere else entirely. Clearly it would have been wonderful to have had it with local rooftops in the frame, but I'm not fussy, it was still a 'moment'.

Twitching - did I waste my time?

My twitching efforts this year have been practically non-existent. I flirted with a Broad-billed Sandpiper in the spring, and turned around about half way and went home after it flew off. That’s it. I have not travelled to Cornwall to see a Pelican. I did not go to Devon for the Lammergeir. I didn’t go to Suffolk for the Purple Swamphen and have no plans to go to Lincolnshire for it. A White-winged Scoter that spent several months in Aberdeenshire was spurned, and an eminently gettable Cliff Swallow on Scilly was similarly ignored. No doubt there are several more examples of crazy megas that I have simply not bothered for.

I have recognized for a long time that my annual tick haul has been going down and down, however to fall off a cliff like this has surprised even me. You could say that I have grown up. Alternatively you could say that I have been unable to stay the course. Both are I think accurate. On the former point I have just had several face-to-face encounters with Pacific Golden Plovers. The views were fantastic, incredible even. I savoured them, I spent over an hour watching a single bird on a beach. A couple of years ago I haired it up to Norfolk to get distant views of one near Salthouse. The experiences could not have been more different, however only one of them increased my UK list by a species. I enjoyed the close-up encounter far more, the listing element has somehow diminished in importance.

But there’s the rub. Back in 2009 it was important, or it felt like. I’ve never been the type of manic twitcher who drops everything and just goes, elevating a tick on a list above any other consideration. I’ve been quite restrained really, however I have made a significant effort to see many of the 435 birds on my UK list. Some of them have been trips that required huge amounts of planning, time off work, and return journeys of 1500 miles. Others have required ridiculously early starts, driving through the night, staggering down unpleasant shingle spits, getting wet, cold and in some cases trampled. All to add a single bird to a list. So to all of a sudden completely stop, to consciously decided that I am not going to bother to add a bird to list (or attempt it at least), how does that reconcile with the immense effort that I have previously put in? Was it all in vain? Why, basically, did I bother if I wasn’t going to keep it up?

Well I didn’t know that at the time I suppose, and also I don’t like the attitude of not bothering to do something if you think you’re going to ‘fail’. It was what I did and [mostly] enjoyed during a particular time in my life. I was driven by the exuberance of youth. Yes, early thirties is still youth. Pffff. But now I’m not particularly interested anymore and it’s other thrills that are taking precedent. Like gardening for instance, a hobby far more suited to a middle-aged duffer like me – my early forties have seen a marked change in my approach to adrenaline….  Admittedly I’ve been interested in plants for almost as long as birds, but the appeal of a thirty yard walk to my greenhouse is not lost on me versus, say, Bodmin.

a memorable bird for all the right reasons

Nonetheless I still look back with some fondness on some of those twitches. At the time the vast majority of them did not feel like a chore in the slightest, and I had a lot of fun. Some of did of course fall into the “going through the motions” category – birds I had almost no interest in seeing other than the fact that they were new for my list. Short-toed Treecreeper. Zitting Cisticola. American Coot. American Herring Gull. Black Duck. The last three I saw in a single weekend, so the pain was condensed into a very short period, but honestly, talk about dull. These few however were eclipsed by a multitude of glorious birds, some of which I’ve barely seen anywhere else. Oriental Pratincole. Black Scoter. Cream-coloured Courser. Harlequin Duck. Northern Waterthrush. I could go on and on. Some others were glorious but only briefly so, leaving more of a feeling of relief rather than elation, much less satisfaction. Lesser Kestrel. Common Yellowthroat. Blue-cheeked Bee-eater. All fall firmly into this category – mad scrambles resulting in rubbish views, all for that magic counter to tick upwards by one digit.

As mentioned, this year that counter has not advanced at all, or at least not through any action on my part. There remains the beauty of armchair ticks, new birds you can add to your list without needing to do anything. Brilliant! Absolutely perfect for my current frame of mind. I was probably abroad encountering very rare UK birds at extremely close range, and when next hit wifi I discovered I had gained a couple of armchair ticks with the 2011 Rainham Slaty-backed Gull and the somewhat dubious Kent Chinese Pond Heron in 2014. How on earth did that one get the nod? 

Whatever. It's just a number.

Oh my poor buttocks

Following on from a recent post where I said I had been looking at my bike, today I did more than just look at it and got on it. Now before you say 'hang on a sec, I didn't bloody click on Not Quite Scilly', this is Jono and not Gavin. I'm just having a moment, you'll have to indulge me. Now last year in about May I had a health check up of the sort than many newly-minted 40 year olds have. The results were hardly astounding. Eat less, drink less, do some exercise (you podge) and you will lose weight, your blood pressure which is a teensy bit high will go down, and your blood sugar which is definitely too high will go down. I did none of these things, at least not meaningfully, and carried enjoying my if not entirely sedentary lifestyle, one which was rich in the finer things in life. Like gin. And bacon. Not together.

This Christmas was the usual gluttony and excess, and on January first I went off birding, not realising quite how incapable I had become. 12 miles should not have been so hard. This is pathetic I decided, and resolved there and then to do something about it. This involved less stuffing my face, zero booze (for as long as I can bear it), and the dreaded exercise. On January the second and third I put in another few miles despite the intense pain, figuring that I ought to just man up and walking doesn't count as exercise, and then today, with the shins still smarting and the toe wincing, hopped on the bike. I have not cycled anywhere for a long time, and it was surprisingly refreshing.

There are a number of things I like about it, there are a number of things I don't like about it. Let's start with those. Just because.

Cons

• Oh my God how much do my buttocks hurt? I know from prior experience that this will lessen over time and eventually disappear altogether, but I also know quite how awful the second ride is. Today this came only eight hours after the first, but boy did I know all about it. I am dreading tomorrow morning
• The commute home. Mornings are fine really. It is light, you are fresh, the promise of gainful toil awaits. In the evening the story is entirely different. It is dark, you are tired from mental strain, you wish to be home, and your buttocks hurt like hell. That DLR seat never looked so good.
• Your colleagues get to see you dress up to leave...
• Lycra

Pros

• It is actually faster than public transport! No word of a lie, even with a pudgy birder doing the pedalling. 35 minutes there, 37 minutes back. Six miles each way and I've shaved 20 minutes off my daily commute.
• No public transport crush. No other peoples' armpits.No waiting. No strikes!
• I can have a shower when I get to work, and emerge onto the office floor looking and smelling radiant, as opposed to the Central Line turning me into a bedraggled mess.
• Better still, when I get home I can have a shower again, and the key benefit of this is that I will change into normal clothes. Stupid though it sounds, not spending the evening in work clothes could dramatically change my outlook on life.
• It is free!! OK, so I have just spent the equivalent of a month's travel pass on getting my bike serviced (new brakes, new cables) by this will soon pay off. I just cashed in half an annual tube ticket and the princely sum of £500 is soon going to land in my grubby little paws. I am going to spend it all on booze in February.
• And then of course there is the pure satisfaction of just doing it. I've not yet experience the endorphin rush or whatever it is called, but even though I am knackered I have to say I feel a little bit perky. Strange but there you go. 

I'm very interested to know how soon I will notice a difference from this minor lifestyle change. Presumably my body will do its utmost to preserve those carefully squirreled fat-reserves, so I will need to stick at it for a while. What I will be able to notice, instantly, are the miles I eat up and how I eat them up. None of this silly little bike computer thing with a doofer on the wheel, no that is severely outdated technology. These days you just use your phone, assuming you have not dropped it. I have been pointed in the direction of something called Strava. You touch a button to say you are leaving, you touch again when you get there. Like Oyster but free. This amazing app then records your time over individual segments of your journey, so you can see if you are getting faster. Or not as the case may be. It also shows you the times of those segments achieved by other users of the app......ah. So, on the nice smooth ride away from my house and through the middle of Wanstead Flats I am currently the ......509th quickest person to do it. Somebody called Buster did in two minutes what took me three and a half. But I know why. On that stretch of road there are several sets of traffic lights, and I bet you that Buster stopped for NONE OF THEM. As a brand new cyclist (kind of) I am very good and stop for all of them, however after just 12 miles I can already begin to see why so many cyclists completely ignore them. I hope to remain good, but the lure of the stat could see the odd transgression!

London Nightjar, a Patch Tick, and a 'Fun' Run

New 'filtered' through today of a day-roosting Nightjar just down the road from me at the Middlesex Filter Beds. A local birder had spotted it whilst out  jogging, and it had subsequently attracted quite a crowd of London birders, some of whom needed it for their all-important London lists. I didn't, having seen breeding birds in the Surrey sector last year, but I went anyway as I've never seen more than a silhouette at dusk. I've long hoped to come across a day-roosting bird, but I don't really bird the right habitat for that ever to be a possibility. 

The bird was roosting in more-or-less plain view. Naturally it had chosen the exact spot where a clear photo was impossible, but I gave it a go anyway (as did Shaun, even though it clearly wasn't a Gull). A real treat for loads of local birders.

In other news I've birded the patch both yesterday and today, and come away with a full-fat patch tick in the shape of a Woodlark thanks to a timely text from Nick who had discovered it zipping round the grassy area of the Flats calling its head off. I hastened down there to find it still doing exactly that, though unfortunately those less quick off the mark were not as lucky. And then this morning I had the inspired idea to check the Park for a pair of Wigeon that were no longer on the Flats. I know, genius. And of course there they were. They take me to the astonishing total of 97 for the year, which is so piss poor I cannot even begin to tell you. Next year I promise I will make more of an effort.

And finally, hot off the press, I have just survived a fun-run. The other day I lost a huge number of BPs by driving off to Norfolk with both sets of car keys in my pocket. My rescue mission to Belgium with the second set of car keys is apparently long-forgotten, and as penance I was forced into a participating in a family fun-run in aid of Make Poverty History. I am, as you might imagine, an unexceptional runner, and the concept of the words fun and run in the same breath is entirely foreign to me. Nonetheless I whacked on a pair of trainers and set off the Park to meet the family, who were ahead of me due to the need to twitch the Nightjar. I made it to the start and picked up my number just as everyone all set off. Mrs L and the eldest set off together, and middle child went with a friend. Needless to say I didn't see them again until the finish. This left me with my youngest, now aged seven. She is not built for running, with very short legs at this point in her life, so we took it nice and slow - frankly this worked for me. How slow? Well, 5km in 45 minutes is how slow. Whereas young Master L finished in 29 minutes, Mrs L in 31, with Pie and her friend coming in at 38 minutes. So yes, we were last (as in last in our family of five, not last last - gratifyingly there are people out there less fit than I am), and no, it was not fun. But I did it, and I did not complain as much as I expected. And I am still alive, which is obviously a massive bonus, and by no means a guaranteed outcome as far as me running anywhere is concerned. Welcome to the Revolution.