Thursday, November 05, 2020

Pipe and Fair Isle jumper...

Naturalists and birders. Does your hobby take you down a certain route into other fields? 

I see other wildlife observers who are well balanced people with other interests. Some have football season tickets or maybe go cycling ( when I say other interests I mean totally separate, ie you don't carry binoculars) . Some go to the gym or swimming or whatever.

How do you get the time? Everything I do in daylight or even to a lesser degree, in the dark, when not working, is in some way linked to the observation of natural history. The only things outside of that box are watching films, when I cant get outside, or listening to music, usually when driving to a birding site.

Every other thing I do involves another species. I take photographs, mainly of wildlife and the environment, I draw things, usually birds, I go for walks, with a wildlife target in mind, I read every day, texts linked to wildlife. We go on holiday, to an area where I know there is some wildlife I would like to see and so on. I never switch off and nor would I want to.

This might seem a bit geeky or obsessive, unhealthy even,  but there is still, variety in there with more than enough for two lifetimes of interest.

Drilling down further, does your wildlife watching have a particular interest within it? You might like the scientific approach or you might be a bit of a statistician, or a taxonomist. 

Personally I like the history of all things wildlife. If you are or have ever been an angler you will know of Mr Crabtree. He was a character drawn in comic strip form by the late Bernard Venables and it is evocative of times now largely lost with the main character teaching a young lad to fish in stew ponds and Mill Pools where the calm green waters reflecting willows have not changed since Constable painted them.


This is the version I am interested in, but linked to natural history.

The country written about by Richard Jefferies, Ian Niall and Watkins-Pitchford. All leafy lanes clad in dog rose and honeysuckle or coastal fields with thick hedges and migrants calling in the mist of an October dawn. Chaps with pipes and Fair Isle sweaters under a thick army great coat and ex-naval 6x30 binoculars.    Amongst the birders, Ennion, Richardson, Wallace, Alexander, Mountfort and others are read over and over again. They make me feel comfortable and give inspiration.

In a world swamped with media overload, smart phones, apps, nocmig, etc its great to get back to basics. As 'Lockdown 2: this time its tedious'  kicks in I'll probably find myself seeking solace with the old fellas. Tonight at dusk, I was walking quietly in the back field with Peggy, the local Barn Owl silently hunted the hedgerow and winking Pink footed Geese moved south overhead and all seemed well with the world... 

The Bird Catcher. Pen and Ink by Ian Niall.


 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an excellent post! I couldn't agree with you more. The older I get (now 60), the more I want to, as you put it, get back to basics. Books by all those old birders you mention are on my shelves. Mind you, during the first lockdown I enjoyed working my way through Thomas Hardy's major novels again. Behind the gloom and the melodrama is a wonderful portrait of a vanished way of life when people were in tune with the natural world. – Malcolm

Simon Douglas Thompson said...

cyclist, runner and astronomer too

Ipin said...

An excellent post Stewart, I was thinking about this this morning when I saw a Sibe Chiff at Druridge. I watched it at first, just to be sure, and it was. I then panicked - because of the early fog, the camera was in the car, I had to leave the bird and run for the camera. I got some shots and then panicked again when my phone battery was dying and the voice-record app wouldn't work when I should've been enjoying the bird. Why? Because I knew that getting a Sibe Chiff accepted by the CRC without a photo and a sound recording isn't going to happen. But also for the blog and eventually I suppose, for Social Media. Maybe I should have just enjoyed it and not bothered to submit it?

Stewart said...

Chers Iain. Its just a Sibe Chiff, I would take a written description of bird and call...