The 1970s: finding my feet - 1974

More history, no more pics.  I started 1974 stumbling down to the Bill in the gloom, staring at my feet and ignoring a couple of flushed shapes that may have been Blackbirds and calling gulls overhead.  There had been a flock of up to nine Velvet Scoters semi-resident off the Bill and on reaching the Obelisk I whipped my binoculars up to where they had been the previous evening.  Sure enough five were still there.  My first bird of 1974, as I had hoped it would be.  Later I saw my first live Great Northern Divers in Portland Harbour but they were eclipsed by a male Long-tailed Duck.  It held its tail at an angle of 30-45 degrees above the water where it was occasionally caught by the wind – brilliant. 

Trips during the spring term included a weekend in Dorset and Hampshire (Red-necked Grebe a new bird and 100 Bramblings), Tregaron (41 Whooper Swans, Red Kite, Red Grouse, Dipper and Great Grey Shrike) and an unsuccessful visit to Blackpill for Ring-billed Gull.  I returned home at Easter seeing Rough-legged Buzzard at Windover Hill (after camping up there), visited Pagham by train and bus and spent three nights wardening at Rye Harbour where I saw three pairs of Garganey.  On the last day three males were chasing a female around one of the pits.  It was the first time I’d heard them call – a peculiar and unforgettable crackling or rattling like a ruler being run along a corrugated radiator.  This was trumped by a Firecrest in our garden for most of one day.  While watching it at 5m range from the kitchen window it flared out its crest to two or three times its usual thickness – a brilliant fiery red-orange and one of the brightest colours I’d ever seen.

I really did not want to go back to University, mid course blues, and a few days stay at Portland Bird Observatory got extended by a week – I only had lectures on three days and was sure that I could soon catch up.  I’d started sea-watching and seen a good selection of common migrants although nothing unusual.  My absence had been noted, one of the tutors knowing of my interest in birds asked if I’d been carried off by an eagle?  No just gripped by an albatross was my reply, something reported from a seawatch while I was at Portland.  I’d enjoyed Portland so much I went straight back down for a long weekend seeing more of the same plus the long staying dark ‘Blue’ Fulmar.  The later had been seen from the West Cliffs and after half an hour there a wooshing sound directly over my head caused me to look up and there it was hanging in the air barely five feet away before going off to do another circuit of the cliffs. I watched it for about 20 minutes before it finally left.  It had no white on it at all, just paler traces in the wings.  At times it looked a different shape too.  On my last day I had a look around Radipole Lake before catching the train back to Cardiff and bumped into some birders watching a Terek Sandpiper!  It was the bird that had wintered in Devon and I’d turned down a one-way lift to go for it on my previous visit to Portland (a regret that had not lasted long).

I went on a Spring Bank Holiday minibus trip to East Anglia organised by Peter Lansdown, one of the top birders I had met.  We saw a trip of 6 Dotterel in Cambridgeshire, 4 Stone Curlew, Bittern, Red-backed Shrike and female Montagu’s Harrier (all new birds).  The Dotterel were very approachable with four in full summer-plumage – stunning.  We had to wait for four hours to see the harrier but when it appeared at Titchwell it thrilled us with a superb aerial display including stoops and throw-ups which I noted lasted 37 minutes!  During a week revising at home in early June I returned to the Cuckmere where I’d seen a Cirl Bunting in early April.  The male was in almost exactly the same place and even better was carrying food to the back of some nettles.  The female was also seen carrying food and there was clearly a nest there although it was not in a position where it could be seen.  Back at University I was immersed in exams but as soon as they were over I caught a train to Beaulieu Road for a couple of days in the New Forest.  It was summer and I didn’t think I’d need a tent or sleeping bag.  Foolish me, it was a clear night and freezing and I got hardly any sleep at all – trains passing through the night not helping in that respect.  I returned to Cardiff and the next day went to Pembrokeshire where I saw my first Chough (7 at Elegug Stack) and two days later Dave Pitman and I started hitching to Scotland.

We left Cardiff early morning and hitched up to Perth where we slept in some large pipes by the road.  Traffic had thinned out considerable and with no lifts we got a bus and train on to Aviemore and camped at Loch Morlich.  Lack of transport was a bigger problem than we had anticipated and we had to do everything on foot.  Going up to the Cairngorm Chairlift was OK but Loch Garten was too far to day-trip and we packed up the tent and walked.  The Ospreys were good but the wardens not very welcoming.  Dave had had enough, left me his tent and hitched back to Cardiff.  I walked back to Loch Morlich intending to spend a couple more days there before getting a train to Aberdeen and visiting the Shetlands.  At Loch Morlich I was very fortunate to meet up with Ian Whitehouse and his non-birding friend who had a car.  On my first day on the tops with Dave (chairlift to Cairngorm, walk to Ben Macdui and back down) we had seen a Ptarmigan and four Dotterel.  I took Ian and friend back to the same area where we saw the Ptarmigan and Dotterel and continued on towards Ben Macdui where we had two 2 singing male Snow Buntings.  On the way back we encountered 2 Dotterel with 3 small but very mobile chicks.  The adults didn’t seem concerned by us although they made sure that their chicks were not too inquisitive.  Utterly captivating.  Ian and friend were heading up to Caithness and asked if I’d like to join them.  I certainly would and we headed for Fariad Head via Loch Laide.  We filled up with petrol at Kylestrome (hand pumped by an attractive lass) but missed the last ferry at and camped by the road.  After seeing Corncrake at Faraid Head we drove back down to Strathconnon where we saw 2 Golden Eagles and spent two more days in Rothiemuchus failing to find Capercallie.  We told ourselves that it probably wasn’t the best time of year to look for them.  Ian’s friend had to go back but Ian and I went on to Shetland catching the overnight ferry from Aberdeen.   

Ian and I spent a week on Shetland visiting Noss and Fetlar.  The seabird colony on the cliffs at Noss was amazing although my first view of it, from Bressay, was not particularly spectacular, a small green island sloping away to the east before it drops into the sea on the opposite side.  Once we’d landed on Noss the walk around became more and more interesting and it finally reached an unbelievable climax with the 600ft cliffs at Noup of Noss.  Before reaching the Noup I was amazed by the number of Great and Arctic Skuas, Fulmars and very tame Puffins.  As the cliffs rose they were joined by Kittiwakes and some auks but it was not until the Noup that I saw Gannets on the cliffs – a true seabird colony with thousands of birds on the ledges, in the water and in the air.  Each individual seemed to be adding to the noise, and smell which at times was almost overpowering.  The cliffs were white with dropping, hardly surprising when an estimated 50,000 pairs of seabirds were breeding there!   On Fetlar a pair of Snowy Owls had 2 small young.  A hide had been set up overlooking the nest from a distance.  There was a ‘waiting room’ the other side of a small hill and on being given permission to proceed to the hide I climbed to the brow of the hill and was confronted by the male Snowy Owl banking across in front of me.  Unforgettable.  The female and the chicks were very good too, as were the Red-necked Phalaropes which we saw regularly near our campsite as they chugging around the edge of Loch Funzie catching insects above the surface like a clockwork toy but with more grace and agility than it would ever be possible to programme mechanically. 

While on Shetland I became fascinated by the skuas and their differing methods of deterring trespassers (i.e. me) from their territories.  When walking through a Great Skua colony the particular pair of birds whose territory I had entered would take off from their observation post and fly directly at me 5-10 feet above the ground, veering away at the very last minute.  Sometimes while one bird ‘attacked’ me head on the other would woosh past over my head from the rear.  Attempts would often be half-hearted if I was on the edge of the territory and as I never went close to a chick, all of which had left the nest, I was never hit, but carrying a stick aloft gave a measure of protection.  Once a territory had been left the owners would lose interest as the next pair took over.  In contrast Arctic Skuas would come in in a group, up to 9 or 10 birds one after the other, before regrouping and trying again.  Several times I was clipped on the head and they seemed to mean business more than the Great Skuas.  Arctic Skuas also tried feigning a broken wing to draw me away from a nest, something I never saw Bonxies do.  Leaving Shetland I had had enough of hitching but it was a long journey back by train. 

Back in Sussex I twitched a summer plumaged Spotted Sandpiper at Weir Wood Reservoir (pre-fraudster days!) but the spots were only visible through a telescope which, without a tripod with me, I rested on someone’s car roof.  I spent the last week of August camping at Cley with Dave Pitman seeing Barred & Icterine Warblers, Wryneck and a Purple Heron at Hickling although we missed a Black-winged Pratincole seen over the marsh late one afternoon.  The highlight was a good fall on Blakeney Point on 30 August with 80 Pied Flycatchers, a Red-backed Shrike, Wood Warbler and 7 Wrynecks in the Plantation and an Icterine Warbler on the Hood.  I was now working at the Business Statistics Office in Newport on the sandwich part of my course but as it was an easy, almost door to door, commute on the bus I stayed living in Cardiff.  I saw 2 Melodious Warblers at Portland and a Grey Phalarope and White-rumped Sandpiper at Ferrybridge on a day trip. We returned via Chew Valley Lake where Ruddy Duck was my 4^th new bird of the day.  My British List was now 234!

me at Portland (photo by Maurice Chown, kicked around a bit by me)

My first foreign birding trip, as opposed to a family trip abroad where I saw some birds, was a week in Majorca with Richard Bosanquet, Maurice Chown, Graham Hearl, Pete Naylor and Nigel Redman.  Maurice & Graham had met the others who were from around London on the Scillies the previous autumn.  Graham had an eye for a deal and got us a cheap (out of season) package tour to Puerto Pollensa where we hired a car.  It was quite a squeeze for 6 and on one occasion I managed to shut the door on Maurice’s fingers not realising he was coming out my way, ouch!   We went late to maximise the chance of seeing Eleanora’s Falcons which were excellent.  One blustery morning at Cabo Formentor we had excellent views of nine in the air at one time (and 15 in total that day).  They were stopping several hundred feet and ‘throwing up’ to return to their original height, a little above us, at seemingly faster speeds than their descents.  All the time they were calling ‘keya keya keya’.  The rough sea several hundred feet below was the perfect backdrop.   We also saw Cory’s and Balearic Shearwaters (on one occasion I had Cory’s and Eleanora’s in the same telescope view!), Booted Eagle, Black Vulture, Blue Rock Thrush and Olivaceous and Marmora’s Warblers.  I saw 100 species, 15 were new and the trip cost £60!  Back in the UK autumn was pretty much over and quite an anti-climax.  A weekend in East Anglia in mid November with Maurice produced 2 Rough-legged Buzzards, 4 Shore Larks, 3 Great Grey Shrikes and 100+ Snow Buntings.  Otherwise I was finding the routine of working 9-5 every day rather restrictive but made weekend visits to the usual Welsh sites.  I returned home for Christmas and on a visit with my dad to Church Norton on Christmas Eve saw 2 Swallows hawking insects low over the sheltered beach near the graveyard.

[blogged April 2014]

The 1970s, part one: getting started, 1970-73

A bit of unreliable history with no images.

I’ve been interested in animals for as long as I can remember but my interest in birds probably started around my eleventh birthday while on a family holiday to the Isles of Scilly in June 1965.  We went to Samson and were surprised by the number of eggs and newly hatched chicks right by the paths there.  We saw an egg with a small hole in it and a beak poking through and decided to await developments.  The chick struggled to emerge from the egg, often flopping down exhausted for a few minutes after some of its efforts.  Slowly the hole got larger as the chick broke more pieces from the shell and after nearly an hour it emerged, a wet sticky mess.  Prior to this I have a vague recollection of seeing a male harrier on Bodmin Moor when I was 9 or 10 (and living in Cornwall) but was more interested in animals with zoo visits a highlight.  Family holidays to the Isles of Scilly continued to 1969 when I went on one of the first Seabird Specials and saw Storm Petrel, Manx Shearwater and Puffin.  Birds were beginning to register more and animal watching in the UK was never rewarding enough to really catch my attention so it was birds almost by default.  Birds were virtually everywhere, did interesting things and there were enough different types to make them interesting without being an overwhelmingly unmanageable species most if which I could never know.  Some birds were pretty good looking too!

I started making a note of the birds I saw in 1970, initially when taken on Sussex Ornithological Society outings by my dad.  I bumbled along in a very low-key way for a couple of years without seeing that much.  Looking back now highlights were probably Little Egret (then a rarity) and some superb Bearded Tits at Stodmarsh, Nightingale and Dartford Warblers at Lullington Heath, Osprey and Bearded Tits at Pagham as well as a December tern (probably Sandwich), Snow Buntings at Rye and the regular wintering Glaucous Gull at Hove.  Most I have long since forgotten, not the same unfortunately with the March 1972 Gyrfalcon on the Downs behind Worthing.  My Biology teacher told me on a Thursday that his son had seen it a few days previously and I went after School the next day.  I’d been told it was at Cissbury and spent the couple of hours to dusk aimlessly wandering around there seeing nothing and nobody.  I had failed on my first ever twitch.  It later transpired it had been most often seen at No Man’s Land a mile or so to the north, and was last seen that evening.  So close yet so far and a lesson to myself to make sure I got more precise information in future!  I tell myself I wouldn’t have appreciated such a rare bird then if I had seen it, but as it was a white morph I’m sure that I would have.

We had two family holidays walking in Austria.  I was looking out for birds each day and saw Golden Eagle, Black Woodpecker, Alpine Accentor, Nutcracker, Alpine Chough and Red-backed Shrikes although my favourite bird was the Dipper.  The first was a rather tame looking individual in Saltzburg which I didn’t count!  I was also quite taken by a pair of Siskins watched feeding at close range on a thistle head.

In October 1972 I went to University in Cardiff and immediately joined the Cardiff Naturalists Society which had a very active programme of indoor meetings and field outings and was very encouraging to new young members.  In my first week I attended an indoor meeting and signed up for a coach trip to Portland the following weekend.  2 Shore Lark were the highlight there but I’d really got the bug.  I made my first visit to Kenfig, a good area I’d been told about that was about 25 miles west of Cardiff, reached by bus and a 3 mile walk.  I was rewarded with 3 Whooper Swans while the term finished with a coach trip to Tregaron Bog  where I saw Red Kite and Hen Harrier.  A trip to Pagham with my dad at the end of the year produced my first Water Rail feeding in one of the ditches.

In 1973 I went on all the Cardiff based outings I could, spent odd hours between lectures in Bute Park and made occasional visits on the bus to Kenfig, which was then a 45 minute walk.  I saw a Great Grey Shrike on the Gower Peninsular but it was the Fulmar’s effortless flight at Worm’s Head that really knocked me out.  On a trip to Slimbridge I saw my first Peregrine and had Bean and Pink-footed Geese pointed out amongst the White-fronts but was not fortunate with the Lesser White-front there at the time – modern optics would have helped a lot.  The Tropical House provided welcome respite from the biting cold of the Dumbles but it usually took a while for binoculars to demist themselves.  It was the Tropical House that gave me a first taste of what birding in the jungle might be like (rather good!) and their Orange-headed Ground Thrush became a firm favourite and a most wanted bird.  In the dunes at Kenfig I found a dead Great Northern Diver with most of its neck missing, a bird I’d not seen alive.

In mid March 1973 Maurice Chown asked if I’d like to join a week-end trip to North Norfolk.  A long drive ‘cross-country’ from Cardiff but it was great fun, camping out on Salthouse Heath.  While driving back to our campsite at dusk we disturbed a Barn Owl from a tree by the road, a new bird for me.  It flew down the road ahead of us for about 100m before coming to an open field which it started quartering.  We quickly pulled up alongside the field and had excellent views of the owl as it did two circuits of the field before continuing down the road.  Brilliant.  On that trip we also saw 13 Whooper Swans, Short-eared Owl, 6 Shore Lark and 50 Snow Bunting.  In mid April, while home for Easter, I returned to Cley with my dad, staying in the George for three nights.  We saw 25 Shore Larks, some excellent Bearded Tits and 4 Snow Buntings and returned home via Minsmere. 

Back in Cardiff after Easter I visited Kenfig (Grasshopper Warbler), Ynys-Hir and Gwenffrwd (Pied Flycatchers and Wood Warblers) and did a boat trip from Penarth to Lundy but it was too rough to land (Manx Shearwater and 2 Puffins).  In mid May I watched a pair of Nuthatches nesting in Bute Park in a plastered up hole 4m up in an Elm.  Both parents were feeding young and in almost three hours of watching I recorded 40 visits, an average of one every four minutes of so with most visits lasting 5-20 seconds.  I was unable to visit the site again until after the birds had flown but on a later visit I saw a Nuthatch enter the hole and suddenly become excited, perhaps remembering the family it had raised there?

My first successful twitch was to Kenfig on 24 May 1973.  I’d been told the previous evening of a female Red-footed Falcon there and so caught the bus to Bridgend and Pyle and then walked to Kenfig.  I was almost half-way around the pool before I was suddenly confronted by the bird on the top of a nearby bush.  I spent most of the day there watching it on and off hawking over the pool, catching insects with its feet and transferring them to its mouth, before disappearing without trace a couple of times.  An excellent bird.  Graham Hearl, the local RSPB rep and by now a good friend arranged a long weekend of wardening at Worms Head and we called in at Kenfig on the way but although the Red-foot was still around we didn’t see it.  It made me even more pleased to have bunked off the previous day!  I was then into first year exams and feeling I’d not done very well in my first one had to put all ideas of birding to one side and get stuck into it.  Half those on my course were either kicked out or had to retake the year.  Fortunately my knuckling down had paid off.

Back home we had a walking holiday in Scotland, based near Inverness, where I saw Slavonian Grebes (10 with 2 juveniles on Loch Laide), Short-eared Owl (seen 4 times on evening walks around Strathpeffer Golf Course), Dipper and Twite.  On one occasion the owl landed on a fence post 40m away with its back to me but would swing its head around to peer at me with its bright yellow eyes, decided that I was not a threat and swing it back, repeating the process several times before flying off.  One day I persuaded the family to visit Ullapool where I went on a tourist boat to the Summer Isles seeing my first Black Guillemots - 40 including one which swam within 5m of the boat - and wild Rock Doves.  On the way home we climbed up Cairn Ban Mor, me hoping for Ptarmigan and Dotterel.  We didn’t find the latter but saw a flock of seven male and three female Ptarmigan, first spotted by Anna when a ‘stone’ in front of her got up and started walking away!

I saw my first Cirl Bunting in the Cuckmere and in September stayed for a week at Portland Bird Observatory on an interesting BTO run Bird and Weather Movement course.  We saw Balearic Shearwater and Barred and Melodious Warblers but the course was a bit inflexible at times and we didn’t get out in time to see a Wryneck or a Scarlet Rosefinch found by local Grahame Walbridge.  Some of us had brief views of an interesting looking warbler creeping around in the Bill quarries that flew into the Admiralty and disappeared before any experts arrived.  We described it as like a brown Phylloscopus warbler with a rounded tail and very prominent white supercillium.  From the limited literature we had we wondered if it might have been a Radde’s or Dusky but mid September was definitely rather early.  Looking back it was probably just a Sedge Warbler seen out of context but it was still rather frustrating.  Term started in October and the first Cardiff Naturalists outing was also to Portland where a juvenile Woodchat Shrike showed well on telephone wires behind the Devonshire Pub.  Described by some as like a paper bag it wasn’t the most exciting of rarities but while talking to Grahame Walbridge as we were waiting for the coach to collect us from the Observatory he spotted an Alpine Swift flying around dwarfing the hirundines it seemed to be accompanying.

I was visiting Bute Park regularly and on 25 October saw my first Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, my 200^th British species.  I saw it a further 7 times to late January, approximately once in every three visits.  I nearly always located it by first hearing it tapping on branches although Nuthatches and Great Tits did that too.  On one occasion it, a Treecreeper and a Nuthatch were within 3m of each other on the same branch.  A weekend in East Anglia in November produced 9 Shore Lark, Willow Tit, Brambling, 50 Snow Buntings and a Stoat with a dead Greenfinch.  I also visited Kenfig, Tregaron and Lisvane Reservoir, the latter several times as it was easily reached by train from Cardiff, even if they ran rather infrequently.  Back in Sussex for Christmas I visited East Head and saw the King Alfred Glaucous Gull which had returned for another winter.  On New Year’s Eve I caught the train to Weymouth and bus to Portland for a four night stay in the Observatory.  There, by arrangement, I met Dave Pitman who had come down from Cardiff.

me at Tregaron (photo Maurice Chown)

[blogged March 2014]