Lesson Two: What birdwatching am?

Introduction

So, you've learned all about what a bird is (if not, please consult Lesson One) - now it's time for you to learn about how to watch them.

Bird watching can be done almost anywhere, and you don't even need telescopes, binoculars or birds to do it.  Usually it is done outside, but if you are unable to leave the house, or if it's a bit chilly out, then you can birdwatch from your very own home, or that of someone else (for example, that of a cousin), by looking up birds on YouTube.  This is a great way to add rare birds to your list.

What list is?

Many birdwatchers choose to compose lists of birds they've seen, mostly for tax purposes.  Birdwatchers will often keep a 'life list,' which is a list of all the birds one has ever seen.  It is called a 'life list' because birdwatchers have one instead of having a life.  Many birdwatchers like to start their life list off with something simple like a robin or blackbird.  In fact, 48% of British bird watchers surveyed had robin as the first bird on their life list, 32% had blackbird, 15% wren, 12% masked shrike and 10% had other birds.  Interestingly 99% started their lists with the number 1, making it the most common number on bird lists.

Example of a 'life list'

Another type of list that many birdwatchers keep is their 'year list', which is a list of years that the birdwatcher has seen.  Most bird watchers are actively trying to dip 2020 for obvious reasons.  There are also patch lists, which is a list of all the birds seen on a bird watcher's patch.

What a patch am?

A patch is a receptacle into which birdwatchers pour massive amounts of time and energy.  It is usually made of park or forest or pond or something else where birds go.  The idea being that the patch birder will go to their patch regularly and look at lots of boring birds, day in day out, until they loose the will to live, in the hope that one day, maybe, just maybe, they might find a rare bird.  A 'rare' bird on a patch usually means a bird that's actually really common in the woods just up the road.

Birdwatchers mark their patches by urinating on trees.  When there is a high population of birwatchers on one patch they will fiercely compete to exert dominance over one another.  They do this by trying to see more bird species than the others, by trying to see rarer species than the others, and by fighting.

Sir Lord Gerbert White (1720 - 1884)
One of the first people to come up with birdwatching. 
He mostly watched birds on his local patch of Selborne Ultimatum.   

Patch birding is said to be the most rewarding and enriching form of birding as it harmonises you with the land and enables you to sync yourself with the ebb and flow of the seasons as you notice birds come and go, note their behaviours at different times of the year, see how the plant and insect life harmonises with the weather and all that other hippy muck.  It is certainly a more wholesome form of birdwatching than twitching, which is a soul destroying endeavor, somewhat akin to heroin addiction.

What be twitching do?

Twithching is where a birdwatcher receives news of a rare bird, either by tweet, pager or telegram, and drops whatever they're doing and goes to see that bird, no matter how far away it is, or how expensive it is to get to.  A dedicated twitcher can devote their whole life to building up a list of, sometimes, dozens of birds!  This often comes at the expense of their social lives, marriages and careers.  Then, when a twitcher dies, there is often great division within their already broken and shattered families as their offspring bicker and argue, often in the legal courts, to decide who will inherit the deceased twitcher's list.  Twitchers are often forced into a double life, having to hide their addiction from their spouses, employers and priests.

A crowd of Twitchers gather to see a Bearded Vulture in the Peak District.
  Note: the Twitchers have been photo-shopped out to protect their identity.

Some would argue that twitching is of no discernible use to the world at all; that possibly it is even a negative force in that it encourages people to make long journeys, burning petrol and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or trampling down habitats and disturbing birds just to get a little tick on a list.  However, I disagree, there is a great use for twitchers.  Whenever I am away from home for an extended period of time I always report a rare bird in my back garden.  That way I am guaranteed round-the-clock surveillance on my house to prevent it from burglary, which then enables me to go twitching all over the country safe in the knowledge that there are a dozen eyes watching my home at all times.

What Nature Reserves is?

Another good place to see nature is a nature reserve.  These are also good places to go and see reserves.  Nature reserves are places where wild animals and birds have been gathered together in one place to make them easier to see, and hear, and taste.  The best kind of nature reserve is called a zoo, where you can see lots of wild animals and birds in cages.

The RSPB (Secret Society for the Production of Birds), WWT (World Wrestling Federation) and NNR (Royal National Lifeboat Association) run wildlife reserves all over the place, and this will be the subject of our next lesson.

 


  

Bempton Cliffs

Once upon a time I wanted to go and see me some seabirds, so I got in the car and went me to Bempton Cliffs.

Fun fact... 
Did you know, despite how everyone acts, Puffins are not the only species of bird you can see at Bempton Cliffs!

There are, for example, Kittiwakes.  Colonies of these gracious and handsome gulls announce their presence by calling out their own onomatopoeic names in an avian chorus of thousands, swooping in to feed their distinctive black and white downed chicks, huddled together on rocky...
  "Oh look, a puffin!  Look at that Mike, a puffin.  I found one."

Then there's the slender and graceful guillemot; seemingly immune to gravity as a dozen of them cram together on the most shallow of ledges, or form rafts on the open sea with their young, who jump from the cliff face before they can even fly to begin their life of...
  "I think I see one!  I think I see one!  Aww, look a puffin, isn't he cute."

And the razorbill, with that exquisite detail of white drawn around it's beak, and those flipper-like-wings that allow it to basically fly under water, the closest surviving ancestor to the greater auk, the flightless bird that once graced our shores, now extinct because of human...
  "Haha!  Look, that little puffin is stood on a rock.  Isn't that funny."

The glorious gannet, so much bigger than you realise.  These powerful birds, that can smash into the water at great speeds, raining death from above on any unsuspecting fish, have great capacity for tenderness within them as they lightly caress their young, cotton-wool chicks on the...
  "That puffin just flapped its wings.  Did you see that?  Maureen... Maureen... Maureen... MAUREEN!!!  The puffin just flapped its wings!  Yeah, I found one, come and have a look.  I don't care if he fell off, he can swim, we paid enough for lessons, there's a puffin over here."

I shouldn't be so down on the puffin spotters though.  It just seemed a shame to me that many of the people crowded around me didn't seem to be appreciating the finer points of the many other glorious birds that, through no fault of their own, weren't puffins.  Other than using them for directions I don't think I heard a single person comment on any of the other birds present.  "Follow the ledge beneath those two big white birds, turn right at the seagull, keep on going until the black and white bird and then look up a bit and you'll see the puffin scratching himself."

But I should be grateful for the puffins.  If they can act as ambassadors for their slightly-less-comedy-nosed-but-equally-as-magnificent colleagues, then that can only be a good thing.  If one of the children dragged along by their parents to look at puffins developed an interest in birds as a result, then all credit to the puffin.  I don't think it would be the kid who was throwing stones at gannets while his parents laughed at his adorable antics, or the one on her phone the whole time, or the one trying to climb over the fence next to a sheer drop while his parents argued with each other about sandwich fillings, but maybe one of the other kids.

Still, I wonder whether people would be as enamored with puffins if there were hundreds of them in every city; defecating all over people, cars and buildings alike, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

 As much as I normally ignore feral filth pigeons, seeing them here, in their natural habitat, where I can rightfully call them rock doves, it was impossible not to admire them.  You have to work hard to blot out the memory of the man-made Frankenstein abominations pecking at human vomit outside the Wetherspoons, but once you've removed the feral variety from your mind you can appreciate the beauty of these true rocks doves.

However, it can also be a little depressing to see, among the purer looking birds, some of the modified varieties that human kind cooked up.  On cliffs that could have once been home to the grater auk if humans hadn't have wiped them off the face of the earth, it's sad to be reminded that another bird species has been altered beyond recognition by human tampering.  Perhaps if it wasn't for the feral filth pigeon, seeing this graceful species of dove that lives in the cliff face might have been as exciting as any of the other bird species at Bempton.

Due to Covid 19, strict social distancing was in place throughout the reserve.  Social distancing is where you see that there is approximately a meter gap between people at one of the viewing platforms, so you wait patiently, while other people just go on ahead in front of you anyway and cram in where ever they see a gap.  But, fair play to the RSPB: I was glad to see they had only opened one of their car parks in order to control numbers, and were turning people away once it was full... apart from when they turned me away.  Having said that, parking a mile away in the town and walking to the reserve instead meant that I saw a good number of yellow wagtails, linnets and yellowhammers before I even arrived.  (By which time there was several empty spaces in the car park anyway.)

Can't touch this.  Yellowhammer time.

Once I'd had a look at the thousands of seabirds crammed on to the rocks I went off for a wonder along the trail.  It was along the trail that I bumped into a few tree sparrows, which makes the first time I'd seen them in the UK.  I bet puffins can't flutter-hover in one place and then gracefully land on a flower like tree sparrows can.

It was also good to see, and hear, the upward spiraling skylarks and the downward parachuting meadow pipits in the fields, along with white throats, sedge warblers and reed buntings.  But it was the juvenile cuckoo that probably won the most coveted 'bird of the day' award (a difficult choice, considering I had added three 'lifers' to my bird list (the three auk species) but I'm trying to think objectively here.)  However, before I could get closer to it for a proper look, it was scared off by a young family, probably looking for puffins.

Tree Sparrow

Juvenile Cuckoo

After glimpses of a fulmer and a peregrine on the walk back I was satisfied that I had achieved what I had come here to do, so it was time to start making a move home.  However, now that the crowds had gone and most of the viewing platforms were empty, there was only one thing I had to do before I left...

Aww, look, I found one!

Oooh!  Three of them together!

Hello fellas!

Aww, feeling sleepy?

Hehe!  Look at him fly.

Yey!  Another one!

Well hello there you little cutie.

Aww, that one looks sad.

Peek-a-boo!  I see you!

Aren't you just the cutest little birds in all of Bempton!?  But don't tell any one I said so.

   

Lesson One: What is bird?

Introduction

One of the fist steps to becoming an accomplished bird watcher is knowing exactly what a bird is and/ or isn't.  You can buy guides in shops that will tell you a lot of what you need to know.  I, personally, use Colin's Bird Guide, and he hasn't even asked for it back yet.  Some of these books are, literally, several pages long and contain all sorts of information about what makes a bird or not.  This first lesson is a crash course in bird identification.  By the end of it you should be able to identify whether something is a bird more than 78% of the time.

What is bird?

Birds are a kind of fancy lizard.  Most, if not all, birds have feathers and beaks and, unlike trombones, many of them can fly. Birds were invented in 1903 by the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur (Orville himself was a bird; a kind of green duckling in a nappy.)  Up until then people used to spot trains instead, but most trees could not support the weight of a perching steam engine so it was decided something smaller and lighter was needed.

The Wright brothers with an early design of the goldfinch.  

A bird is defined as being "a person with warm blood, which lays hard, shelled eggs and, typically, has feathers, wings and beaked, toothless jaws."  Birds constitute the animal class of  'Aves' (as opposed to the 'ave nots') and are further divided into 'orders'.  There are 40 known 'orders' of birds.  The largest order being the passeriformes, which constitutes well over half of bird species and one hundred percent of passeriform species.  Other orders include Psittaciformes (parrots), Strigiformes (owls), Charadriiformes (Shorebirds) and Cuneiformes (one of the earliest systems of writing.)

Birds are, technically speaking, dinosaurs.  Now that you know this you can tell everyone down the pub and they'll all think you're really cool as you belch that fact at them between drunken rants about the EU, or your latest theory about the Catholic church that you learned in a Dan Brown novel.  This poses a very contentious and much discussed question among ornithologists - If science made a T.Rex, like what they done in the movies, would it be permitted on your bird list?   

Birds range greatly in size.  The smallest bird in the world is the bee humming bird.  Males weigh in at 1.95g, which is about the same weight as 1.95g of sugar, but not quite as sweet.  The largest bird in the world is Big Bird, although, this is a human being (homo sepien) in a suit.

There are approximately exactly 10,000 species of birds to chose from, for example, ducks.  Birds have adapted to almost every terrain and weather.  Some have developed funny bits that grow out of their face, whilst others have evolved weird long sections, and other ones have developed straighter, browner parts - but all birds have one thing in common; they are all birds.  This is what differentiates them from most other types of animal, for example ocelots, because almost no other animals, apart from birds, are birds.  The exception to this is the bat, which is the only species of mammal that is also a bird.

Birds, like most other things, are comprised of 'parts' or 'bits', and some of these bits have special names to help us identify which pieces are which.

Where bird?

Since the beginning of time, birds have spread to almost every country on earth.   The only place on earth that birds have not been found to live is the Moon.  Birds live in a wide variety of situations.  Some birds live almost exclusively 'on the wing', such as the swift, which only lands in order to mate.  The ostrich, on the other hand, is the complete opposite, in that it spends all of its time on the ground, apart from when it is time to breed.

The best countries to see birds are countries with what is known as a "sky".  This is a form of bird storage that almost all countries use to some degree or other.  Examples of countries that have birds are France, Tonga and Spain.

Most birds are what is known as "outside birds," meaning their natural habitat is outside.  There are some birds, such as Budgies, which evolved and adapted to 1980s front rooms, but the majority of birds can be found out and about.

Birds are attracted to nests, so if you can find an area with a lot of bird nests, there is a good chance you will find birds nearby.

Birds have also been known to be in two places at once, this is called migration.  One of the most well known and evocative examples of this hobby is the swallow, which returns to the skies above U.K every spring.  It was once believed that the swallow remained in the U.K during the winter, and that they hibernated under water, in rivers and ponds.  Once they invented science it was discovered that swallows actually migrate to Africa every year, where they hibernate in African rivers and ponds.

The Earth is home to almost all bird species known to Man

What bird do?

One of the things birds are most known for doing is their song, with which birds tell each other how horny or how violent they're feeling, very much like in rap music.  Some birds' calls are so distinctive that they have become named after the noise they make, such as the chiffchaff, jackdaw, cuckoo and pied-wagtail.

Another thing that birds do is eat.  This is the process of obtaining energy, in the form of nutrients, from external sources, otherwise known as 'food'.  Bird diets vary widely depending on the species.  Some, like blackbirds and dunnocks will eat worms, finches favour seeds, birds of prey will eat other birds or small mammals and ferral rock doves (the common pigeon, or filth pigeon as it is otherwise known) lives almost exclusively off of human vomit.

Birds reproduce by a process called "reproduction."  They lay eggs, which eventually evolve into some sort of bird or other.  The possession of bird eggs was actually made illegal in the 1950s, which is the reason why so many birds have criminal records.   

Most birds are extremely dangerous and will attack without warning or reason.

Test

Can you tell which of these following items is a bird?  If so, you are ready to move on to Lesson Two...

 

My Wet Patch

Every bird watcher needs a 'patch' and having left the wonderful Wanstead Flats last summer I have been looking for a new patch that I can bird, half-halfheartedly, once every few months.  My one allotted government sponsored hour of exercise a day during lock-down has enabled me to find such a place: the Aire Valley.  The Aire Valley is a big place, so I'll mostly be focusing on the six kilometre stretch of it between Riddlesden and Utley   As this area consists mostly of floodplains I have nicknamed it my Wet Patch. 

The Aire

The main geographical feature of the patch is the Aire river.

Photo Credit: Diego Torres

The Aire runs from Malham tarn to Airmyn, where it joins the Ouse.  It is 92 miles long, which makes it the longest river in the whole of the Aire Valley!  It may, or may not, be the four-thousand-and-thirty-eighth longest river in the world.  If you were to straighten out every bend in the river it would be 92 miles long!  Only much straighter.  That's longer than a double-decker bus!  Six kilometres of the river run between Riddlesden and Silsden, which are precisely the six kilometres we are concerning ourselves with here.  

The river is flanked by fields containing cows, sheep and golfers and it occasionally tries to kill them all by flooding.  Most of the land in this part of the valley is floodplain, or, as it's known locally "prime real estate."

During the cold, wet months, which is quite a lot of months in West Yorkshire, the river floods the neighboring fields to provide habitat for the soggier birds, such as geese, swans, waders and gulls.  In the spring warblers, buntings, finches and thrushes sing from the bushes on the waters edge while kingfishers, goosander and common sandpiper dart up and down the river itself.  This stretch also supports a few sand martin colonies.  The fields on either side often resound with the calls of curlew, lapwing and oystercatcher.

Silsden, Utley & Riddlesden

There are three towns/ villages in this part of the valley which come with their compliment of starlings, collard doves, house sparrows and filth pigeons.

Silsden is a small ex-industrial village, but you probably know it as the location in which the world's biggest onion was grown.  Grown by Vincent Throp in 2010, the mammoth allium was entered into the Guinness Book of Records weighing in at 6.4kg (about the same weight as 6.4kg of butter) and won the town international respect and acclaim.  A statue was erected to the gargantuan bulb and has been a place of pilgrimage ever since.

Riddlesden is a suburb of Keighley that was once a village in its own right and still maintains some of that 'suburb of Keighley' charm.  It was the breeding place for the Airedale Heifer, but so what.  The grounds of East Riddlesden Hall are, I guess, kind of okay.

Utley is in the middle of Silsden and Riddlesden.  People live here so that they can pretend they don't live in Keighley.  In the mid nineteenth century John Stewart Mill divided the village into High Utley and Low Utley, and it is the lower part that I'm including in this patch. This is also where I live.  It is also where my garden is...

Photo credit:  Mark Morton 

The railway that runs past the bottom of my garden, with its line of trees on either side, acts as a green corridor leading into Utley cemetery, meaning my garden is quite busy bird-wise; bullfinch, goldfinch, chaffinch, siskin, lesser redpoll, treecreeper, great spotted woodpecker, goldcrest, curlew and oyster catcher are all regularly seen in or around or over my garden. 

Utley cemetery

An operational cemetery where dog-walkers bring their pets to scat on the graves.  A good range of woodland in the trees and you can sometimes witness a good punch-up between a sparrowhawk and magpie.  A little past the cemetery, close to the dual carriage roundabout, where all the road works are, you know the place, is a little nameless pond with, sometimes, a duck.     
         
Keighley golf course

Home to a number of middle-class species of bird.  If you're lucky you might see... wait for it... a birdie!

Keighley golf course sits on the north bank of the Aire and you have to walk through it to get to the canal.  Mistle and song thrush, pheasants (not to be confused with peasants, who you definitely won't find here), oystercatchers, tree-creeper, grey wagtail, roe deer and spotted flycatcher.

Stockbridge nature reserve

Photo credit: Ray in Manilla 

At the eastern end of the Wet Patch is a small wetland nature reserve.  This is owned and maintained by Bradford Ornithological Group.  Only members are allowed in, and you have to know the secret handshake and password to be able to get in.  There's a nice hide facing a lake, reeds, scrapes, islands and a little wooded trail.

In the spring/ summer the reserve attracts reed and sedge warblers and whitethroat, as well as various finches and tits to the feeders.  Waders, such as snipe, common sandpiper and redshank stop over during the winter months.  And all sorts of other things pass over, and even stop to pop out a few kids, throughout the year.

Leeds - Liverpool canal

Mallards, Canada and Greylag geese.  Kingfisher if you're lucky.  Also a great dawn chorus form the bordering trees and fields.

Low wood

Photo credit: Daveynin

A small Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve along the side of the canal.  Teeming with life.  Treecreepers, nuthatch, jays, pied flycatchers, tawney owls, badgers and roe deer.  Sometimes face eating youths.  Lots of bird boxes around too.  Let's hope the wildlife is as successful at breeding as the local teenagers are.

Low Wood is governed by the mysterious "Low Wood Volunteers."  They live in the many burrows that dot the area and come out at night to have a bit of a tidy up and leave notes asking people not to litter.

Spring Crag Wood/ Alder Carr Wood

Host to strange trees which seem to grow a fruit that looks, and smells, like bags of dog scat.  In actual fact, believe it or not, these are actually bags of dog dirt!  But don't think ill of dog walkers, this is actually an ancient pagan offering to Mother Nature, that is kept alive by dog owners the nation over (who own dogs, so must love nature, right?)  It involves picking up the dog mess in a plastic bag, the responsible thing to do, and then hanging the bag on a tree or bush because, well, it's not their problem is it.  This not only fills an otherwise pleasant spot with stinking turd, but it also stuffs the planet full of damaging plastic.  I mean, the council doesn't put bins deep in the middle of the forest or miles into the moors, so what do you expect them to do?  The circle of life or something will sort it out.  Other variations of this noble practice include flinging your dog muck into a neighboring field, dumping it in the river, or rubbing it in the face of a newborn lamb.

Having said that, there is some great litter in Alder Carr Wood.

Photo credit: me.

Hillside

A steep climb up the northern wall of the valley.  Good views over the river - I can see my house from here etc.  Normally a good spot to see game birds, raptors, pipits and larks.

It's here that the patch boarders Ilkley Moor, so if I fancied making a day of it I could wander on to the moors and see posh people shooting things (or Moorons as I like to call them.)

It's mostly farms, so you're restricted to public footpaths.  There used to be a golf course here too, but it now belongs to the Scouts, which means, instead of dodging golf balls it's now arrows and throwing axes you have to watch out for.  The Scouts are rewilding much of the site, so it's going to be a good place to keep an eye on over the coming years.  Only - be aware - wandering around a children's play area with binoculars and a camera could attract suspicion.       

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So that's pretty much it for the patch.  It's a big old area, about 6km₂, but you can walk to any extreme of it from my house in an hour or less. It also contains a nice range of habitats, and a nice range of birds to go with it.