On Tuesday evening I gave a talk to the Lincolnshire Bird Club.
I set off on Tuesday afternoon from my home in east Northants and before the car had warmed up I’d seen a pair of tumbling lapwings in a place where I wouldn’t normally see them. It must be spring!
A little further down the road a red kite drifted past.
I don’t know Lincolnshire very well – it’s not a place you go through on the way to anywhere else, on the whole. My visits to the county have mainly centred around the excellent RSPB nature reserves at Frampton and Freiston Shore and Gibraltar Point, although I have occasionally visited the south shore of the Humber and there was one profitable visit to Market Rasen racecourse a long time ago. And there was a painful visit to a Rushden and Diamonds away game at Boston which saw my team consigned to relegation back to the Conference – the pain still lingers even though the club does not.
However, almost every time I do go to Lincolnshire I think I should spend more time there. Taking the road from Boston, with its famous stump, to Horncastle where I was speaking, the generally straight road passes across some interesting flat land and occasionally wiggles about through attractive woods and quite attractive villages. Here and there there were some very attractive houses, not just the large homes set in pretty parkland, but also normal people’s homes. every now and again i would pass a building and think ‘That’s a very attractive building’ at a frequency that seems to me to be higher than my experience in other counties. it may be that my expectations of lincolnshire are a bit low and so it is finds it easier to delight me than otherwise.
Likewise, in the fairly intensively managed countryside there seems, for some reason unknown to me, to be a bit more space for farmland birds. A barn owl hunted down the roadside just round the sharp bend following an encounter with an attractive farmhouse, and before I arrived at my farmhouse B&B a pair of grey partridges were my first for the year (I don’t get out much!).
Having been given a warm welcome at my B&B at Baumber I set off to Horncastle to see whether there was going to be a good turn out for my talk. And there was! Around 50-60 people came to talk, listen and nine of them bought copies of Fighting for Birds too!
I enjoyed the evening, even though I had a cold and a cough (man flu!), and I hope the audience did too. There were some old friends, some familiar faces from birdwatching hides, some RSPB staff and some regular readers of this blog. I even enjoyed the Bird Club AGM which followed my talk and it’s clear that the Lincs Bird Club is a well-run and thriving body – which is also obvious from its web page.
The next morning I woke with less of a cold and opened the blinds to see that there was snow on the ground and it was still snowing. Never mind, the breakfast of local beef sausages, bacon and farm fresh eggs was a great start to the day and the farmhouse was full of prints of birds too, which might be because its owners are Bird Club members.
The place mats on which my breakfast arrived had birds on too. The one in front of me was of a yellow robin which didn’t ring a bell with me at first but then I noticed that the toast would go on top of a kookaburra. Ahh! – we are dealing with Australian birds here. The mat for the tea was a golden bowerbird which took me back to the superb male I once saw in a rainforest on the Atherton Tableland near Cairns.
I took a ‘phone call over breakfast about next Monday’s blog and I watched the snow turn into rain as I enjoyed the toast and tea.
The drive back was made gloomy be the thought of George Osborne and drizzle, sleet, rain and snow but was brightened by thoughts of Australian birds, Lincolnshire breakfasts, hen harrier debates and the camaraderie of birders. As always, the brightness won over the gloom. After all, this was the first day of spring.
I haven’t heard a chiffchaff singing or seen a brimstone butterfly yet. Have you?
![By nottsexminer (Brimstone Butterfly Uploaded by Fæ) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://markavery.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Brimstone_Butterfly_8109898250.jpg)
Uplifting after yesterdays Blog/budget. I spent last weekend on the Pembrokeshire coast, there to celebrate my partner’s 60’th in one of her favourite places with her children and partners. We don’t often all get together and the seven of us had a great time. We all like the outdoors the cliff scenery is wonderful and we each went off and did various things during the day. I saw a few flowers, violets, daisy, celandines, scurvy grass, one thrift flower and lots of coconut smelling gorse. I won’t tell you how long it is since I saw Chough, needless to say a long time but there they were in resplendent blue black with those ridiculous red bills with Ravens and the odd Peregrine marvellous.
The point is however much we complain, campaign to save or enhance what wildlife we have left our countryside can still be so uplifting and rejuvenating, especially when shared with people we care about.No I’ve not seen Chiffchaff or Brimstone yet but I’m sure I soon will.
Paul – exactly!
Saw a smart male Brimstone butterfly on 5th March in South Cerney, Glos. It was sunny and 14C, I thought Spring had come, but it hadn’t and it is presently 10 degrees colder with a strong, biting E. wind. Despite plenty of trips out recently I have yet to see any incoming Spring migrant birds, although Sand Martin and Wheatear have been seen already by others in Gloucestershire.
The moths are keeping a low profile and waiting for warmer times also!
Thanks for those observations about Lincolnshire and your talk on Tuesday night which went down well and generated a good debate. The highlight for me was the suggestion from the audience that one way to take the sting out of the hen harrier debate would be to translocate nestlings from english grouse moors to lowland Lincs (where they were very common before being wiped out in the 19th century). I won’t hold my breath but it would be great to see them breeding round here.
Its been one of those 4 seasons in one day kind of days in Lincs today with no sign of Brimstones or singing Chiffchaff as yet.
One thing you didn’t mention was the excellent pint of Batemans Hooker bitter at the Admiral Rodney. Sadly I only had one as I was driving.
Osborne seems very keen on fracking. I hope his constituency in Cheshire is at the front of the queue but I suspect it will be us, here in Lincs. No marine nature reserves on the east coast, too much frackable gas?
Phil – many thanks! Good to see you.
Great talk Mark , nice to catch up again … John made up for it Phil …
Dean – many thanks – likewise!
Regarding yesterday’s blog I joined the RSPB in the mid 1970’s when all the birds of prey populations were at a very low ebb. With the notable and very sad exception of the hen harrier the other species have improved their numbers – peregrines in most cities, more hobbies than ever seemed possible, the success of the red kites and ospreys and buzzards in eastern England. Avocets have gone from strength to strength and here in Somerset over 30 bitterns are booming on the Levels about 3 times the population of not too many years ago.As for egrets, big and little, how many would you like.
I haven’t seen a yellowhammer this year, tre sparrow and grey partridge requires a twitch and it is sad that so many farmland birds have declined so much. But locally barn owls are doing well, nationally the picture for Stone Curlew is good and for species such as nightingale and cuckoo, most problems seem to lie outside the UK. It needs to be ( and is being) tackled of course, but it will not be easy as someone noted recently worthwhile things rarely are.
I have heard one Chiffchaff – usually have heard plenty and blackcaps by this time of year, but the cold weather is obviously having it’s effect.
Yesterday I did a shift for the Skydancer project at a site near Otterburn in Northumberland, where Hen Harriers bred each year from 2006 to 2008. I was hoping to get the grey male flying in to roost, but although I stayed until about 40 minutes after sunset he did not put in an appearance. It was quite cold with 12-15 cms of snow and the smaller passerines have, understandably, not so far moved back up there. I did however see the resident pair of Ravens and the male Peregrine, his partner being sat on the nest nearby. I did get a site “tick” in the form of a young vixen who appeared a couple of times and spent long periods stood out in the open on the track. Clearly it is still too cold for the local dog walkers to start visiting in the early evening, as she looked very relaxed.
My first Chiff Chaff of the year was on “The Archers” yesterday (or the day before). Ruth heard it just at the start of the programme and pointed it out to David while she was out helping him with some sort of farming task. The birdsong in The Archers is always seasonally appropriate – which is nice for us listeners who are birders. I haven’t actually heard a real one yet here in N. Staffs!
Wendy – the BBC used to have a ‘general birdsong in the countryside’ recording that appeared in afternoon plays etc and which used to contain bee-eater calls. I used to like it!
I saw 5 lapwings displaying on some damp meadows in Lancashire yesterday, although it was bitterly cold day, the sky was blue and it was a great day to be outside. Listening to the farmer, who I hadn’t met before, tell me about how much he enjoys their presence on his farm and about the things he had done to encourage them over the years gave me a very warm glow inside, despite the biting wind.
This morning the view from the office window is one of snow being blown horizontally by an even colder wind, but at least my tree sparrows appear to be enjoying the fat-balls on the feeder and the weather isn’t detering the house sparrows from chupping away in the hedge to my left and whilst some of them are busily sorting their nests out in the eves to my right.
Joe W – that’s a comment that has warmed me up, thank you.