In no particular order…

It’s been a while since I posted anything, and I’m aware that I’m skipping ahead in time to today from September accounts of August birding, but chronology is a harsh task master and I’m no historian.  I might go back and tell about some incredible experiences in Yorkshire (all five grebes in a day centred around Tophill Low, plus some serious rares at Flamborough), at Frampton (American Sandpipers for days) and Sennen for 17 seconds of Upland Sandpiper… or I might not.  I’ll see how I feel.

This post is about an aspect of birding as a middle aged man returning to a hobby from my teens and twenties.  Back in the mid/late 90s I was a fanatical birder but the usual distractions hit me and I stopped in favour of football, drinking and trying to find a partner.  In 2020 during the lockdown, I worked every day - many teachers were wearing surgical plastic face shields to teach vulnerable kids and the fear and pressure was acute - and I began to stop off and sit in my car on the way home at a local lake that was completely abandoned, just to change my scenery and decompress from the stress and anxiety of covid.  I began to watch birds as a way to focus on something other than the safety of my family and pupils.  I bought binoculars.  I bought a Collins guide.  I began to keep a list.  

Back in the 90s I’d kept hand written records of my sightings and by some providence they have survived the decades and a dozen house moves.  I dug them out and spent hours poring over them.  I recalled the Black-faced Bunting at Pennington Flash, and a Dark-eyed Junco in Cheshire (I think).  My first rare semi-self-finds (I’m sure they were found by others too, but in pre-internet days it was harder to know); Little Egret at Ynys Hir and Woodchat Shrike at Spurn.  I lost myself in nostalgia and the joy of seeing those birds was brought back to life.

I set out to learn, to see, and to try and find the birds from my previous life list.  Today I saw Red-breasted Goose at Bank Marsh for the first time since the late 90s and it reclaimed top spot as my favourite wildfowl (in a tight tussle with Smew).  It’s one of the last birds I want to catch up with from my 1993-2002 era and it unlocked memory, feeling, a sense of connecting with my younger self and reclaiming some small element of my own identity that had been fragmented as I grew into my adult life.

Of course, while you search for these glimpses of wildness that contain crystallised pieces of your own identity, it’s often the company that you keep that allows you to grasp the feeling of the memory as well as the rational function (“I have seen Red-breasted Goose before”) and today was no different.  Having friends to laugh with as I walked the cold miles to see the geese in the frozen salt marsh made the memory, and I hope the version of me that exists when I see my next Red-breasted Goose conflates the feelings of two memories: the youthful wonder of my first sighting and the second naivety of my middle years; in no particular order.