8 – Dorset’s coolest birder

Surfers, owners of vintage split-screen VW campers, snow boarders and folk who consider toboggan a career all seem to have one aspiration in common – being cool – but birders? Can birders be cool?

At the beginning of last month Graham Armstrong sniffed the air and headed to Branksome Chine, to look for seabirds. Later, in an e-mail to local birders he wrote:

“Strong wind from East backing ESE not frequent so devoted rather more time than usual today seawatching c0800-1200hrs. Not busy, but interesting sightings interspersed through morning, with the undoubted highlight a dark juv Long-tailed Skua. This flew with the wind, at leisure, at a steady height of several meters above the sea, headed to Poole end of the Bay. A reminder of how slight and tern-like these birds are, and finally some reward for many hours watching here this year. Graham.”

This e-mail got a quick response from local Dorset birder Steve Smith who wrote: “really felt that this should not pass without congratulating Graham on a fantastic record. It takes some nerve to assess the wind direction, stroll down to Branksome Chine, give it four hours and see a Long-tailed Skua. Graham you really are Dorset’s coolest birder. Steve.”

To which Graham replied… “Thanks Steve, I’ll get a T-shirt printed.”

Hmm, Dorset’s coolest birder? As a young man watching Radipole in Weymouth I would meet Martin Cade casually. We would be standing there, he would be composed, rolling a cigarette, while gulls piled in around him. Gesturing over his shoulder and saying “Med Gull” was his magic act. How did he know it was behind him? I was impressed as I watched it land and bathe in front of us.

Around that time, I was birding on Hengistbury Head in a huge fall of Goldcrests Regulus regulus, knee deep in bracken with birds everywhere when Dave Smith said, “Pallas’s”. There in the midst of the crests was a Pallas’s Leaf Warbler Phylloscopus proregulus. If it was magic it was good magic; it was my first.

Both knew their calls.

Dave Smith again… He was birding Hengistbury on 30 September 1985 when he heard an Arctic Warbler P borealis calling from the woodland. As the legend goes, he went in and found it, and as he watched a Northern Parula Setophaga americana passed behind it. The Arctic wasn’t seen next day but a Greenish Warbler P trochiloides was found nearby. As I remember the story, the Greenish was accepted but not the Arctic. They may be difficult to separate by plumage but have a listen to their calls. Perhaps this story is apocryphal, but it illustrates my point. If you want your birding mates to think you are cool, learn your bird calls. (The Northern Parula and Greenish Warbler were seen by all of us over the subsequent days.)

Killian was studying Common Chiffchaff P collybita calls and how they vary with age for our first book The Sound Approach to birding (Constantine & The Sound Approach 2006) when he heard what sounded surprisingly like a Greenish Warbler, but decided it was the effect of the window on a Pied Wagtail Motacilla yarrellii. Hearing it again through the window, it sounded particularly Greenish for a Pied Wagtail. He grabbed a recorder as he saw a phyllosc flying up the road. Worried that this was it he played a Greenish recording but no answer. Back inside, he remained frustrated for two hours before a friend called in for a chat, and they stepped out into the garden with a cup of tea. Ten minutes later in the very tops of the trees he heard it again and yes, Greenish Warbler. There it was… And groups of eight or ten birders were in the garden for the next few days. They thought it was very cool.

Arnoud is a ringer, and one morning he and his fellow ringers trapped a Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler Locustella certhiola then released it in the same area, a ringing site that by necessity is out of bounds for birders. Nevertheless, this was a red light to any serious birder that they should get out and look for other Sibes while the conditions lasted.

Magnus was so motivated that the next day he spent the morning searching the bushes of IJmuiden, only a couple of km to the north, with a growing feeling of disappointment as the morning went on. Arnoud had to go to the funeral of an aunt and was just listening to the lawyer reading the will when Magnus phoned him.

On his way back to his car, Magnus had flushed a medium sized brown bird to his side that, seen through the corner of his eye, gave a fleeting jizz impression of a small sparrow hawk Accipiter gliding close to the ground. Turning towards it he saw it veering into the undergrowth, realising it was a large thrush, and then saw it doing something unforgettable, flashing a black and white-patterned underwing just before it disappeared.

“Arnoud, I’ve found a White’s Thrush… I haven’t heard it call, and I never actually got more than a split-second view of it, but I saw its underwing.” Arnoud and 200 other Dutch birders left whatever they were doing. It took well over an hour for the thrush to reappear and the pressure on Magnus was building while birders, some wearing suits and ties, started to sweat. Eventually a handful flushed it, and saw it diving into an isolated clump of bushes. All the birders stood in a wide ring around the spot, waiting on top of nearby sand dunes, knowing that when it eventually flew out they’d get a good view.

At last it was flushed, and as the crowd saw it they spontaneously broke into a Mexican wave of cheers as it flew a circuit past them, with some birders even giving a little burst of applause.  As a consequence, we have no sound recording of the bird but there is a Sound Approach recording of the event… Extremely cool.

I think then, amongst their peers, birders can be cool. Even then it has to be subtle. It has to appear effortless to take advantage, as Martin did of us in that group of birders, quite a lot whom were constantly trying to impress people by drawing attention to themselves. But that’s definitely not cool.

Most birders would laugh if I asked them if they thought being a birdwatcher in general society was cool? In truth, Magnus has recently taken up surfing, although he assures me it’s not just to look cool. He is conflicted though, as his local surfers are against sewage outlets, seemingly unaware of their importance for vagrant Bonaparte’s Gulls Chroicocephalus philadelphia. In Catching the Bug (Constantine & The Sound Approach 2012), I wrote about James Lidster finding a series of rare gulls at the local rubbish tip. Having even bought his own hard hat and yellow jacket, the guys down the tip thought he was cool. Driving through town when the local bin men shouted his name, Jim didn’t feel so cool. He told me that he didn’t put bird club stickers on his car windscreen, as girls would think that wasn’t cool. That was twenty years ago and now it’s all changed.

In the online news site Quartz, Marc Bain recently wrote an article titled The new meaning of cool. It opens with a reference to Joel Dinerstein, a cultural historian and professor of English at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, who teaches a course on the history of cool. Bain writes of Dinerstein: “About five or six years ago, or perhaps a little more—he can’t remember exactly—he noticed a change in what his students were telling him”. In Dinerstein’s own words:

“They no longer thought of any given iconic figure or celebrity as cool if they didn’t also have a social activist or political activist—if not an agenda, at least a stance,”

In the same article, London-based trend forecaster Sara Maggioni agrees: “It’s cool to care now, the younger generation wants relationship, they want authenticity, they want more meaningful connection.”

I’m not sure how many older birders really want meaningful connection. Drivers of split screen camper vans have a special hand signal when they see another, and they are friendly with each other… I have seen birders using hand signals, but few become a birder for the camaraderie.

I know broadcaster Chris Packham. He and I care about the same things so it’s not surprising that we should be acquainted. He cares passionately and sums up this new definition of cool. To be really cool you have to attract attacks from seriously uncool sources. Tim Bonner, chief executive of the main hunting and shooting lobby is constantly asking the BBC to sack him for having opinions his organisation doesn’t agree with. Ricky Gervais summed it up recently in NME: “It if is choosing not to watch a comedian because you don’t like them, that’s everyone’s right,” Gervais said. “But when people are trying to get someone fired because they don’t like their opinion about something … that’s what I call cancel culture and that’s not cool.”

Chris uses Twitter and that’s where Tim Bonner hunts. You can see how Twitter suits birders. The name for a start, and it encourages brevity (if not accuracy). Social media is a great leveler and you don’t have to be Chris Packham to know that with it comes a need to care for your image. Messing up on Twitter isn’t cool. But not everyone wants to attract the attention of Tim Bonner. There are more subtle ways of looking cool than taking him on.

Twenty years ago, the way of recognising a cool birder was by the badge on their bins. The concept of ‘influencers’ was understood very early on by the optics companies, who competed with each other to get professional birders to promote their brand. Zeiss and Leica were considered very cool, with Swarowski or Nikon for scopes. It was Bill Oddie, around ten years ago, who first raised concerns with one such sponsor about the company’s unethical connections to hunting.

He was ahead of the game. Hunting animals is far more controversial now, and there are too many examples of the impact caused by ecologically insensitive hunting for a conservation minded influencer to ignore. With issues also being raised about the military and far-right political links that many optics companies have, it’s no longer quite so cool to be seen to be promoting them.

After three increasingly damning reports produced by Ethical Consumer on the links between optics companies and weapon manufacturers, the last out this week (Veldt & Clayton 2020), Canon are now the bins of choice. In this new report, “69% of companies were found to supply optics or other imaging equipment to the military directly and/or market their optic products for military or tactical use. Links were also found with the gun rights movement in the USA. 28% of companies were found to have industry links with the National Rifle Association, while 10% were deeply embedded in the world of “hunting, shooting, public lands, the second amendment …One company was also found to use imagery related to militia and white supremacy in its marketing”.

Magnus and I would think Canon bins are cool because that’s what we use. Anyway, we were chatting about which bird sounds are cool. I suggested Long-eared Owl Asio otus; just by perching at different heights, Long-eared Owls can project their advertising call anything from 50m to 1000m. By utilising physics, one of the most secretive birds in the world can chat to a near neighbour without either betraying their position to an aggressive Tawny Owl Strix aluco or, if appropriate, send a message twenty times as far. That’s cool. (Undiscovered owls, p134) Another favourite is migrating Redwings Turdus iliacus. When they set off they listen to others flying nearby to work out the optimal altitude. If a bird below is moving faster they drop down, and if a bird above is making better progress they climb. Why is this interesting? It is thought that Redwings winter either in the Baltics or here in southern England depending on the prevalent wind at the start of their migration. (Catching the bug, p 119). Magnus’s vote went to Grant’s Hydrates castro and Monteiro’s Storm Petrels H monteiroi, which look virtually the same, use the same burrows at different seasons, and had Luis Monteiro not been studying their feathers for mercury pollution(Monteiro & Furness 1998), would have remained undetected. It was the differences in their sounds that clinched the split. (Petrels Night and Day, p 228).

While flicking through Sound Approach books, the Northern Lapwings Vanellus vanellus have just such a cool sound (Birding from the Hip p182). If I had to choose just one sound from Morocco: sharing the birds it would be the hooting of Andulasian Hemipode Turnix sylvaticus, because it’s just so cool knowing it.

Going back to Graham’s cool seawatch I should confess I was at Branksome around 7.30am that morning. Seeing the weather, I knew I was keen to get there and had been excitedly awake way before dawn, early enough to have breakfasted and prepared a flask of tea. Around dawn, at 7.45am, looking out from Branksome at the deep black brooding skies with a burning sun and high seas, I saw a mythical Sooty Shearwater Ardenna grisea. My 283rd bird for the harbour and a bird missing from Graham’s Poole harbour list. So, when Graham joined me at 8:00 am he was a bit gripped. I was already in trouble with him, as we had both been there three weeks before and sadly he had gone a little early and had missed the spectacular Long-tailed Skua Stercorarius longicaudus struggling to fly across the bay then. It didn’t even seem to fly around Old Harry and out to sea, and I wouldn’t be surprised it if had taken a short cut past South Haven (Graham’s patch) and across the Dorset heaths.

I have wondered since, why I am not the coolest birder in Dorset? Too old? No, Graham is old. Too keen?  Now we’re talking… Cool and keen are opposites. The cool birder writes his own history, creates his own legend and being too keen isn’t cool.

On my fortieth birthday Steve Smith made me a t-shirt printed with “I bird with Steve Smith”. An ironic reference to my preference to bird with famous birders by using his own ubiquitous name. So, I am not wearing that. I might however wear one that says, “I bird with Graham Armstrong”.

van den Berg, A & The Sound Approach 2020. Morocco: sharing the birds. Poole.

Constantine, M & The Sound Approach 2006. The Sound Approach to birding. Poole.

Constantine, M & The Sound Approach 2012. Catching the bug. Poole.

Bain, M 2020. The new meaning of cool.In 2020, it’s cool to care. Quartz November 15, 2020. https://qz.com/1896190/what-does-cool-mean-in-2020/

McGeehan, A & The Sound Approach 2009. Birding from the Hip. Poole.

Monteiro, L R & Furness, R W 1998. Speciation through temporal segregation of Madeiran storm petrel (Oceanodroma castro) populations in the Azores? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 353: 945-953.

Robb, M & The Sound Approach 2015. Undiscovered owls. Poole.

Robb, M, Mullarney, K & The Sound Approach 2008. Petrels Night and Day. Poole.

Veldt, M & Clayton A 2020. Shooting Wildlife III. An update report by Ethcal Consumer Research Association. December 2020. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/media/2105/download