Just a quickie? Maybe not...
This week seemed destined to be very quiet, with the only noteworthy event being a flyover Skylark at work yesterday [Work Tick - result!]. Even my midweek gull raid failed miserably - only 1 BHG in the Harbour and that flew off as I arrived... After having my plans changed for me at the last minute, I didn't even get this afternoon to go chasing stuff, and was only able to have a look off Blackball for the evening roost.
At first glance it looked like another bust, but no.. there were birds, just way way out in the near calm. The calm helped and I started picking out grebes - unhelpfully they weren't in their usual neatly separate groups but mixed in with gulls, so it took a little time - and more grebes and more.... The roost was spread out in a great line which waxed and waned from scores deep to singles and small gaps - mostly Herring Gulls, of course, and at least 600 of them. About 40 GBBs were mixed in, though as the light faded, the immatures stopped sticking out as well as the adults, so that's probably a low minimum [as opposed to a high minimum...]. Only three grebes were set markedly apart from the long wavering line of birds; they were also [very helpfully] closer. Oooh, and not GCs either! Picking grebes on silhouette is not always easy [to say the least] but having been able to rule out GC and Little easily, the fact they were all the same size and shape helped rule out Red-necked* [plus they weren't really big enough, and had too much neck going on]. Slav vs. BN can be very tricky, but head shape and neck structure when not actively diving but keeping an eye on all those gulls is pretty good. Slavs they were. [Ah, I remember the day when only finding 6 together on my Patch in winter was disappointing... How things change.]
At last, three figures of grebes, and it only took until February.. :)
And now for something completely different. Well, not so much.
I've been thinking about psychological prisons. Is your Patch a pleasure or a burden? Once started, once publicly defined, once walked and worn into [though it into you, or you into it?], is it an obligation to maintain it? A birder's duty? Or is it beyond that? A rite, perhaps, an echo of our past. Territoriality is built into our genes from millions of years of forebears and while it is no longer acceptable to defend Yours in the ways once used, some sort of release for these ancient instincts is, I think, healthy for the psyche. Especially for us testosterone-afflicted males. Thus sport, after all. Having a Patch, Bounds you can Beat, feels so deeply right to me that I doubt the sentiment is due to any of my personal insanities. [Probably].
As to mental bars... Certainly when I was actively chasing a Patch Yearlist, I felt bound to put it before what may have been more enjoyable birding further afield. But even at my most reluctant, I've known that it was just Bed Syndrome. By that, I mean that feeling when you have to force yourself to get up, even though you know you want to be out and you'll regret not doing so. I don't call it 'dragging up' for nowt, you know. Summer seawatches, when being there for half an hour [ish...] after sunrise is a really good idea but also means getting up really early, is a perfect example. A more effective preventative to roaming afield is the cost of bloody petrol - and indeed all other means of transport - but this is another subject.
This doesn't mean I don't get cold, wet, miserable, or down right brassed off on't Patch. But even after I've stomped miles of dogshit-infested pavements, been left dripping with sweat by inclement weather, been abused by
There are great pleasures to be had in birding. The pure experience of just watching birds do what they do, the wonder of those rare connections - the moments when you look at them and they are looking at you, the rush [not least of relief] at a successful twitch, the times when you can help someone else see what you see [like the RSPB say; "Aren't birds brilliant?"], the satisfaction of going and seeing and finding out. Of them all, I think the most intense is the bird on your Patch. Certainly, while I have knelt down and given thanks [in public] on a twitch [or two..], I've never danced so maniacally as I did when I saw the Spotted Flycatchers at the Nose... Slightly more sanely, I'd rather count very distant GC Grebes and [usually vainly] hope for something else off Blackball than go to Broadsands and see a Red-neck, Slavs, BNs, divers, [and who knows what else] far far better than they're ever likely to on Patch.
For me at least, if it's a prison, the bolt is on the inside of the door.
[[*I'm trying hard to remember if I've ever seen more than 1 RNG at once...]]
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