This article first appeared in the April 2025 Edition of Birdwatching Magazine
Nearly four decades ago, living in London, I used to escape to the country at the weekends, most often with a friend. We used to stay at her mum’s in Bournemouth and go to the New Forest, the Dorset Heaths and beyond. She knew I was into birds and one day revealed that she loved birds, but being a born and bred Londoner, hadn’t seen many.
I decided the best introduction would be Minsmere, still a place with an amazing variety of species and guaranteed to have lots of birds anytime of the year, but perfect for April. So, a couple of rooms were booked in a B&B and off we drove on Friday night, ready for an early morning start. It was already a major success as we saw woodland birds on the drive in, Sand Martins nesting in what is now a carpark, and a Marsh Harrier right over our heads before we got to the first hide.
There was a cacophony of bird calls as we sat and scanned across the scrapes. Gulls, terns and waders needed identifying to the newbie. Then, suddenly, she let one hand drop from her bins to punch my thigh with the force of a young Mike Tyson.
Astonished and with a ‘dead leg’ I was wondering what I had done to deserve it, maybe no good deed could go unpunished. An explanation waited for my friend to catch her breath. The punch was merely shared excitement. A Green Woodpecker had landed on the nearest ‘island’. A bird she had badly wanted to see, and recognised from a painting I’d seen hanging in her mum’s kitchen. Fortunately, her enthusiasm lasted longer than the purple bruise that formed overnight. She still loves woodpeckers, any day with one is a good day. We’ve seen many on five continents, where she has often found a lifer for our guides! Dear reader, you will have guessed that I married her!
I became a weekend dad when my first marriage ended. It was hard to find things my kids could enjoy together. However, when my teenage daughter wanted to spend her weekends with friends my son came alone and we would go birding together. Lucky for me it’s a love he never lost. It was a joy to take him on his first overseas birding trip… I’ll never forget the embarrassment the thirteen-year-old felt when, driving down a country avenue in Portugal he spotted a Griffin Vulture sitting in a Stork’s nest and excitedly swore like a trooper. A totally forgivable expression of sheer joy.
There is nothing on this earth I have enjoyed more than introducing others to nature in general and birds in particular. Just as my dad named the trees and birds as we fished from a river bank, or when he took me to a summer dried cart track. He would carry a gallon jar of water in the car and we would park in the woods to watch the puddle he created from a rut in the track. Sitting there on a long summer evening watching Redpolls and Linnets, Yellowhammers and Corn Buntings come down for a drink. Occasionally serenaded by Nightingales.
My most recent joy, that I hope extends this family’s birding across a century, was when my eldest granddaughter asked to go birding. I thought that aged thirty she was immune to the birding bug. Not so! She rang me yesterday, excited to say how she had watched a murmuration over Brighton Peer. In a couple of weeks I hope to take her to see her very first owls!
