14th January Every Little Thing She Does is Magic The Police
Outside I hope I show positivity, pleasure and personable qualities, a deep love of all people. My fears, disappointments and anger; all felt when I am confronted with racist hatred, a self-centred lack of empathy, concern and compassion towards others by too many people and the apathy of governments over too many social issues, well, I will keep all of these feelings inside. A carrot and not a stick approach to people; laughter, fun and bonding are far better qualities. To this end of being the clown I always wear my bright yellow smiley tie. You can see this on my Biking Birder logo. The tie I bought back in 1989 when I became a Primary School teacher in Wolverhampton. I actually bought it from a charity shop for 50p! It portrays around fifty round yellow smiley faces of many sizes together with one large red smiley face. I always joke with people that the red one is me as I am so shy and reclusive. Actually I am neither of those things. People, usually children sign it! Take a look at my logo, the one with a cartoon-like me standing next to my bike which carries four cuddly toys. My tie is there! The tie is a constant reminder of one Patch Adams, the famed American doctor so wonderfully portrayed by Robin Williams in the film about this incredible human being.
Every day Patch wears a clown costume and a red nose. I wear a bright yellow tie with a red-faced me. Of my future desires and dreams, well they depend on my beautiful wife becoming well again. A forlorn hope that something can be achieved by her doctors. (This thought was written before my dearest Karen died in 2012. I will leave it here as the sentiments and hopes were so relevant at the time. Later in the book, I will refer to Karen as my late wife. Editing for publication of the final chapters took place during the year of the tenth anniversary of this adventure and Karen has been gone for over twelve years. I still love her! Always will. Every little thing she did was magic.)
I left the youth hostel after saying goodbye to a lovely Turkish lady
from Anatolia, Jacky. “Come to Turkey with me” she joked as she poked my chest
to emphasis the request. Out into the rain I loaded up the bike, got onto the
saddle and promptly cycled down a lane only for it to be a dead end. I turned
around and found a way down to the River Thames, whereupon I cycled along it
towards The Tower of London and Tower Bridge. A quick stop to photograph these
iconic landmarks, then it was off towards the Isle of Dogs with sleety rain
falling and the spray from the traffic stinging my eyes. It was piercingly cold
and what with the rain and sleet, I should have been miserably struggling. Yet
I was actually enjoying the ride.
Onto the A13 I came across sections of cycle paths but they were
unusable due to the compacted ice covering them. A six-lane busy road out of
the city, I had to cycle on the inside lane. It was terrifying yet
exhilarating. Even when one of my panniers fell off due to a pothole and I had
to jump off and retrieve it before a lorry, car or bus squidged it, I was unphased!
The route went over a large river basin with Teal on it. Then there were
bushes that held some Redwings. Birds kept me going and thoughts of visiting Rainham
RSPB Reserve, my destination for the day. I had previously been to Rainham
RSPB Reserve back in early December 2005 when a Sociable Plover was present.
What a cracking bird that was! In fact what a fabulous year that was. I have
already mentioned the T.I.T.S and this bird was to be my 287th bird
of that fantastic birding year.
Another memory of Rainham was of visiting the area looking for Water
Pipits back in the late 1980s. During the 1980s another group of Wolverhampton student
twitchers; Richard Southall, Jason Oliver and Alex ‘The Bear’ Barter was the
main crew for twitching excursions and on this occasion the lads were with me
looking for rarities around the capital. We had already seen an American
Ring-billed Gull in a park in Uxbridge; well only seen after Alex had been to
find a nearby shop to buy a loaf of bread. This had become a regular thing for
Bear to do. Bonaparte’s Gull at New Brighton was brought down to the foreshore
of the Mersey in front of us by a loaf bought by Alex.
The stop at Rainham had been as we were on the way to see a Great Grey
Shrike, which performed brilliantly for us later on but for now we were
searching around dock roads with large numbers of lorry containers stacked up high
everywhere. Now Alex had recently started to work for a haulage company and to
our amazement that day we found a container that had ‘BART’ scrubbed onto it in
the dirt. There were thousands of containers and there was the one Bart had
personalised with his nickname. Unbelievable!
Those three lads were fanatically keen birders; two of them still are. Sadly, Alex, The Bear, died suddenly of a heart attack when in his late twenties. A massive shock to everyone who knew him, his family and close friends, Alex’s funeral was a very well attended affair. Alex’s other love to birding was power lifting and the church was full of weightlifting giants of men and puny looking birders. Still missed after all these years since that incredibly sad day, Alex is buried in a woodland so that he can continue to bird.
Whilst cycling along the main road, somewhere along the way to Rainham I
got stuck behind a funeral cortège, the sort you can see in the film, Oliver!
with Leonard Rossiter as the undertaker. The hearse was one of those exceptionally
large, mostly tall black structures with large glass windows on every side,
which was being pulled by two large horses. Inside the hearse, the coffin was
draped with white flowers. Top hatted attendants rode atop despite the now
drizzly rain. Two large Bentleys carrying the mourners were behind. This sort
of hearse is also used in a wonderful song routine in Monty Python’s Meaning of
Life film. Even the corpse’s sperm are sacred!
I rode alongside the long queue of
traffic which had built up behind the cortege but did not want to overtake as I
thought that would be disrespectful. The procession lasted for about half a
mile when suddenly an impatient driver tried to overtake the whole traffic
queue in one go but failed to do so and had to tuck itself in between the two
Bentleys. At its next attempt, the leading Bentley tried to block his way but
he managed to squeeze through. Two ways of looking at all of this to my mind.
One, why does one need to overtake such a parade desperately and dangerously?
Yet also why does one need to have such an ostentatious and awfully expensive
send off? The attempt to prevent the overtaking could have caused the hearse to
have been in action again sooner than expected.
Eventually I arrived Rainham RSPB reserve; after receiving some friendly directional advice from the lads at a nearby Asda store and I was greeted wonderfully by Howard Vaughan, Brenda and others. 'What do you want to do?' asks Howard. 'Birding or a cake and coffee?' Howard expected my answer to be for the latter for I was covered in grit, damp from the wet weather and still shivering from the terror of cycling along the A13. Two minutes later, outside, Howard had the answer to that and to cut it short, we were out birding together for the next three hours.
Howard proved to be a brilliantly talented and cripplingly good, chatty birder with superb birding skills and enjoyable conversation! Howard had been surprised and delighted by my answer over the choice of cake or birding. He admitted that he thought that I would arrive at the reserve and be keen to cycle on for the next reserve; sort of tick Rainham off on my reserve list, done that, been there, got the t-shirt and set off for the next reserve. Now that my choice was to go birding Howard had a great excuse to get away from the office and watch those creatures that he and we loved so much, the birds.
And was he skilful at avoiding going back to the office too soon?
Without giving it away too much Howard’s tactic was to say what he had just
seen and forget to put a time into the message reply over when he would return
to the centre.
These days Howard has his own business giving bird tours in the UK and abroad, especially Costa Rica. There cannot be a better bird guide anywhere else in the world than Howard!
Blue-eyed Birder Bird Tour, Guide and Speaker website
Howard also gives evening lectures. How fabulous they must be, Howard's amazing sunshine personality would guarantee an evening of fun whilst he shows his incredible knowledge of all things nature.
Then there is his blog. Here I must say I am so jealous as Howard is a superb photographer and his prose is always so erudite and fascinating.
Howard, the Blue-eyed Birder, one of the best people I have ever met! Thanks Howard.
The views over the magnificent Thames were misty and atmospheric with
icy marshes stretching into the distance and birds were everywhere. Finches
were feeding around ‘accidentally’ dropped bird seed, flocks of ducks were
floating on the Thames, together with Fieldfares and Starlings flying over; all
seen and enjoyed. Howard found a few Ruff
[78] and together we walked along the old Victorian sea wall adjacent to a
small area of phragmites. The duck on the river were mainly Wigeon with Teal,
Mallard and Shovelor. A flock of fourteen Black-tailed
Godwit [79], together with a single Curlew
[80] flew over. Other birds seen included Rock Pipit [81] down by the shore with Howard’s thinking being that
he could tell the different subspecies. There were Snipe, which we flushed as we
walked through the salt-marsh shoreline but no Jack Snipe. The occasional pipit
went up and the occasional flock of waders flew either over or up the Thames,
including a flock of twenty-four Ringed
Plover [82].
Then there was a stunningly
beautiful, yet strangely plumaged pale female Stonechat [83] and Skylarks
[84]. Now to me the strange monochromatic female Stonechat was the most
beautiful bird I had seen so far. It has been interesting since the visit to
compare its plumage with a female Siberian Stonechat, for that is what one
would imagine it to be. Yet Howard said that the bird had bred and had normal
Stonechat young the previous spring.
Along one section of the reserve we were stopped in our tracks by a passing herd of the reserve’s cattle. It reminded me of the previous summer when I had had to wait for a lengthy line of cows to pass over the Spanish – French border on a road in the Pyrenees. Just as then, there was one cow later than the others. This one was being persuaded to hurry up by Terry Morris on his quad bike, the assistant warden. Later I enjoyed Terry's story of a famous Shire Horse, named Winston present at Rainham, famous because of Winston’s unfortunate and deadly bouts of flatulence!
Howard and I talked about our best birding moments as we walked around the reserve. Both of us mentioned the fabulous Great Bustard, the heaviest living flying animal, or is that another bustard? Howard’s birding story detailed his incredibly finding of three Great Bustards in Felixstowe; how they had flown over his head. I talked of my late friend Gordon Barnes and how he had found a Great Bustard on Fair Isle back in 1970, back when Gordon was a crofter there.
Along a boardwalk, we talked of the
possibility of a Bittern in the area. It was amazing to me that the recent
building of rail track for the Eurostar train had increased the chances of this
charismatic bird being present at the reserve. When the track was being built,
they insisted that some of the dykes from outside the reserve area be unblocked
and this has allowed not only fresh water to enter the reserve at that point
but also Rudd, a favourite food of Bitterns. Around this area, alongside the
elevated train track, new scrapes were being developed with plenty of muddy
wader feeding margins and plans for a large new hide to be erected in the
Spring. This was to be constructed from a prefabricated kit with a totally new
window design; actually designed by Howard. Clever!
Next up was Alveley Flash and a few resplendent Pintail [89] were swimming around on the water, quite close to. It
is easy to understand why so many people have this wonderful bird as one of
their favourite ducks. Males are stunningly smart with silver and grey plumage with
extensive pin tails. They made a beautiful picture when viewed closely.
With a surprise at every turn, the next one was upon entering the
amazingly comfortable Ken Barratt hide; the comfort being due to the fact that
it was kitted out with seats thrown out of the famous Drury Lane theatre. Now I
knew of Drury Lane because of Monty Python. In fact I knew a lot about Monty
Python because my dear brother Paul used to buy me something Pythonesque for
Christmas every year. These presents included every Monty Python book. Who
could forget the magnificence of page 72 in Monty Python's Big Red Book? What a
memorable page. Then there were the vinyl records from way back in the
seventies. These were as important as videotapes were later to become. One of
my Christmas presents from Paul included ‘Live at Drury Lane’ and the chairs in
the hide were definitely ‘comfy,’ NOT the comfy chair! After all no one forgets
the Spanish Inquisition.
At least ‘Brud’ never gave me the same present twice, unlike Mum and Dad
who gave me the AA Book of the Countryside as a Christmas present two years
running. Given the circumstances though this was an improvement on the
‘Princess Book of Animals,’ a young girl’s comic’s annual I had received when a
teenager!
More birding chat included the thought that maybe a dozen Penduline Tits
had been on the reserve at one time over the previous year; Howard had seen at
least six together. Twelve would be an amazing number for anywhere in Britain
but for a reserve within the London area, astounding. This had been
immortalised on a long mural at the back of the hide which included the
previously mention Sociable Plover flying with a flock of Lapwings.
We talked of ‘ones that got away.’
I told of a small passerine I had seen briefly near the top of the cliff at
Peveril Point, Swanage, Dorset back in 2001. It flew immediately over the cliff
edge and I could not relocate it. I ran to get birding friends but it did not
turn up until later that evening when it repeated the performance of going over
the cliff edge, this time because of being flushed by a dog walker. I knew what
it was, having seen quite a few in the Pyrenees and the Gredos Mountains
before; an Alpine Accentor but I did not submit it. What was the point? A
single viewer with two briefly snatched views that were not sufficient to get a
full description.
Speaking of one that got away; Gordon Barnes, mentioned above, kept a
journal of all his birding days on Fair Isle and within the foolscap pages of
one notebook, there are the details a gull he saw flying past in 1969. The
notes are extensive with colourful crayon drawings. A Great Black Headed Gull,
never before seen in Britain but then Gordon did not submit records at that
time. I wonder if the observatory knows. Howard asked for an email of the
pages.
Howard picked up a snail at this point and there and then I learnt that
there are two types of hedge snail: dark lipped and white lipped. This one was
dark lipped. You learn something new every day, especially when you love nature
and you are walking with a man with extensive knowledge and boundless
enthusiasm.
Eventually we were back at the centre, coffee and cake were kindly provided and I was in full swing chatting with new ‘friends; talking so much that I did not notice the subtle way Howard hinted that it was time to leave. I should be on my way and Howard emphasised this by closing the visitor centre shutters on the fabulous sunset over the Thames. Howard made me promise that Rainham RSPB reserve would be the only RSPB reserve that I would visit twice in 2010. Howard’s last words were ringing in my ears as I made my way down the drive in the fading light and drizzle, which had now returned to make my evening a little unpleasant, “write a book the way you talk. I will buy it!”
Now really this quick
description of the walk around the reserve does not do it justice. I would
never have thought that Rainham would be one the favourite RSPB reserves
visited during the Biking Birder year but it was from the moment I walked into
the top floor café area. The vista from there was so fabulously beautiful and
the RSPB staff on hand were such brilliant people. Add the birds and the setup
of the circular walk; this is a great urban RSPB reserve within easy reach of
thousands of people. Yet it is intimate in places, where one can get away from
it all, as Howard and I did for those few hours!
Ticking off the birds on a Rainham Tick Sheet, I found that I had recorded exactly sixty species with twelve year ticks, not bad for a soggy day in early January. The best thing had been the sunshine people. Thanks everyone at Rainham RSPB reserve. You are wonderful! It had been a real privilege to be shown around. Thanks. I will be back. Rainham, so good you go there twice. . . And then twice more!
By the way Howard, the clue is in the name - Biking BIRDER!
30.20
mile
309 feet elevation
up 291 down
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