Thursday
29th
September Gale Force W to NW Heavy rain
Special
Birding Days with The Birding Clams
The weather outside is brutal; 60 to 70 mph gales and heavy rain so I turn to a book to while away the morning hours. Birds New To Britain, 1980 - 2004 details the finding of the first lesser scaup back in 1987 at Chasewater, Staffordshire. Mentioned are two ex-students of mine, Jason John Oliver and Alex Barter. The former is a twitcher going strong. The latter sadly dies over ten years ago. Bart, very affectionately known as The Bear, was a phenomenal birder and all round brilliant bloke. Here are a few photographs from birding days with Bart, Jase and another Coppice High School student, Richard Southall.
For a few years in the 1980s they, with their teacher, me, birded around the UK. As they grew into lads and then men, the friendship grew and now they and the birding students that followed have a bond beyond mere words. We are
The Birding Clams
1.
A First Outings of the CTC – Coppice Twitchers Club
They
haven't always been called The Birding Clams. Back in 1984 a group of
three Secondary-aged lads; Jason Oliver, Alex 'The Bear' Barter and
Richard 'Dicks-out' Southall, were in the back of a yellow Nissan
Cherry with their teacher. Destination, the famous olive-backed pipit
that had found a back garden in Bracknell to it's liking.
Flickr user CharlesLam
A
first trip for what was to become regular overnight twitches by a
number of council estate students from Coppice High School, Ashmore
Park Estate, Wolverhampton.
The
trip was memorable for the four involved. The pipit was seen easily
enough but the other two scarce bird targets that day caused just a
few problems. The fudge duck at gravel pits south of Uxbridge wasn't
seen. Victorian bottles were found though and a couple of carrier
bags full of them were taken home. The area was pock marked with pits
where London collectors had dug into the Victorian rubbish tip to
find bottles rarer than the ones discarded by them but picked up by
us. The ferruginous duck, to give it it's proper name turned out to
have been hiding under branches overgrowing the gravel pit margins.
Unknown to us at the time, all we had was a handwritten list of
possible birds with the name of the site; no specific details of
which tree, bush or lake to look on.
Smew
at Wrasbury was written down. Little did we know that Wrasbury was
more than just an immense curved reservoir with a very high bank
around which ran a road.
Workers
had waved to us as we drove through gates they were painting. Workers
had disappeared when we returned to those gates an hour later having
not seen any smew. The wet paint gates were locked.
Two
hours later police arrived to deal with a group of lads who were
trying to lift a different gate off its hinges so that an escape
could be made.
Two
hours later an old man arrived on a push bike with a key to open
those gates.
The
smew. So it turned out weren't on the reservoir but on some gravel
pits a little further on!
My
wife had begged me early that morning not to go. She said something
bad was going to happen. Being locked in Wrasbury reservoir for four
hours watching ducks and the planes taking off from the nearby
Heathrow may just have been what she foretold.
Actually
all this happened three years after a more successful birding weekend
with J.J. Holian, Bill Low, myself and another Coppice student,
Steven Turner, better known as Smoothie.
A
weekend in Norfolk, with the four of us sleeping in the car, gave us
pallas' warblers, richard's pipits and various lesser scarce birds.
Those
same three lads, Jase, Sout' and Bart, were in the car, March 1985, as we careered extremely excitedly, down the hill at Cuckmere Haven. A little crake had practically
allowed birders to stroke it. We arrived the day after it was last
seen. To make matters worse, later that same day I managed to flush a
red-breasted goose not once but twice and both times before Jase had
managed to see it. Rumours that one of the lads had a tattoo of the
goose made in order to grip off Jase are surely found-less; too cruel
a jest.
2.
1989 Two months, two 'Firsts'.
The
Nissan Cherry had a leaking radiator. A first for Britain was at
Charlton Poll, Billingham, Teeside. Eggs and large bottles of water
got the lads to the, hate to say it, most boring 'First' ever seen.
The double-crested cormorant arrived at the pool at the allotted
time. “Be there at 7:45AM,” we were told. In it flew at 7:45AM.
It landed on the water, caught a large fish, swallowed it and then
stood on a pontoon for the next hour. There are only so many plumage
and bare part details to take in and so after that scintillating hour
we were off to more exciting birding at Bamburgh Castle to the north.
Chalk
and cheese, ying and yang; how different a bird only a few weeks
later. Thousands trying to see a golden-winged warbler. It took us
seven hours of searching around a housing estate near Maidstone, Kent
before we found it on some pyracantha surrounding a town house.
photograph by Tim Loseby
3.
Two Coppice Twitchers Thought They had Twitched Their Last.
A
new wonderful girfriend for the teacher and an American vireo, red-eyed, to go
and see. Diane had already rescued the team from the disaster of
having an old Escort blow up on the A2. Diane had even taken the
team; the teacher, Ian Crutchley and Steve Allcott, onward to see the
target bird of the day; the marsh sandpiper at Elmley.
The
vireo though was to bring terror into the proceedings. Who but Diane
would, whilst driving at a naughty speed down the A30 through Devon,
swerve off without thought or reason up the slip road. In fact a
reason for such erratic driving was never given and two shaking lads
on the back seats will recall with horror the moment of screeching
brakes and pending doom. The vireo was secured later after a
different driver had negotiated the narrow lanes around and to Cot
Valley, Cornwall.
4.
Clam Days Return
A
name for the group, not CTC but a name with fun and movement; now
known as the T.I.T.S, each rare bird was greeted by a small dance
from the lads. The Terpsichorean Inspired Twitcher Society racked up
the list in 2005 as each tried to complete a Big Year and see 300
bird species.
The ex-Coppice students, now into their thirties
managed it; their ex-teacher didn't. He had spent too long watching
The Ashes series, the best ever cricket Test match series, to get the
extra birds that would have lifted his respectable 292 to the magic
300. Mind you, he was with his son, Josh, at Edgbaston when Kasprovic
gloved the ball to Jones off Harmison.
A
few of the birds seen by the group that year:-
5.
Clams Today
Nowadays
the glory of the Coppice High School Twitchers Club, now known as The
Birding Clams, meets up every year on Shetland. The first week of
October sees the group assemble and bird. The exploits of the
C.L.A.M.S, the Clear Lunacy & Madness Club, can be seen on
Facebook. There is a group page called just that, The Birding Clams.
The
Clams have even enjoyed birding in France!
Some
members have stayed faithful since that long off time back in 1984.
Others are new and some didn't even go to the same school or have
that teacher. Yet the group is strong is, the fun is still there and
the most important thing, after the birds that is, is the deep
friendship and camaraderie of the group.
Yet to come . . .
Clam Days On Shetland.....
