For the record… by Leah

If you had told me a year ago that I would spend hours, almost every day, wandering through fields, staring into hedgerows, debating with myself over whether a tiny dot was a blue tit or a great tit, photographing it all and then recording it, I’m not sure if I would have believed you.

Yet here I am, soaking wet, freezing cold, my neck aching from the weight of binoculars and a camera, but with a lovely photo to show for my efforts.

This blog is ‘for the record’.

Blue Tit

Great Tit

The biodiversity literacy VIP, on paper, sounds refreshingly simple. Suspiciously simple? Walk around University land. Record what you see and what you hear. Build a picture of biodiversity. In practice, it’s a lot more than that.

It involves early mornings, long walks in all weathers, mostly spent staring upwards and carrying enough kit to make your neck question its life choices. It’s also an exercise in patience, humility and delight, where you discover that birds do not care how cold you are, how wet your socks are, or how dangerously close your camera is to a full memory card and flat batteries.

The moment you stop looking, turn your camera off, or question your life choices, the bird you’ve been waiting for will appear.

Birds have excellent, if highly inconvenient, comedic timing.

Walking slowly, with purpose:

I’ve always been a fast walker. Efficient. Purposeful. Constantly in a rush, with far too much to do to really take notice of what’s around me.

But, this experience has taught me to slow down and enjoy being in nature. Walking slowly and stopping to look often, are crucial to a good bird walk.

You need to pause, listen and scan the environment constantly to see the best birds. Before I would just bulldoze past hedgerows as little more than walls of green, I now see them as habitats full of sound, movement and life.

The landscape stops being a backdrop, and starts to become the main event.

Recording everything:

This course isn’t just birdwatching, though I do often refer to it as my ‘bird class’. It’s recording. Everything we see, where we see it, when we see it, and sometimes wondering why we’ve seen it. Like why am I seeing a barn owl flying out of a ditch in the middle of the day? But it’s not just about what we did see, it’s also about what we didn’t see. I still wonder where all the siskins are hiding out up here. I only live a few hours south of St Andrews, and I can’t go a day without at least twenty siskins in my garden, up here I’m lucky if I can find one a month.

Initially, I had the tendency to overlook the birds I was seeing every day, mostly the pigeons, herring gulls and crows, but I’m pretty sure if I went more than a day without seeing those birds, it would probably be my first sign that the world was ending.

Listening:

One of the most challenging, and most rewarding parts of the course has been learning to listen. Deliberately listen. It’s more than just bird song, each species has its own different calls. That’s right, every single one of the thousands of species has multiple calls to listen to and learn.

Over time, you start identifying some species very quickly, like wrens, tiny little birds who sound like machine gun fire, or great tits who sound like squeaky wheelbarrows (at least to me anyway). Robins are also obvious in their song, defending their territories fiercely.

We all have our own little ways of remembering calls, and it’s so fun to listen to people try to describe, and often impersonate, bird song.

Tradition, technology and internal conflict:

There’s a variety of types of ‘listers’ in birding.

Those with their notebooks, meticulously writing down everything they see on paper, generally long-time birders.

The more ‘modern’ birder, with their lists in the notes on their iPhone.

The ‘photographer’ for whom their photos are their list.

And the ‘E-birders’, those that record their birding in an app, often fighting to have the biggest or the best bird list.

There are also the ‘mental’ listers, those not wanting to miss seeing a single thing while they record, relying upon their enormous brains to not forget a single sighting.

No matter their methods of ‘listing’, we all have one thing in common, birds, for the record.

I am often in two minds about the technology of birding. I’m no expert at identifying birds by sound, so sometimes I use Merlin to practice matching the birds I’m seeing to their sounds. Used thoughtfully, it’s a brilliant learning tool. But there are more extreme Merlin users who rage-bait birds using the recordings available to trick the birds into thinking they have a friend (or an enemy) in the area, to try and see them. This is controversial in the birding world, especially with the paper notebook birders. It raises questions about ethics and disturbance.

By the time I’ve got Merlin and Q-Field on the go on my phone, as well as a camera and binoculars in play, and my mental bird list, trying not to forget anything while noticing everything, it can be a little overwhelming. Always trying not to miss anything, while accepting you inevitably will.

Frustration:

A few weeks ago, I saw a small, grey bird on top of a bush with a little blackcap. I was so surprised to see something different, in an area I usually walk several times a week, that I immediately went for my phone to look-up what it was. And missed the opportunity to photograph it. It was a male Eurasian blackcap, one of the first of the spring. I then spent an hour chasing seeing it again, to be eluded. In the following weeks, I have become an expert in its call, and have heard several. But still no photo of one. One of the frustrations of birding, seeing a bird but having no evidence or photo, for the record.

Birding does sometimes also prove as a slight distraction to daily life. I’ll be driving along and spot a bird of prey in a tree, then suddenly realise I’m not looking at the road anymore! I now find myself riding through fields, pointing out birds to my friends in the middle of conversations. Other than the slight issue of driving safety, birding has enriched my life so much.

Looking down (occasionally):

Despite the VIP’s undeniable bird-bias, we do sometimes look down too, and not just at ground-nesting birds. So much non-bird life has found its way into my records. Plants and fungi in the winter, and now lots of butterflies in the spring. As well as the excitement of mammals, a herd of deer running by, or a noise in the trees turning out to be a squirrel. These brief, fleeting encounters remind me that I’m just a visitor in their lives. Humans can be so disconnected from nature.

Recording biodiversity beyond birds, gives context to them. Nothing exists in isolation in nature. Plants support insects, insects support birds, and birds support birds of prey. The more you notice, the more interconnected everything becomes.

Wet weather and notebooks:

No outdoor blog in Scotland would be complete without mention of the weather, and the role it plays in our work. Fortunately, as an avid equestrian, I’m no stranger to being outdoors for hours on end in the most horrendous of weather. The horse waits for no one and doesn’t care if you’re cold, and neither do the birds.

That said, weather makes birding a lot more challenging, even for the hardiest among us. Wind covers the sounds of the birds and relevant movement is much more difficult to distinguish. Rain that either ruins your paper or makes your phone freeze, as well as blurring both glasses and binoculars. And cold that makes your hands too numb to write, type or take pictures.

Community:

Although recording can sometimes feel solitary, I’m always aware there’s a community of us birders out there. From those arguing over IDs in Facebook comment sections, those taking their EBird big years with the utmost seriousness, to those just out there to learn and enjoy.

The goal is not just birdwatching, it’s learning and sharing your experiences and knowledge with those around you. People are so curious when they see me out photographing the tops of trees, on my 10-year-old camera, and often come up to ask what I’m photographing.  It seems I don’t fit the typical demographic of a ‘birder’, and so the serious birders are often surprised to find me amongst them at hides.

More often than not, when I’m out birding, I’ll end up having a lovely conversation with someone I never would have crossed paths with otherwise. We share our sightings and suggest places to find the birds each other are looking for, sharing knowledge and connecting. Of course, you get the kids that think they’re cooler than us, but, for the record, it’s not cool not to know birds.

Connecting with people is a big part of birding. Connecting with nature and the world around you, is another. And somewhere in between, you end up connecting with yourself.

For the record:

Maybe it’s in my DNA, my grandfather Jim, who I never knew, was a huge bird lover. As I started to discover my fascination for birding, my mum started to talk to me more about him and his love of birds, and even gave me a few of his most special bird books. Apparently, there are over 1,000 in our attic.

And at the end of the day, despite the cold, rain and inevitable missed sightings, this class has taught me that noticing is a skill, one that takes patience, effort and care. Each record may feel small, but together they matter. Scientifically, ecologically and personally.

And for the record, learning how to pay attention has changed far more than just how I see birds.