I was obsessed with drawing from an early age, especially horses. Out of the blue at a primary school medical, the district nurse said, ‘I hear you can draw a horse in three lines. Show me.’ At that she pushed a sheet of paper and a pencil across the desk. The three lines thing bothered me. You can’t draw a horse in three lines. I did my best then pushed the paper back to her.
Horses (not the drawing I gave to the nurse!)
My mother and grandmother conducted my upbringing. My father had almost nothing to do with it. The two matriarchs spent a lot of time worrying I would waste my life by taking up something inappropriate as a career – such as art or music. When you have ‘surgeon’s hands’ as my granny put it, you ought not to squander your gift playing the piano or doodling. ‘Very nice for a hobby dear, but not for a career,’ was a remark I heard frequently. Nevertheless a piano was bought and I was given art materials for birthdays and Christmases. I spent so much time playing the piano my mother would sometimes lock it.
Animal Wonders – an early publication, aged eight. Priced competitively at 2d.
Compared with drawing I found painting much more difficult, particularly with colour-blindness lurking in the background. At school I would ask the girl next to me to tell me which crayon was the green one and which brown; then I would carefully place them on opposite sides of the desk. I always preferred drawing to painting.
View from my bedroom window (aged 14). Home (aged 14).Funky gibbons
Before dropping art as a subject, I would sometimes get picked to take part in school art competitions. One of these was at the Kelvin Hall Museum in Glasgow. My mother packed the usual ham and egg sandwiches into a Tupperware box and off I went in the bus. I wandered around the museum looking for inspiration. I just couldn’t decide what to paint, and in the end I chose some stuffed mallards in a glass case. The result was appalling. I vividly recall my art teacher’s crestfallen expression as he asked me why on earth I’d picked that for a subject. I was ashamed of my ineptitude and began to think surgery sounded like the easier option.
Even after I’d escaped the clutches of the Art Department I kept drawing. I had an interest in the work of Velasquez and Rodin and tried copying various images from books. Many years later on holiday in New York we were on a tour of the Metropolitan Museum conducted by a friend, Eyal. An artist himself, he did tours regularly with art students and visitors. I recounted my past efforts to him and mentioned copying Velasquez’s portrait of his assistant, Juan de Pareja.
‘You do know that’s here?’ he asked. I did not. A bell rang; the museum was closing. ‘Come on, I know where it is,’ he said, grabbing my arm. We ran up a staircase. The guard at the top held up a hand and said, ‘Gentlemen, we are closing.’ ‘I know,’ said Eyal, ‘We just want to see one picture.’ Skidding round a corner into a big first floor gallery, we arrived in front of the painting. It was surprisingly small, but so beautiful. I was thrilled.
Juan de Pareja with my generous acknowledgement to Velasquez (forged his signature)
Later, at university I doodled during lectures – something I pursued compulsively for the rest of my career whenever I became bored in meetings or talks.
Lecture on parasuicide. …and one on alcoholism.
I occasionally drew illustrations for student magazines and toyed with cartooning.
Maggie T.Clive JamesTed talking.Unknown actress and Captain Bob.
Once qualified, I started my house officer jobs. I had experienced a very stressful student locum on a general surgical unit and (despite my hands) had no desire to become a surgeon. I took one of the less popular posts in orthopaedic surgery just to get that part of the preregistration year out of the way. I spent two months at the Princess Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital, Fairmilehead. My responsibilities were confined to the wards that had been allocated to me and did not include other firms whose registrars were meant to clerk in their own patients. Despite this, one very well-spoken registrar tried to get me to admit the professor’s patients. I refused, whereupon he called me ‘a slimy rat’ and stalked off in the huff.
On call that night and bored, I decided to depict the ‘slimy rat’ that I had become. An Australian registrar looked at my drawing and asked if he could have it for a few minutes. It turned out he was not a fan of my antagonist. Unknown to me, he photocopied my drawing and pinned it up on various noticeboards throughout the hospital.
The next morning I was confused to encounter various paramedical staff expressing their sympathy for the awful thing that Mr Court-Brown had done to me. Once I spotted the copies of my masterpiece on the wall I realised that they assumed I had been the victim of a nasty prank. I felt a bit miffed that they thought CCB could have done the drawing. Irony is never easy to convey non-verbally.
Slimy Rat
Despite her iron grip on my future, my mother failed to stop me hanging about with artists and musicians. I even married an artist. My interest in birds encouraged me to return to drawing later in life and I started recording the more interesting ones I’d seen. I would draw them, cut them out, and fold back the base so I could stand them up on my bookshelves. I also took a small drawing book with me on holidays and birding trips.
Great Northern Diver, Bewick Swan, Hoopoe.Juvenile Golden Eagle, Tree Sparrow, Buff-breasted Sandpiper.Umbria 07/07/07Stag partyGolden Oriole.Australia
At work and bored in meetings and lectures, I continued doodling. Birds in flight were my favourite subject. I really like watching gulls, birds that many people detest but which are masters of their element and endlessly graceful in form and movement. The complex structure of their wings from different angles is a delightful challenge.
Three gulls and a couple of terns. Black-headed gull plumages.
I have an old friend, Jim who, like me, loves birds. On our many quests to see new ones and revisit our old favourites we have enjoyed years of harmless, happy companionship. Often accompanied by the man who started it all, Rob Jones, we have found ourselves in landscapes we might otherwise never have known: Norfolk reed beds at dawn; grey sea lochs on Islay; dusk on Speyside under Scots pines. We have also shared the pleasures of the collector. Our collections are not made up of objects you can hold or contemplate but things that are much more ephemeral; a list of moments when you made a brief connection with a wild bird – especially those moments when that bird was a fabled rarity.
Jim is an artist and he can capture those moments using his special gift, but for the rest of us they must simply ‘flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude’. Birdwatchers’ notebooks can be works of art in themselves but these days few would rely on their field notes or sketches alone to confirm a rare sighting to the British Birds Rarities Committee. This is partly why birdwatching has been overrun by photographers for whom the experience of seeing a bird is not enough; they have to trap it digitally. Perfect photographs are now expected. It’s progress I suppose.
The tribe of birders has its own arcane jargon and traditions. ‘Twitching’ is a British term, meaning the pursuit of previously located rare birds in order to add them to your list. It arose in the 1950s and supposedly described the nervous behaviour of one Howard Medhurst, a British birdwatcher, who used to get very cold on the back of his pal’s motorcycle. If another birder regales you with a detailed description of a rarity you have missed, you are being ‘gripped off’. This is very bad manners. A ‘lifer’ is a bird seen for the first time ever. Giss (pronounced jizz) refers to ‘general impression of size and shape’ and apparently derives from a WWII term relating to the identification of aircraft. An ‘LBJ’ is a ‘little brown job’ – which abound in Britain. ‘Crippling’ views are when you see a bird in the best possible conditions at very close quarters and a ‘plastic’ bird is an escapee from an avian collection which cannot be added to your list. There are other terms of such cringing geekiness I prefer not to use or even mention them.
The generality of normal people have a vague notion that twitchers are mad, bad – and sad. When the subject crops up in conversation birders are often challenged with, “You’re not one of those awful twitchers are you?” Rather than attempting any form of self-defence, Jim would reply, “Yes I am,” to put his accuser at a disadvantage. Next up are the other classic questions – how do you prove you’ve seen a bird? Do you have to take a photograph of it? Can’t you just say you’ve seen it anyway? The latter question misses the point that there is no pleasure in pretending to see a bird. It’s an honour system that polices itself. But Jim and I are not true twitchers. The real ones are driven obsessives teetering on the edge of sanity [cough]. In fact, we are ‘dudes’ (birders with all the gear who enjoy easy birding in pleasant weather and whose fieldcraft could be better).
The transition from having an interest in birds to having birds take over your whole life is often one of damascene suddenness. Intrinsic to this conversion is a fondness for making lists and being male. There is no getting away from the fact that birding is mostly a male preoccupation. If gardening is surrogate agriculture then perhaps birding is surrogate hunting. The urge to find animals to eat must be deeply embedded in our nature and the skills that allow hunters to do this are very similar to those needed to find, observe and identify wild birds. In the early days of ornithology, before high quality optical equipment was widely available, it bore more than a resemblance to hunting. The only sure way to identify a bird was to shoot it, skin it and preserve it. Museums still hold large collections of bird skins and eggs.
So why birds? Well, most of them fly about emitting noises which makes finding them a lot easier than finding other animals such as mammals. The protean nature of their plumage makes them a wonder to behold and crucially there is a manageable number of bird species on the ‘British List’. Currently that list stands at 622 but many of those have been seen only once or just a handful of times since records began. It is therefore possible for a reasonably enthusiastic student to get to know all the likely species; their size, plumage, regional distribution, movements and voice. Learning a British insect list would be a much bigger challenge. And they’re awfully small.
If birds are not to be shot to confirm their identity then how are they to be identified? Should you have the appropriate licence you can trap or net them – but that is only for proper scientists who need to measure and ring birds. For the rest of us we have to classify our prey by observation. A decent pair of binoculars and a field guide is the essential kit. Most serious birders would add a telescope and tripod to that. If you really must photograph birds there are attachments to connect your camera or smart phone to the end of your scope or, like the ‘toggers’, you could carry around a colossal telephoto lens instead (and wear a camouflage jacket).
Surprisingly, photographs don’t always show the crucial field marks. This means that skilled bird illustrators are still essential to proceedings. Field guides are constantly being re-illustrated, rewritten and revised. The ‘must-have’ edition keeps changing and, unavoidably, aesthetics come into it. I started with an old Collins Pocket Guide but was persuaded by Rob to get the Shell Guide, which was much better, but I never much liked it because of the odd, pallid illustrations. As new editions of the better guides came out I ended up with a collection of them. I now use the Collins Bird Guide app on my smartphone instead of a physical book which means I have one less item to carry. That app even includes recordings of the songs and calls but it is very bad form to use them to attract birds. Knowing birdsong is a deeply rewarding skill. It’s lovely when the summer migrants return and you can refresh your memory of all those lovely warblers. Despite the wonderful new technology I still miss thumbing through a nicely distressed guide, especially in the pub at the end of the day.
Field Guides Section of my Library
Once armed with good optics, the right clothing, and your preferred field guide, your problems really begin. Birds don’t look like they do in the field guides. They don’t perch side-on, in good light, in full breeding plumage, next to similar species for ease of comparison. On top of that they might fly off silhouetted against the sky, plunge into the shrubbery, or bob up and down among waves far out to sea. A gale may be shaking your scope and jolting your elbow and your fingers and toes might be freezing off. There may be no other birder nearby to help you sort it all out. If there are other birders, they might see a bird while you don’t. If the bird doesn’t reappear, you’ve had it. This is called ‘dipping’, an especially galling experience if you have travelled a good distance in hopeful expectation of seeing ‘the beast’. Because of these frustrating experiences Jim and I referred to ourselves as the ‘Edinburgh Dippers’ in an hilarious bird-based pun.
Supposing you do see the bird well but there is no one else around to ask what it is – what do you do? Traditionally you make sketches, take notes and pore over the big books when you get home. When you do, you find that you have failed to record that one crucial feature which separates your bird from the other very similar bird you didn’t know about. The field skills of experienced birders are very impressive and even obsessive beginners may never attain top skill levels. The best field ornithologists seem almost psychic in their ability to find and identify birds – and they hold all the field guides in their heads.
It is inevitable that you will feel the need to record what you have seen – if only to have something to refer to in future when memory dims. Initially I ticked off each sighting on a list at the back of my favourite field guide. A new bird seen for the first time is referred to as a ‘tick’. It might be a garden tick, a local patch tick, a year tick, a Scottish tick, or a UK life tick (lifer). The latter, of course, the best kind of tick. I graduated from paper to an Amstrad 9512 and floppy disks, then to Excel spreadsheets and finally online lists which allow you to enter the date and place of sighting, store the list remotely, and share it with other enthusiasts.
My current lists with their totals are below. The top list is my British life total, currently 315. Rob has over 400 which is pretty serious. Below that, birds I have seen in Scotland, then a couple of year totals, the Australian birds I’ve seen and at the bottom, the 56 species I have seen in or from my garden.
Once you have a serious list the gaps in it begin to rankle; those embarrassingly common things you haven’t seen yet. I put them in a section called the ‘Hit List’. These were the target birds I had to get for the sake of respectability. At first you go out for a day’s foraging and come back with half a dozen new birds. Easy. But soon the yield per trip begins to tail off and new species become harder to find. Still, as you labour to add to your list of commoner birds, rarities turn up at random. This results in anomalies like having a buff-breasted sandpiper but no Mediterranean gull. To control the addictive qualities of twitching some birders will limit their area of interest to one of the constituent countries of the UK or even just a county. Americans have a much bigger problem with the area thing. Their field guides are usually divided into birds found east or west of the Rockies.
In the beginning, your enthusiasm gets the better of you and in your ignorance you gaily identify rare species right and left. Later, it turns out your great find is unknown at that time of year or never seen in that habitat. Mis-identification can be toe-curling if you are found out by a more experienced birder but still quite embarrassing to confess to a non-birding companion who has become weary of many false dawns. No one wants to be a dude.
A friend of mine who is a radiologist in Liverpool and a keen birder was once at Leighton Moss reserve and had just seen a spectacular marsh harrier hunting over the reed beds. As he walked back along the path from the hide he saw two women coming towards him. They had top quality outdoor clothing and were hung about with the best binoculars and telescopes. Most birders will share information with others unasked because it should be about sharing. My friend hailed them and after exchanging pleasantries he said, “Have you seen the marsh harrier?” The ladies glanced at each other, puzzled, then one of them said brightly, “Yes, I think he’s in his office back at the visitor centre.”
Any bird on your list that you are not 100% sure of is referred to as ‘stringy’. A birder who has a lot of these on his list is looked down upon as a ‘stringer’ and his life list total as totally dubious. For a while I had my own stringy sightings in a separate part of my list under the heading ‘String Section’. It is a relief to finally get a proper look at any of those dodgy ones, and over the years I have removed the offending items one by one. However satisfying this is, it is always tinged with the regret that you have not added to your total with your new sighting, merely soothed an old wound. It is always better to wait until you are sure of what you’ve seen. I only have one bird left in the String Section now. To confess: it is a Leach’s Petrel, Pentland Firth, 7th August 1988. Now, it may indeed have been one of those exotic pelagic wanderers, but I know my ID skills at that stage were not really up to it. I stringed a Leach’s Petrel and it still makes me wince when I come to it on my life list. Chances of another are slim.
In the end the essential skill required for bird identification turns out to be an intimate knowledge of common birds from which the rarity will then naturally separate itself. Jim and I once came across a very pale, almost white, greenshank at Aberlady Bay. Getting excited, we approached the warden (pleasingly called Warden Gordon) who was nearby and invited him to inspect our find. “It’s a greenshank,” he said flatly. “But it’s so pale!” we protested. “Nevertheless, that is what it is.” he said wearily.
Division into multiple areas of interest increases tick frequency but inevitably this dilutes the pleasure. Foreign trips are often recommended by non-birders on the basis that you would just love to see all those beautiful birds they saw while lounging around the pool at their villa. They can’t quite remember what they were called or exactly what they looked like – but the thing is; those birds don’t really matter. They are not on the British List. Of course it is lovely to see a Hoopoe in Corsica, but seeing one in Dunbar…
The most recent addition to my list took me 33 years of serious birding to get. As a small boy, one hot summer night my father drew my attention to a strange rasping call coming from the fields in front of the farmhouse. “Hear that?” he said. “That’s a corncrake. You won’t be hearing many of them in future, they’re dying out.” They were indeed, due mainly to changes in farming methods. Although I heard them many times since then in suitable habitats in the Western Isles I could never quite clap eyes on one. The grass was always a bit too long by the time we went on holiday. The nearest I got to one was a freshly dead specimen on Fair Isle. My anaesthetist pal Donald wondered if resuscitation might be a possibility…
Finally, on June 1st, 2019 at RSPB Balranald on North Uist, we pulled into the car park to see a small knot of people looking over a fence into a weedy paddock. Unmistakable calls were coming from it. There were a few tense moments as the others (non-birders mostly) described a head sticking up from the foliage only for it to duck down before I could get a bead on it. Finally I succeeded. I was able to watch it calling and skulking around in the vegetation. Crippling views in fact.
Rare birds can turn up at any time but the main twitching season is autumn, principally October. It is then that the current year’s crop of inexperienced young birds are on the move and prone to be diverted by adverse winds. The ideal meteorology is a high pressure over Scandinavia which results in onshore easterlies pushing Europe’s southbound birds onto our east coast.
Because many birds die during their first winter the sheer numbers are much greater in autumn. Spring migration is spread out over a longer period and involves fewer birds. The upside of Spring is that they are all in breeding plumage and the males may even sing making identification easier. In autumn drab immatures and adults moulting into muted non-breeding plumage makes identification tricky. Flight calls are hard to learn and distressingly similar. On the east coast any rarities usually originate in eastern Europe, or even Siberia. On the other side of the country westerly gales, especially fading hurricanes, can carry ‘yanks’ to our shores. I often think about how many birds must drop exhausted into the ocean for every one that turns up here to be twitched. Some birds are thought to arrive on boats, so-called ‘assisted passage’. North Sea oil rigs have enthusiastic bird groups who experience many ‘falls’ of migrants onto the superstructure of the platforms.
It might be useful to define terms: a migrant is a bird taking its normal annual route while a vagrant or accidental is a bird that is way off-course. These lost souls are what the twitchers are after. Such birds are not ornithologically significant, they are simply oddities of nature that interest the collector more than the scientist.
Before rapid electronic communications one of the best ways to get really rare birds was to visit a hotspot like Fair Isle or the Isles of Scilly and simply wait for what turns up. A remote island in the middle of a vast sea draws in exhausted birds. The general lack of tree cover means they have little choice when it comes to places of concealment and they can be found more easily. On Fair Isle Heligoland traps allow the wardens to measure and ring birds in the hand. Doing a round of the traps in the morning brings the excitement of discovering who the mystery captives are.
My wife and I spent part of our honeymoon helping to ring storm petrels on Fair Isle. Their musty smell, redolent of old books, is unforgettable. The Warden gave us the ‘honeymoon suite*’ in the Observatory, probably out of pity for my wife. These days, with much better information available about the location of rarities, FOMO has taken over and many twitchers opt to stay on mainland Britain so they can chase the latest sightings. East Anglia offers a compromise. It picks up many vagrants but you can also drive all over it – and it’s not surrounded by raging seas.
If a serious rarity turns up on your ‘patch’ huge numbers of birders will materialise to see it. At a twitch the car park will contain a variety of dilapidated hatchbacks with half-eaten takeaways on the dashboard and missing wheel covers. Sometimes there will be a comatose birder snoring in the back seat. Swivel-eyed fanatics will tell you they’ve driven overnight from Kent to get here. Whether they dip or not they will usually divert to any other nearby sites holding rarities and then to any others on the way home.
Sometimes these events get in the papers. Usually there is a photograph of the poor lost vagrant and another of the horde of nutters, bristling with scopes on tripods. A twitch can cause trouble if the bird doesn’t have the decency to locate itself in some remote spot but instead takes up residence in the bushes of a Tesco car park or someone’s back garden. For these reasons some birds are ‘suppressed’ only to appear in the annual bird reports years later, much to the distress of twitchers.
Finally, a last word on terminology. ‘Birding’ is preferred to ‘birdwatching’ with its implications of passivity. Birding used to refer to wild-fowling as in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor: “She laments sir… her husband goes this morning a-birding.”
Whatever you call it, it is never ‘bird-spotting’.
The Bohemian Waxwing 