| "In the dark, dank days of October 2004, it finally became clear - I was getting fractionally porky and a touch middle-aged. It's not that I was a complete lardball, or that I couldn't make it up the stairs - it was just that at the age of 34, you start to feel the chill wind of age and mortality! There was nothing for it but to undertake a fitness drive." |
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In 2005, Simon Woolley was on a mission - to find 200 species of birds in Hampshire in a year without using motorised transport. "Birding by Bike" is Simon's story of the ups and downs of the Hampshire hills, the big birds and the big dips. We promise you that you won't put this page-turning account down until you reach the very last page. Don't believe us - then read on - Simon has kindly given surfbirds extracts from the book.
Write to Simon (address at the bottom) for a copy now and in return make a donation of £5 in aid of tsunami relief - where it all started. Payment details at the bottom of the page.
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Birding by Bike - the Hampshire Big Year 2005 by Simon Woolley
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| Laughing Gull, Gosport, copyright Paul Norris |
Desert Wheatear, Hayling Island, copyright George SA Spraggs |
....On one early November ride in 2004 around the upper Itchen valley, cycling past the Naturetrek office at Cheriton Mill to be precise, I flushed a Little Egret from the water meadow. A few minutes later, a Bullfinch flew across the road. Now I got thinking. How many birds could I see, in a year, in Hampshire, without using the car, or trains, or buses?
I put the idea on ice for a few weeks, and was hardly thinking about it at all when we set off to Sri Lanka for a birding holiday, on the infamous date of 26th December 2004. Everyone knows what happened in Sri Lanka (and right around the Indian Ocean) that day.
"...here and there were chilling reminders of the fifty or so people, mostly tourists, who had died here - the lid of a suitcase, torn from its zip, a beach bag, a flip-flop, and most upsetting of all, a few pages from a bird book (matted, soaked and welded together) in the lee of a fallen tree."
January 2005 in England started off grim and wet, and there's no point denying that we took some time to recover from our near miss. But life does go on, and my thoughts soon turned again to my self-set challenge. What was a realistic bike year-list target in Hampshire? Over a mug of tea I settled down to construct an initial target of 150, thinking that 160 would be a pretty good measure of success, 170 would be very good indeed, and 180 would be outstanding. Were these numbers realistic? We would see.
The final spice was added in those early days of January by a long phone call with my very good friend, Chris Mills. Chris lives in Norfolk and enjoys a bike ride too, and he essentially "accepted the challenge". He started his own blog (Birder on a Bike) with the same goal as me! Now, I was in no doubt from the very beginning that he would "win" on sheer numbers - Norfolk is Norfolk, after all! But I reckoned that we could work out some kind of handicap system in December.
15th January - this was the real beginning. A small flock of Waxwings, precursors of a major invasion into southern England, had been found at Hedge End retail park - a classically unattractive but berry-rich location. So with a bit of time late on a Saturday morning, I piled on the wet weather gear, put the binoculars in my rucksack and hit the (very wet) road.
Immediately on arrival, sodden and mud-spattered, I joined a small group of car-based Hampshire birders and settled down to watch a flock of some 18 or so Waxwings - scarce visitors to England from Arctic Scandinavia and Siberia.
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| Waxwing, Hedge End, copyright Nigel Jones |
23rd January - My pager was telling me we had a shot at a real New Forest speciality next, so it was time for another hard half hour ride to the south-east, and a luncheon rendezvous at Vales Moor, near Burley. Just a few yards from the car-park a Dartford Warbler popped up..............Increasingly hopelessly we wandered about the heath. But just as we were giving up, the hot news we wanted came through - the bird was on a bush about ¾ of a mile to the south of us. Peering into the now hazy but quite bright sun, we could just make out a pale spot, and Alan"s scope confirmed it - a very distant but very tickable Great Grey Shrike! I wanted to be at our final site in good time, and we managed to reach Blackwater Arboretum with over an hour to go before dusk. While we missed both Crossbill and Brambling, species which others recorded that afternoon, we did succeed with the main target here - a Hawfinch dropping in to this regular and traditional roosting site. However, the hard bit was yet to come, of course. I offloaded everything bar lights and reflective coat, took a deep breath and hit the road once more, in almost total darkness. The ride was not fun - a niggling pain developed in my right knee, it was "chuffing cold", as they say, and it wasn"t much fun on some quite busy roads. I'd ridden about 73 miles, and been in the field for almost 12 hours.
10th March - some days just make you glad to be alive - this was one of them. I decided to head west from Winchester in the afternoon in search of owls, starting just west of Farley Mount, where I quickly managed to hear a Tawny Owl calling in daylight. But then, very surprisingly, a familiar burst of song came from a ridge some ½ a mile from the road. Surely not? But it was - a Woodlark, miles from anywhere I'd heard or seen one before in the county.
13th March - a true single-species twitch today - I rode for almost 1½ hours to a site "somewhere in the New Forest" and set myself up alongside a few other birders to look for one specific raptor. After a couple of false alarms over Sparrowhawks, the genuine article appeared - I saw a total of three Goshawks over just half an hour. This species has recently colonised western Hampshire, and is now breeding in the New Forest, but they are the very devil to see except in early spring, when they perform very public aerial displays over the woodlands. Also here were Woodlarks, Buzzards and a selection of common New Forest birds, such as Stonechats and Dartford Warblers.
21st March - spring finally struck today. Following reports of migrants on the coast, I took a short ride out of town and up onto Morestead Down before work. I was actually very surprised when the target bird showed up: a cracking Northern Wheatear in a set-aside field.
10th April - in beautiful spring sunshine, I took a 77km 'mystery tour' of the downs north and west of Winchester, with one big target species in the shape of a pair of Stone Curlews at a traditional (but necessarily secret) site.
2nd May - more hot news on the Hampshire grapevine had me preparing for a completely new venture - a night ride. A singing Spotted Crake had been located in an area of wet swamp in the Test Valley, and had been heard singing for two successive nights. So at 2200 I left home and pedalled through dark country lanes to the site. Very soon I could hear the distinctive, surprisingly loud "whiplash" of a territorial male Spotted Crake, with a Nightingale accompaniment. This was really good value - the species is all but unknown in southern England in summer, and a very rare bird nationally at this season. Even if it was a "heard only", this was one of the best birds of the year so far. The ride home was (unsurprisingly) dark and (thankfully) uneventful, and I finally crawled into bed at about 0030.
15th May - My "competitor" Chris Mills had been scoring very heavily this weekend up in Norfolk (our friendly bike year-listing rivalry was a huge source of inspiration (http://birderonabike.blogspot.com). Just a pity you couldn't spare a few more of those Norfolk rarities down this way, Chris.) so there was nothing for it but a bit of blind optimism, and the hope that the two Roseate Terns reported at Hill Head would extend their spring stopover to three days. So 1½ hours of pedalling on a chilly morning saw me safely in place on the seafront at Titchfield Haven by 0900. A check of some 30 Common Terns on a small island, and there they were - 2 Roseate Terns safely on the list. Buoyed up, the ride home in warm spring sunshine was a genuine pleasure. 175 species up - well beyond my beginning of year expectations - and it was only mid-May.
21st May - Cup Final day, and an absolutely foul bit of weather. But news that a major rarity was still present in the north-east of the county had me setting off in appalling weather. I crossed my fingers - it was reported to be very mobile. This was the toughest ride yet. I got freezing cold and utterly bedraggled as I cycled mostly uphill to Odiham. Exhausted and very chilled, I reached Tundry Pond at about 1400 and ran (yes, ran) down the towpath - I was not going to dip for the sake of a lazy five minutes on foot! The very fine adult WHISKERED TERN was still present with three or four Common Terns. This southern European marsh tern was a Hampshire tick, another British Birds rarity on the year-list.
22nd May - with much better weather today and the date just right, it was time to head for a secret locality in the New Forest for a spot of raptor watching. The now familiar ride to the Forest via Romsey was well-rewarded with (after about an hour of waiting) an absolutely stunning sighting of a male Honey Buzzard lifting out of the very closest trees, circling and gaining height rapidly. It was within 40 feet at first, close enough to see every feather and the striking yellow eye - awesome. Honey Buzzards are nationally very rare birds (only about 40 pairs in Britain), and although the New Forest is one of the strongholds, they are notoriously difficult to locate and very hard indeed to see well. Also near this site were a big fat female Goshawk, many Common Buzzards, singing Woodlark, Redstart and Cuckoo, and a Raven. Elsewhere on the ride there and back, I had my third singing Firecrest of the year - I didn't even have to get off the bike.
31st July - At long last it felt like autumn migration might be under way. In what was turning out to be a pretty good raptor year, I connected with an Osprey, at Lower Test Marshes. At about 1020, all the gulls went up, and the Osprey cruised in from the south, circled, and perched in one of the dead trees. This may well have been the bird which had been in the general area since about May - it's a very rare bird in Hampshire in summer. So maybe not autumn migration after all!
21st August - I was just about to enjoy a relaxed Sunday, when a hot pager bleep had me flinging on the hot weather kit and heading off for the coast. A record run to Farlington Marshes (1½ hours) and a quick run along the sea-wall, and there was the moulting juvenile/1st winter WILSON'S PHALAROPE. Worth just as many 'points', but of course much less difficult, a Yellow Wagtail called in flight overhead, shortly followed by three seen distantly over the fields. Add in lots of waders and a bonus Spotted Crake, and this was a pretty good day out! The mileage count went over two grand today - 138 hours (or 5.75 DAYS!) in the saddle, at 17 km/species.
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| Wilson's Phalarope, Farlington Marshes, copyright Hugh Venables |
25th August - more red hot pager news had me saddling up and heading south-west through squally showers to Pennington this morning - it really is a long ride (over two hours), but I was rewarded immediately on arrival with good views of the juv/1st winter Grey Phalarope on Butts Lagoon. While this (very) high Arctic breeding wader is an annual autumn visitor to the county, this was easily the earliest ever - most records involve storm-blown birds in September or October. So it was nice to get ahead of myself for once.
2nd October - to my rather great surprise, the double century was now beginning to loom - just six more birds required. I had clearly underestimated the possibilities back in January. Pennington came up trumps again. I headed off early across the New Forest, and shortly after arriving at about 0930, locked on to the juvenile BAIRD'S SANDPIPER which had been present since Thursday. This was yet another very rare American wader, and my first for Hampshire. Like the Wilson's Phalarope, this was the sixth for the county, and the first to stick around for any length of time since 1996. It was a classic 'Weetabix-on-legs' job - long-winged, very smart and distinctive, if a little furtive in amongst the rushes and sedges at the back of the Fishtail Lagoon.
27th October - at long last, I achieved what I thought would be pretty much impossible back in January - 200 species in Hampshire in a year, by bike and on foot. I had cycled 3,827km (or 2,378 miles), been in the saddle for just shy of a week, and the average distance per species was about 12 miles. I arrived at Titchfield Haven at about 0930 and decided to check the floods just south of the village first, as this was where bird had been reported on and off the day before. Within a few minutes - there it was! The superb first-winter LESSER YELLOWLEGS provided a suitably rare and spectacular 200th bird.
29th October - and still they come! Red hot news came through this morning of a confiding Hampshire tick near Titchfield again - but I couldn't get into the field until mid afternoon. Would it stay? The answer was a resounding "yes"! After a windy ride to the coast, I walked the ¾ mile west along Brownwich cliffs, to be rewarded with point blank views of a really crippling Lapland Bunting.
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| Lapland Bunting, Brownwich Cliffs, copyright Peter Raby |
This species, while a scarce migrant along English coasts, is a really rare bird in Hampshire - only about 60 or so have ever been recorded, and nearly all of the recent ones have been "flyovers" at coastal migration watchpoints. So to have a chance to twitch one was highly unexpected. Stunning stuff - a real Hampshire blocker nailed, and a superb bird too.
5th November - Remember, remember the 5th of November - well, I certainly will after this year! At 1330, the news broke, and after (not much) umming and ahhing, I was off. After a record-breaking 1 hour 22 minute ride I was on site, and immediately had flight views of the 1st winter LAUGHING GULL. Stunning stuff! The bird proceeded to fly up and down the sea wall a few times, to the delight of the gathered and seemingly almost complete Hampshire birding fraternity. Deeply happy, and with several adult Mediterranean Gulls to add to the day list, I 'streaked' home in a rather slower time.
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| Laughing Gull, Gosport, copyright Joe Cockram |
But better was still to come - to find out what lay in store for Simon in the final weeks of 2005, send a cheque for £5 payable to Simon Woolley, 2 Culver Lodge, Culver Road, Winchester SO23 9JF . All proceeds go towards tsunami relief.
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