The Manchester Birder

There is a need, in any debate about changing culture or emerging technology, to watch ourselves carefully for signs that we are entrenched in a position simply because we don't like change.  It's easy, especially as we age, to dislike change because we dislike change, and there are times if we're honest with ourselves where our subjective preferences are informing our response to new things more than the objective truth about them.   I'm a middle-aged man.  I do not rely on my phone to be the primary source of information about everything in my world, and I have never knowingly asked AI to do anything for me.  I eschew AI-based searches online and I have not got an account with any LLM (Large Language Model - such as Gemini from Google or GPT4 from ChatGPT).  However, many people younger than me treat LLMs as something entrenched in their lives.  A person I know well works to train LLM programs by evaluating and rating their responses based on real, l...

If I lived on the coast I think it would be different, but this years summer lull is a serious one.  Too hot to walk far, all the local water has dried up (except truly big water bodies and reservoirs) and breeding birds seem to be as quiet as I've ever known them.  I've all but given up birding since May, barring desultory wanderings on patch mourning the loss and the lack and the silence. Butterflies and dragonflies have, as with many UK birders, stepped heroically into the breach.  An epic year of butterfly and odonata migration is the positive spin on probably catastrophic climate change that has kept half the UK as dry as I've ever known it, and the strange irony of leaning heavily into a new found passion of searching for these migrants that are only here because southern Europe is experiencing desertification in real time has not passed me by. There is still joy to be found.  After the late spring blaze of fritillaries I wondered if I'd lose interest in butter...

The day after the day after the night before is not a place a man in his mid-forties should ever wish to find himself.  This is the sad truth of two (and three) day hangovers.  This particular man had left his home at 8.30pm on the Thursday night with the intention of a quiet pub quiz, three pints, and an indulgent thirty minute lie in on the Friday morning.  Instead he had fallen in with a crowd of old friends and ended up still sipping gin at 3.22am on Friday morning.  Arriving home after sunrise, he awoke to work five bare minutes before his log on time, and worked solidly if in a certain level of discomfort for eight hours.  6.30am on Saturday and the alarm went off, and this man still felt the hangover bite.  A new low.  Even after 36 hours and a good night of sleep the hangover was winning. Sadly, that man was me, and I was reflecting on feeling the gritty edge of the reality of middle age as Kris picked me up and we headed to Nosterfield as part...

After a few years of threatening in a gently relaxed way that I would get into butterflies it's the summer of 2026 that tipped me into a more serious quest to see some butterflies beyond what come to the buddleia on my front garden.  Like many people I can identify the obvious and common species, the Red Admirals, Orange-tips (males!), the Peacocks and Small Tortoiseshells.  I can pick out a Brimstone and I've seen my share of Clouded Yellows while birding.  I can recognise Ringlet, but until this summer I wasn't aware of seeing any hairstreaks (except Green, which have a couple of days every year where they fairly boil out of the banks of a ditch up on the moors within my 10km circle and are hard to miss).  I had no clue about fritillaries, or heaths, or browns, and I couldn't have told you the difference between Large and Small White, or Common, Small and Holly Blue.  I didn't even know that some of these butterflies existed.   It's rare to go into a...

June and early July were contrasting times for me in terms of birding.  I have stayed local almost all of that time, but my one twitch was a big  twitch. I walked a lot in June.  I don't usually - the horse flies and mosquitoes have a deep desire to sample my blood, and my immune system does not enjoy their attention.  I tend to only go birding near the coast during these months, focusing on tern colonies and enjoying the breeze rather than being eaten alive.  This month I couldn't do that really, with only a visit to Seaforth to squint with migraine-inducing focus through the fence while trying (successfully - well done Lee) to find Roseate Terns with Lee.  While we were at Seaforth, he told me about a conversation he had had with two birders on Anglesey recently, and how he was struck by the gentle joyfulness of one of these women who was incredibly knowledgeable and generous with her time and expertise.  He felt that her whole approach to wildlife w...