North Lancashire, January 28th 2025: homesick for a place I’ve never lived.

 

From 1990 to 1999 I attended a YOC group (and then RSPB group) in Bolton.  Many of my formative memories of birding were created there, from local morning trips to the highlight of the year, the Long Weekend every May, along with fixtures like the Bolton Bird Race and the opportunities to visit Blacktoft Sands and Leighton Moss without my parents having to drag the whole family out to a place they didn’t want to go.  I am, and always will be, incredibly grateful to a handful of people there who gave up so much of their free time to drive and teach and show an awkward teen how to appreciate the world around them. 

Those memories still inform my favourite days birding (never one to find satisfaction in “just” a twitch – always preferring long days in the field seeing and experiencing as much as possible), and there are some locations that are tied into my nostalgia in a semi-spiritual way.  North Lancashire, and in particular, the area around Arnside, Silverdale and Warton is one of those places.  The site of the first YOC Long Weekend in 1993, the place where I first saw Bitterns and Bearded Tits and Hawfinches and Green Woodpeckers and Marsh Harriers and so many other species.  This part of the world seems to open a door in me to some greener, fresher, more hopeful place and I feel that I breathe more easily just being there.

As I drove away from Pine Lake, where I’d stopped to see the juvenile Great Northern Diver that has been there for weeks, I thought about my last visit to Gait Barrows, a Natural England reserve that I had walked around more than twenty years ago and a place the edges of which I have skirted in my wandering over the years.  At the time, I didn’t think I was making a deep keystone memory, but pulling into the small carpark shook something loose in me and the weight of years fell away for a little while.  Something in the limestone pavement, Yew tree copses, and generally hilly terrain speaks to me and I felt physically uplifted as I began a 3km walk in search of Hawfinch.  I hadn’t walked 120 metres when I heard them in the Yews all around me, and caught glimpses of them scattering as they fed in small groups.  Bullfinches, Marsh Tits and Siskins called from all directions, and Coal Tits were in every tree.  Treecreepers and Goldcrest, Great Spotted Woodpeckers and a single Green made way as I tried to be as silent as possible, while inevitably disturbing the quiet of a Tuesday morning in an out of the way corner of a county I love. 

Eventually, standing still on the edge of a clearing, a flock of at least 45 Hawfinches flew over and began to settle in deciduous trees fringing a large stand of dense Yew.  Their interactions are so complex – always at least a quarter of every group sitting high and keeping lookout, ready to alarm call and vanish, and always a male taking a prominent perch surrounded by females.  For their size and bright colours, Hawfinches can be incredibly secretive, and it was easy to lose track of 8 or 10 of them as I turned my head to watch a flock of Siskin move into the same tree.

Across the 3km, I must have had sightings of well over 60 Hawfinch moving in small groups as the large flock dispersed.  I’ve never known Hawfinch in such concentration, even at Sizergh Castle where there is a feeding program during the late winter and early spring.  There has been such an influx into the UK this winter, but even so, Hawfinch was by far the bird I saw the highest numbers of across this site, and whatever else I imagined when I arrived, it wasn’t this!

Completing the circuit and stopping in at Leighton Moss to find a nice Water Pipit at Griesdale Hide, I also picked up volumes 2, 3 and 4 of Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for a combined £60 from their book cycling shelves.  This bargain was more than ruined by the price of a cup of coffee and a sandwich from the café which cost an eye-bleeding tenner – for hot milk, coffee, and bread!  A far cry from a Gregg’s special.  You can take the man out of Manchester, but etc and so on…

Leighton Moss was the first RSPB flagship reserve I ever visited, and I still visit annually, even if I rarely see anything different than I usually see in a day out locally.  Bearded Tit is the exception, and I was keen to hear their jangling calls today, but it wasn’t to be, and I left to see if I could find a huge flock of Whooper Swans in Thurnham on the way home.  After some interesting driving on what was generously called “single-lane roads with passing places” I tracked down the main flock of hundreds of noisy Whoopers grazing in fields.  Noting the serious numbers of Lapwings, Starlings, thrushes of different kinds and even an actual flock of Corn Buntings (which are in single figures in West Manchester, and hard to find) I realised what a barren desert of bird-life it can feel like where I live. 

Grateful to be there, watching this spectacle, I spent an hour searching for and finding the two Bewick’s Swans hiding amongst the Whoopers, which was intensely satisfying, and I drove home ruminating on the one meaningful human interaction I’d had all day: a conversation with a volunteer at Gait Barrows had really sold me a dream that I’ve been returning to since I was 13 years old and putting my foot on the base of Arnside Knott for the first time.  He’d sold his house in north Manchester, moved to Warton, and now volunteers at various wild places.  What a life.  What fulfilment.  No commute.  No traffic.  No hostile crowds in grey places, surrounded by the sour smell of cannabis as people try to dull the aching depression and cut off the sounds of human misery dressed up as modern life.  Instead I could be satisfied, happy even.  I could do some good and not feel stretched to breaking point for 14 hours every day.  I marvelled at a growing feeling as I drove back to where I live: I was, and I am, hiraeth; homesick for a place I’ve never lived.