Corn Buntings, Great Northern Diver and the second naïveté

"You're spoiled on your patch," was not the phrase I'm used to hearing about birding in Greater Manchester.  It's easy to fall into the contempt that over-familiarity breeds, and to disregard the variety and quality of wildlife that squeezes into the last remaining green(ish) spaces left available in a county where the drive to build every town to 120% of its current population is primarily destroying green belt.  I suppose I'm used to the same 140-150 species of birds that pass through or live in the 10km circle that I inflict my birding upon.  I have this realisation periodically, usually when I meet someone new to the area or who has recently begun birding.  Last month it was Dinoj, a Sri Lankan nurse and birder who moved to my home town six months previously and is seeing all of the local wildlife for the first time.  He's literally finding it out as he goes.  His quiet, measured excitement at realising he's seeing Siskins for the first time, his joy at capturing the sole Redpoll in the flock with his bridge camera, his laughter as he watches Mallard landing on a frozen pond have an effect on my thinking and I realise yet again that I am spoiled to have this wildlife here.  Plenty of people in this country and beyond do not.  But it can be easy to dismiss how good local birding can be.  We quickly grow the hard callus of cynicism over our joy.  How do we appreciate what we have?

Local birding requires time.  I learned my 10km circle by gross repetition.  In six years I've visited the Mosses more than 500 times.  Cutacre 300-odd, Pennington Flash 200+.  Some of those visits are half hour blitzes; some of them are 15 hour marathon trudges, but the key is that I have been present and looking for the wildlife that calls that space home.  I vary my times, and the weather conditions that draw me.  I don't always go at 11am on sunny Sundays in July and expect to see everything that I could.  In some ways there is no short cut for this.  Even when it's other people sharing bird news and locations with me it's almost always because of a chance meeting with another birder or patcher when I've been present and invested the time into the patch.  I've said it before and it's still true: there might be nothing inspiring on your patch but Netflix or Tiktok aren't going to help you know that for sure.  For me this week that's how I've spent time with Marsh Harrier, Short-eared and Little Owls, Woodcock and Jack Snipe.  No megas or earth-shattering finds, but beautiful wildlife that I wouldn't have seen at home.  Being there when the birds are there rather than waiting for someone to tell me a bird is present is not only satisfying, it gives motivation to go back and try it again.

Local birding requires relationships. I was talking to another friend and relatively new birder recently about county listing and annual county listing.  He was comparing his list with the veterans whose lists in public forums are intimidating and inspiring in equal measure.  He was excited because he'd been given some information by one of those veterans about a location for Corn Buntings that he would never in a million years have found for himself.  It's not a place that anyone stumbles upon.  It's one of those locations that are passed on by word of mouth down the birding family tree.  

This aspect of local birding frustrated me no end when I started out - nobody trusts the new guy with the real information, which can be off-putting and make you feel like there's nothing out there to see since all the really interesting stuff is suppressed. To be fair, there are often good reasons for this, and, though some of the people are using species sensitivity as their excuse to gatekeep a hobby, there are valid reasons to protect a lot of our local wildlife.  The local bird forum reports almost nothing of any note across several sites.  A friend of mine told me he'd stopped reading the forum because there was nothing on it to motivate him to visit any local sites.  This was exactly the wrong response.  How do you stop being the new guy?  By spending time in the area and proving you can be trusted with the things you discover.  There are Short-eared Owls local to me in the winter and they do not get reported online.  I found them by chance as part of my dogged exploration.  For six years I've been a presence there, gaining trust and in that time I've built relationships with other locals who have given me bits of information: a Long-eared Owl roost, a badger sett, a place to find Crossbill.  Being able to talk to other people and being present is key.  Without that relationship I would have missed out on a local Great Northern Diver this week.  A local birder told me about a footpath that would take me closer to the distant blob on the huge expanse of Rivington Lower Reservoir and offered to help me get access to the shore line.  We're not mates, we don't know each other well, but he's seen me enough to know that the birds best interests are my interest.

Now hear me right, I very much dislike the idea of an "in-crowd" and the smug self-satisfaction of those in the know is unpleasant, but building relationships by being present is the key here, and it's worth remembering that nobody owes you information, and respect is earned and built.

Local birding requires a second naivety.  Paul Ricoeur was a French philosopher who trod the line of religious belief during the scientific and cultural developments of the Twentieth Century, and he articulated an idea about maturity of belief and thought called the Second Naivete.  In religious terms there is a process of growing up that happens when a person joins a faith: initially they believe every symbol, every idea literally, because they've opened their minds too far from a position of unbelief and now they swallow everything whole.  They are naïve, and yet joyous in their innocent wide-minded naïveté.  Over time their rationality reasserts itself (and this always happens, even when it's repressed by the individual) and they grow cynical about things they used to believe in, losing joy and gaining a sense of routine in place of the special.  Many people leave faith groups when they enter this stage of their thinking, and there is nobody more scathing about a religion than someone who used to be a part of one.  Ricoeur's point was that any moral or ethical belief should be mature, and that this cynicism was an essential ingredient in gaining maturity.  However, that thinking was only mature when a person could go back to their original naïve state while understanding the symbolic rather than literal nature of the religious dressing their morals and values come covered in.  The person has gone through naivete, and cynical experience, and come to a place where they choose to be joyful about things they had previously discarded as being too childish, too small, too irrelevant for them.

Pretty deep.  Pretty niche.  Whatever your thoughts on religion this has interesting application to the mellowing out of old age.  But hear me out.  When I'm birding with Dinoj I'm seeing everything fresh.  I'm not cynical about the birds I see all the time.  Siskins give me joy too, even though I see them every day.  The colours on that Teal really are stunning - it isn't just lip service, it's a real thing.  The first bird I saw with Lee today was a Corn Bunting.  I've seen thousands of these over the years.  From the position of experienced cynicism they're nondescript and uninspiring.  But in my second naïveté they're absolutely brilliant and I loved both Lee's excitement at seeing them in Cheshire and my own genuine thrill at spending an hour watching them flock with Reed Bunting and Yellowhammer in a place I would never have found without Lee's knowledge, that he gained from a veteran birder by being present on his own patch.