Memory Lane: Wilson's Phalarope, September 22nd 2021

With my camera out of action and my chances of getting out birding in the immediate future slim to none, a couple of people have suggested that I use old photos in order to keep writing the blog.  That got me thinking, an activity I occasionally indulge in, and I searched through some old pen drives to find some pictures I took in previous years.  

Long story short, I found some photos of birds that I'd dismissed as being too poor for public consumption.  Oh, naive and foolish younger self!  There are no photos that are too poor, no record short too blurry, no shite picture of a bird's arse peeping out from behind my thumb over the lens that I won't shamelessly peddle into my social media feed.  So fair warning lovely people, the next few blogs will be wandering down memory lane with a passing poor sense of direction and only the dregs of my photographic ability to guide us.

I returned to birding in 2020 during the Covid restrictions, and, while I was a key worker in school throughout the pandemic and therefore was exposed to every bad practice and ignoring of the rules by students, their families and staff, I took the travel restrictions very seriously.  Between that and generally being busy in the aftermath it meant that I didn't really travel away from my local patch until late spring of 2021, where I began to visit the far flung and glamorous destinations you associate with me through my writing in 2026.  In late September of 2021 a Wilson's Phalarope spent some time at Burtonmere RSPB, and as the person in charge of my faculty, I had decided to use my two management non-contact periods at school in the afternoon to help me beat the traffic across the 45 minutes of drive to the reserve.  A gross misuse of my time, but rare birds call, and given that my classroom had a secretly always open fire exit into the car park, I'd be gone with an excuse of a family emergency before anyone could stop me.  Easier to apologise than ask permission was my reasoning.  No regrets.

I recall that my classroom at the time was notoriously poor for phone signal.  In fact, one of my students had worked out that the only place to get any signal was the top shelf of a display rack festooned with religious quotes on the back wall.  I left my phone on high in order to receive messages from above: BirdGuide updates; and fretted all day as the sun grew hotter and brighter.  I was worried that the bird would leave before I got there, and my frantic checking of the app was picked up by some of my more observant students while they were supposed to be answering exam questions, who whispered that I must be having an affair, I was checking my phone so much.  I insisted it was more exciting than that, that I was hoping to see a Wilson's Phalarope at the end of the day.  That got more eye rolls than I believe it deserved, but at least stopped the rumour mill briefly.

12.15pm rolled around, my lunch duty covered by a friend who owed me a favour, and I was out of the car park (left my marking behind too, like a rebel) and freewheeling in the sunshine with the radio on and a positive report of the bird to keep my hopes up.  In 2021 I was mostly solo birding.  I still am.  But back then I had no birding friends so this was a bird I was going to see on my own.  I'd remembered to pack my camera, binoculars and water bottle but not any suitable clothes.  I was in grey suit trousers and a black shirt, with leather dress shoes.  Not ideal birding gear in 22 degree heat.  The bird was also on the furthest pool from reception - for those who have never been to Burton Mere it's a long trail to the Border Hide and I began to walk in the heat, feet uncomfortable, sweating from the direct sun.  Thirty work emails had pinged in and I was trying to deal with as many as I could on my way to the hide, and this is why (I tell myself) I missed the fact that every birder was hurrying the other way.

When I finally clocked the exodus, I was already at the hide, very much on my own.  I took a seat centrally, aware that I was getting it wrong, but not quite how or why.  I scanned the water.  A single Ruff was feeding thigh deep in still water reflecting the clear blue sky, and that was it; not one other bird at all from the hide.  On the face of it, a proper dip, and I just couldn't face a trek back to the visitor centre yet.  As it happened, a volunteer at the reserve popped into the hide and, just as I was about to pack up and go in search of the bird on other pools with very little hope of finding it, she said that it had been in the habit of moving between a small pool with poor viewing and this one.  If I was patient, she was sure it would be back.  

Her advice was solid gold.  Within five minutes of her prediction the Wilson's dropped in so unobtrusively that if I hadn't been looking in the right direction I wouldn't have picked it up at all.  On my own in the hide, in beautiful sunlight, I spent half an hour watching my first ever phalarope of any species when I should have been working.  I'm not sure it gets any better than that.  The plumage of phalaropes is so variable, and it's rare in the UK to see them in their full finery, but even the autumn fade of this bird was a delight, hints of the maroon neck and bandit mask making its every movement a fascinating exercise in recognition.  The breathless crowd that had chased the bird to its other frequented pond eventually relocated to Border Hide, and I helped an older couple to see it.  

My main reflection of that bird at the time was that it was a shame I didn't have anyone to share it with.  My then wife has never been interested in birding, and I hadn't connected with any other birders, wouldn't until July 2022, and that was when I began to improve as a birder much more rapidly.  It's funny how a memory of a bird can remind you of life circumstances at the time, and this particular experience was a bit of a sea change in my thinking.  I joined social media on the back of this having always avoided it before partly due to being a teacher and not wanting students to be able to find me, and partly because I secretly dislike how much priority phones have forced themselves to have in my life.  But a feeling that there was something missing from my experience drove me to sign up to Twitter (long gone from there) and it's been online connections that have formed the basis of almost all my birding friendships.  Indeed, this bird is indirectly the reason I have a blog and a platform to write at all.

I went home from Burton Mere a happy man, though puzzling over a missing facet of the birding experience, and even had time to swing into work on my way past to pick up my marking.  Rebel or no, the work had to be done.  

Please let me know if you enjoy this - there will likely be some more of these reviews of the recent past in the next few weeks, at least until my camera is back in action.