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Like confessing to murder - giving up birding (1 Viewer)

I would call it evolving birding.

Having actively birded in Lithuania for quite some years, my former local patch began to bore me a year or so back, which coupled with a new owner who made access rather less than straightforward, meant I effectively gave up on it.

With my land producing all the fruits I could hope for, this rapidly became a general give up on almost all Lithuania completely, thus leaving me where I am today - either birding at the very local scale (ie my land, or even garden for that matter) or travelling outside the country.

I can't really see it going any other way in the near future, other than more international and even less national.
 
John Cantelo said:
(A) I suspect being recently retired has something to do with it too since I no longer need birding to provide the ecape from a stressful work environment. I sometimes used to call birding at weekends my "stepping stones to sanity".


(B) although it's not fashionable to admit it, my preference for enjoying my wife's company to dashing about on birding specific jaunts.
Click to expand...


Here lies your solution John, start leaving socks on the floor and generally attempting to irritate your wife, she will then start to nag you, all too soon it will develop into stress on the domestic front ...birding once again regains the status of 'stepping tones to sanity', all is hunky dory.
 
I also once gave up birding. I managed about two months without it.

I understand your feeling of nostalgy that many birds are rarer they used to be. However, others have increased. I no longer hear Thrush Nightingales out of my window in Poland but Great Egrets and White-tailed Eagles increased in the countryside. Many old birding spots are lost, but, surprisingly, new ones appeared.

Perhaps you should switch focus to trips abroad and watching mammals - as I did after seeing all regular C European bird species and almost all rarities!

PS. I know the chap who permanently moved to S Spain mostly for birding. Now he is burned out because he saw all those Imperial Eagles an suchlike plenty of times.
 
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I never thought I'd give up going to Scilly in the autumn, but suddenly find I haven't been for 5 years. Partly this is the cost, but mostly it's that I feel I should be trying to see something new for all that expenditure and so would rather head off somewhere exotic. Like John I have a place in Andalucia and love checking out the same places every time I go out to see the different special birds out there.

Lots of the species John struggles with in Kent are a problem here in Devon too, and I haven't seen a Wood Warbler in our local woods for two years now. However, local watching does provide some compensation - we had a pair of Pochard hatch 7 young a few weeks back here in North Devon, and today I saw 6 of them (with ma) fully feathered and ready to fly. It turns out that this is probably the first successful fledging of Pochard in Devon. So it does pay to keep looking - even at this quiet time of year. I rarely head out of North Devon birding, usually combining some other reason to make trips around the county, but a 120-mile round trip to see for example Cirl Bunting, probably doesn't make good use of resources. So I will keep looking and maintaining interest and lists to compare what I see from year-to-year, and set myself a few targets to ensure I get the bins in use on a regular basis. Would love to see a local Turtle Dove again though!
 
Feel sorry for the young birders out there (including me) as we never even experienced the massive murmurations of Starlings, abundance of farmland birds and shared transport twitches. Even the Scillies have quietened down! I live in pretty much the worst environment, monoculture farmland, and admittedly the birding is generally slow throughout the year. I just try and imagine what it must have been like to have swarms of birds in every hedgerow, field and wood, although it is by no means compensation.

I think the way to look forward is to see the positive change all us individuals can do to make a massive change in the bird population. Surely, if the population of say the Turtle dove has declined by 90% between 1997 and 2010 it can be reversed with some hard work and conservation efforts so everyone has the opportunity to see these once common species. If such a change can occur in less than a life time, it can surely be reversed in a matter of time. This is where everyone comes into play, since we all experience a relatively luxurious lifestyle we should all focus at least some of our time on aiding these declining species, it is the least we can do after enjoying them so much throughout our birding lives.
 
It has been a great relief to me to find my heretical admission mirrored by some of the posts here (and even more so by the PMs I have been sent). It seems clear that my situation, far from being an exceptional guilty secret, is not an unusual condition amongst us 'oldies'. To find that even some acknowledged experts and enthusiasts on BF have experienced similar feelings has to a large degree legitimised my misgivings,
 
As another old lag with some 40+ years of birding, I can see where many posters are coming from. Foreign birding trips hold sway and the excitement of planning and anticipating them fills me with far more fizz than birding in the UK.

I too can see myself retiring abroad as England seems so blighted and, these days, very poor weather-wise.

But give up?! Never.
 
I've met John and I know he does an amazing amount of stuff at Dunge; leading walks, PR and probably loads more that I know nothing of. He's been birding forever and probably what I have to say is of little cred. I've not been birding that long, compared to some posters on this thread, but I've thrown myself into it and I can kind of understand the 'boredom with the patch' feeling.

Tarsiger said:
Sometimes a different 'sub-genre' of birding is needed; ringing, photography or possibly pan-species listing to pep up the dull periods and provide a different focus (no pun intended).
However, I don't think I'm ever going to think that dissecting an insect's genitalia or ticking a slime-mould is going to 'float my boat' the way a Wallcreeper (for instance) would!!
Russ
Click to expand...

This is good advice, not to say that John probably does something like this already, but I have got immense pleasure from drawing birds.......it really gets you to LOOK; even if you think you can't do it, you will see improvements and the eye really does become more perceptive.
 
Thank you, Joanne, for your kind words. One aspect of birding which for me hasn't dimmed one iota is the joy of taking people birding and sharing what knowledge I have with them. I'm not sure, though, I appreciate being reminded that I've been "birding for ever" no matter how accurate it might be.

As it happens I broke off from some drawing (a bird naturally) to respond here. I used to paint birds - sometimes obsessively (see attached), but it's something else that I've neglected of late; I find the process all consuming and enjoyable, but the results invariably disappoint! There was a time when my notebooks were adorned with skectches of birds too. Joanne is certainly right sketching does make you look at birds closely. As others have suggested I've tried (or more precisely am trying) photography too since getting a G3 (with a 100-300 lens), but I remain a singularly inept photographer,
 

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Brilliant thread and has really made me think. I moved to Mallorca five years ago having birded in the UK for over forty years and it has been a new lease of life. New environment, new birds and new challenges. I lead walks, write for the Mallorca daily paper and am doing everything possible to raise awareness of conservation issues. My skills have increased as I am nearly always birding alone and even found a major rarity, something I always dreamed of doing in the UK. I still miss "home" but find that birding abroad is like starting all over again.
 
I meant to say John... I know someone, who about 10years ago felt the same as you. They decided to wipe clean their life list and start again from scratch. Seemed to do the trick from him as suddenly a Cheshire Yellow-browed was a cause for immense excitement.
 
Following on from Jane's point, I have a friend who also wiped his slate clean, deciding to start from scratch with a video camera. I think he's just re-reached the 300 mark and has managed to get some unique footage of one particular species which has been used by a number of researchers, since it shows behaviour previously unrecorded.
Another idea you might try, John, is starting other really interesting threads on here!

Peter
 
It is not quite so bad.

I recognise the symptoms. Generally when I return from a trip abroad I find it really difficult to get into birding locally but this year having just returned from Papua New Guinea where hunting not habitat loss seems to be the big problem. Outside the birding hotspots there just weren't any birds . I'm actually quite relieved to have seen Kestrel, Blackbird, Lapwing, Song Thrush and Dunnock this morning all onthe walk from the car park to the office and since I returned from PNG have birded more regularly and rejoined Lancashire Wildlife Trust. Perhaps you should go somewhere where birding is really hard.

That said I'm still looking forward to getting back to Africa later in the year.
 
As another 50+ birder I've had my ups and downs in birding and natural history generally.
owever, in the biggest down (when doing my utmost to attract a mate) I found I was still looking at the hedges and pools and places and proving my masculine prowess by identify plants, ducks and things.

Eventually found a mate that sort of shares my interests and I'm flying.

Until we started visiting exotic places like Costa Rica I thought our UK birds were gradually dropping away. Cista Rica, for me changed things. Maybe we went when Costa Rican birds didn't sing but they didn't seem to sing much. They were very colourful but that made me think, Starlings, Jays, the tits, Nuthatch, Robin, the finches ad I could go on. All to me seem just as colourful. Now, in the last years of my working life I get a walk into the countryside near Leatherhead at lunchtimes. Even at that time of day. I get to hear Green, Gold and Chaffinches, Chiff chaffs, RObins, Balckbird and wrens. Even the sdqueezy toy sound of Ring necked Parakeets that aren't supposed to be here all seem to make it more worthwhile.

Every so often I add another tick to my list. It's not important but I encompass my birding with looking out for plant life, bugs, and anything natural history. I take it all as part of appreciation to what we've got.

I don't really go out of my way to find birds ( I might in my next exotic holiday of course). I just enjoy them when they come to me.

You never lose it. Just take it as it finds you.
 
'Foreign' birding vs patch work? I can see where you are coming from now John. Resplendant Quezal vs Dunnock, no contest. There again, if you live in Central America, a Dunnock's pretty cool, in it's own, quite way. The act of showing 'local' birds to people that would normally never take an interest is probably one of the things that has kept me birding for 52 years, plus there's always something new.

Chris
 
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Time perhaps to draw some preliminary conclusions:
a) once infected with the bug, it seems that it’s not possible to stop watching birds
b) A disenchantment with “going birdwatching” (note the distinction) by some ‘old salts’ is not unheard of and may not be that uncommon (esp. in the UK)
c) One remedy for the above condition is to give your hobby a new twist – taking up photography, drawing, etc.
d) Even the most worrying case of ornithological ennui can be reversed by a timely visit to an unfamiliar area (preferably somewhere warm and with a good supply of novel and/or exotic species)

The only question that now needs to be resolved is how the latter remedy, to what is clearly a serious medical condition, can be accessed on the NHS.
 
chris butterworth said:
'Foreign' birding vs patch work? I can see where you are coming from now John. Resplendant Quezal vs Dunnock, no contest. There again, if you live in Central America, a Dunnock's pretty cool, in it's own, quite way. The act of showing 'local' birds to people that would normally never take an interest is probably one of the things that has kept me birding for 52 years, plus there's always something new.

Chris
Click to expand...

If only, Chris ... I painted the bird for a friend who wanted a nice cover illustration for his trip report. Never seen one myself |:(| Although, unlike 90% of what I've painted over the years, I kept the original,
 
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