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A while ago I wrote about birdwatching and remarked how, despite enjoying it, I was resolutely bad at it. We are off work this week, so the other day we drove out to the vast muddy expanses of the Ribble Estuary to survey the massed ranks of winter waders there to enjoy the succulent treats to be probed from the Lancashire sludge.
I much prefer this stark open landscape, where the sea has retreated revealing a sticky grey mud, to the sandier more popular northern side of the Fylde coast (think Blackpool). From Lytham centre we strolled along the pebbly edge of the Ribble picking our way between piles of driftwood and other seaborne detritus; and the promise of flocks of wading birds wasn't a hollow one, as thousands upon thousands of waders spread out before us waiting to be identified.
So now you want to know what we saw don't you. Ah, well, remember the bit about being a bad birdwatcher? I am fairly good at identifying birds with which I am familiar: ask me to identify more or less any woodland bird and I can - many by song. But get me away from my comfort zone to somewhere like this where despite quantity many of the two legged long beaked things look remarkably similar and I am struggling.
For help I relied on my Collins Bird Guide that told us that the Dunlin is the benchmark of small waders in that they are the most common and that if there are huge flocks of small waders with shortish (for a wader) bills, they are probably Dunlin.
So, we saw loads of Dunlin. Equally easy were the flocks of Shelduck (easy to identify: they are big and colourful, shaped somewhere between a goose and a duck). Redshanks are easy - they have bright red legs (hence the name) as are Curlews and Turnstones but then when you scan the flocks and see the array of others that are clearly not the aforementioned and are obviously one of the other many possibilities suggested by the Collins Guide, I scratch my head.
After a cappuccino in the Lowther Pavilion Cafe we had one final walk out across the mud along the Lifeboat jetty. This afforded us our best view yet because the jetty stretches out to the centre of the Ribble, presumably to allow the launch of the boat at low tide. Far out on the mud we had close views of even more waders in the beautiful afternoon sun.
Usually fellow birders are helpful, knowing that one day they might need someone else's help to identify some nondescript brown bird or other. On this occasion I was rather intimidated by the only other birder: a callow but brainy looking youth with an Opticron spotting scope on a tripod (in truth I was a little covetous of his equipment); so I gave him a wide birth to resist the temptation of shoving him in the mud.
Still, it was a lovely day.
I borrowed the photo of the jetty from Bay Photographic's site on Flickr where there are many other seaside sites to see.
Yesterday a constant bass throbbing disturbed the work of many people in our building - good job it was Friday afternoon; it went on for some hours and people scratched their collective heads wondering what the noise might be. At 3pm prompt, stepping into the car park of our Stretford corporate headquarters, might heart skipped an involuntary beat as I realised what the noise had been. They were doing sound checks at the nearby Lancashire County Cricket Club for this weekend's concerts featuring The Arctic Monkeys and Amy Winehouse, among others. Why did my heart skip a beat, I imagine I can hear you asking; and the answer is that that is what live music does to me, always has, wherever or whatever it is, I love live music and hearing the throbbing bass lines, barely discernible as one of Amy Winehouse's songs, I just wanted to be one of the thousands of people who gather and experience the gig.
Musing on my maturity, once again, it reassured me that I still enjoy the odd frisson of excitement. Climbing from the Cumbrian coastal village of Sandwith up to the lighthouse on St Bees Head last week, I experienced such a thrill as the vista opened before us giving stunning views over the Western Hills of Scotland and over one of the largest seabird colonies in the UK (OK, OK, I know I'm drifting into waters where you may well consider an anorak to be the appropriate wear again, but stick with it).
Earlier today, passing the Railway Hotel in Greenfield - a fabulous live music venue - I notice a poster advertising Martin Taylor - yes, Martin Taylor, the phenomenal, world-renowned jazz guitarist. I experienced another such thrill - do you see a theme developing here - and was excited all day until, only moments ago, I discovered that he was on last week while we were busy being excited at St Bees.
That burning core of light, that makes us who we are deep inside, remains unchanged; I don't have to settle for a middle age of mediocrity; but I don't have to strap myself to a Harley Davidson or throw myself from a cliff just to prove that my heart is still capable of pumping adrenaline around the system. The things that push my buttons are still there, albeit I'd have enjoyed Martin Taylor at the Railway more than the Arctic Monkeys I think.
To illustrate the point I have included one of the photographs Mrs C took of the relaxing view from St Bees Head last week.
Sorry to harp on again about this ageing stuff; but I'm beginning to worry that middle age is turning me into a sad old git - not to put too fine a point on it - because when I looked back on my notes from our week in the Lake District they were full of enthusiasm about wildlife - particularly bird life - and - here comes the crunch point - trains, yes trains. One of our most enjoyable days out was on the Ravenglass to Eskdale Railway.
"Am I turning into a trainspotting, beer mat collecting, anorak wearing weirdo", I asked myself; and once again, getting know comprehensible reply, I found myself reassured by my fellow bloggers. Bill Blunt's recent post on collecting things was hugely reassuring. His collection speciality is Wetherspoons pubs. He disputes that he is a collector per se; but I think that anyone who aims to sample and review as many pubs in the famous national chain as possible is, to all intents and purposes, a collector - I was reassured.
The Ravenglass to Eskdale Railway must be about the prettiest example of public transport I have ever seen. It is a narrow gauge railway saved from being scrapped, quite literally, by a group of steam enthusiasts in the 1960s. It is not simply a tourist attraction but a relic of an age when narrow gauge railways were built to fulfil an industrial necessity: in this case transporting quarried stone, once crushed, to the regular gauge trains at the mainline Ravenglass station built conveniently directly adjacent to the little one. Apparently the narrow gauge track was easier and cheaper to lay in the rugged Lakeland fell terrain (no pun intended - but it is quite nice isn't it: train/terrain).
The station itself is a beautifully restored example of the type of country railway station John Betjamin would have gushed poetically about; it simply oozes sleepy country charm. Smartly painted and resplendent with summer floral displays it takes one of the things I love about railway stations - that feeling of ordered calm, the quiet and emptiness between trains - to a new level.
The journey is a pleasurable chug, in mainly open sided carriages, from the open esturial waters of the Lakeland coast up through the increasingly craggy countryside of the Eskdale valley, to the final destination at Dalegarth where Scafell towers in the distance.
Hanging out of the carriage, pointing at birds I spotted and waving wildly at pedestrians, I was entranced by the whole experience; and part of me can understand the pleasure that trainspotters must get from the time they spend around this form of transport. But, not to stray too far from where I started this journey: bird watching, I found, as the number of previously unseen birds increased that I hankered after some sort of checklist where I could perhaps tick them off...now that is worrying.
It has been a while since I've wrote anything about nature, but I was reminded of Simon Barnes excellent book How to be a Bad Birdwatcher when Mrs C and I were chatting about her uncanny knack of spotting birds. I have been a fan of ornithology since a teenager, when I used to wonder down to Crime Lake near Failsworth with my dad's Carl Zeiss 10 X 50 binoculars, that weighed nearly as much as me, to spot Coots, Moorhens and other birds that, whilst common, I loved. On and off, over the years, I have returned to my hobby with varying degrees of enthusiasm; but I have never been a twitcher: I have never felt the desire to run half way across the country to see a rare bird that has arrived at our shores by sheer accident only, in most cases, to be eaten by the local Sparrowhawk. I have always delighted in the bio-diversity of wherever I happen to be at the time, rather than specifically going to look for something; and that is why I am a bad birdwatcher: I don't have to hire a sherpa to carry my array of optical equipment; I take the dog with me; and I point excitedly at things (usually scaring them off in the process). Mrs C. has come to birdwatching late, as much to humour me, I suspect, as to expand her existing interest in wildlife in general; but she has now embraced it with every bit as much enthusiasm as I and, what is more, she is damned well better at it than I am. Only yesterday, walking the dog near to Dovestones Reservoir, whilst I was doing my impression of the great hunter, silently creeping along the path with my binoculars, and seeing nothing, she suddenly stopped, pointed and said, "What's that on the side of that tree" - it was a Great Spotted Woodpecker, not uncommon, but I hadn't seen it. Simon Barnes' book is a book for people who are not impressed by the lore of twitchers but love nature, it is full of excellent tips to improve your enjoyment without having to buy an anorak.
Mrs C and I leave for a week in Keswick tomorrow; We are staying in a lodge on the outskirts of the town right by a river, so I hope to have plenty of nature notes to share when we return. Just as an aside, it's funny how in Keswick we are in a lodge, but effectively the same building was a chalet, at Pontins as kids, and a pre-fab after the war when people needed cheap housing stock (and in those cases post war pre-fabs are listed buildings with families still living in them).
I have two good books to read, so if it rains all week, as the forecasts suggest it might, you needn't worry about us; click here to see what I've chosen as my holiday reads.
