The bird woman of Downpatrick

Belinda Bennett appeared in the recent BBC series Mountain Vets, nursing an injured jackdaw back to health at her Co Down home. She tells Linda Stewart about her lifetime love of nature, her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome later in life and how Chris Packham inspires her

Belinda Bennett shares two key things with BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham — her lifelong love of nature and her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. And like the famous wildlife presenter, it wasn’t until later in life that she was diagnosed with the condition, and something clicked into place.

“Everything started to make sense. I hadn’t a clue about why I was struggling so much, even to get a job. The whole thing was crazy,” she says.

Belinda, who appeared on the BBC’s Mountain Vets series recently fostering an injured jackdaw on behalf of Downe Veterinary Clinic, reveals that she has struggled her whole life in her interactions with humans, yet found it easy to relate to animals.

“Animals are my friends,” she says. “When I was younger I could only relate to animals, I couldn’t relate to humans. I wanted to interact with humans but I couldn’t. I desperately wanted people to take notice of me.”

It was only recently, when she was accompanying a younger family member on a visit to a counsellor, that she discovered the truth.

“I was taking a younger member of the family to get help because they were having a rough time, so I went along, not thinking much about it,” she explains.

“I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me, to tell you the truth. I didn’t understand why I was so isolated from other humans. But as soon as this person saw me, she just knew I had Asperger’s. It all makes sense now.

“It was a good thing that I found out because I couldn’t understand what was going on. I was happy to find a label that fitted me because I didn’t understand it and now I can read into it a lot more and understand it.”

As she read up on the condition, she was fascinated to find an interview with wildlife presenter Chris Packham (below), who was only diagnosed with high functioning Asperger’s syndrome in his 40s, but had experienced the effects of being “wired differently” throughout his life.

“When he talked about his childhood, I thought that was so like mine in many respects,” Belinda says. “It was quite a revelation for me. I’ve been so busy with life and trying to survive in this world that I really didn’t take much notice. I just kept going.

“It’s quite a hard thing to live with if people don’t understand the way you are. Everybody’s different. For as many people as have Asperger’s, they are all different.

“I feel as though I am on the outside looking in. From my early childhood that is the way I was all the time.

“When Chris Packham talked about himself, I saw a lot of connections. There were a lot of similarities in the way he felt when he was a child.”

Belinda, who turns 70 this month, is now retired with three children and six grandchildren and lives a quarter of a mile from the farm where she grew up.

She describes her late father Torrens as a very clever man who hadn’t had much schooling, but went straight into the Navy and worked his way up to captain during the Second World War.

Because her mum Hilda had studied German at school, she was drafted in as an officer in the Wrens.

“She was listening to U-boats, she would have been listening and translating and giving messages to Bletchley. But all that stuff was secret and we never heard about it at all,” Belinda says.

“My father and mother were very supportive with me. If I hadn’t had them, I would have been lost. They knew I was dyslexic, but they must have known there was something else. But they never talked about it. They sheltered me from bad news and things like that.

“When I was young I was the type of person that wouldn’t want people to touch me. I sort of put the barriers up. It was very difficult for my mother — I didn’t want to be touched by my mother. God help her, she was probably very upset about the whole thing,” she admits.

Living on a busy working farm, Belinda was mostly cared for by her sister Diana, who now lives in Oregon.

“My sister looked after me as you’d look after a child. But it was more that she was the older one and she was always trying her best to make sure I was okay,” she says.

Belinda struggled in school because she has dyslexia, which means she struggles with reading, and dyscalculia, a difficulty in understanding numbers.

“I loved learning, but I didn’t like playtime. I couldn’t cope because I couldn’t play with anyone,” she says.

What did help was the myriad of animals on the farm. Belinda has fond memories of her dad’s springer Bonzo and the farm manager’s boxer Bimbo.

“There were lots of cats, a lot of them were wild but we always had a farm cat. There were cats and dogs and we had donkeys and ponies when we were slightly older,” she says.

“When I was working on the farm and having ponies and dogs, I was able to relate to them. I felt like an alien as far as humans were concerned. There must be a lot of people like me that have committed suicide or are in prison because they just can’t cope.”

At 17 Belinda went to

Loughry Agricultural College, and says it was good for her because she learned to integrate with people.

“You have to live with people and work with animals as well, it was brilliant. It was a great start to after-school life,” she says.

She went to Greenmount for a year, but disaster struck on the farm with an outbreak of brucellosis and the entire herd of more than 100 Friesians had to be destroyed.

Belinda says her dad had a bee in his bonnet about her becoming a nurse, so that was where her path next led her.

“It really wasn’t my idea to be a nurse, as I didn’t really know a lot about humans,” she says. “I really wanted to work with animals, but in those days you were supposed to do what your parents told you. It was good for me, but I really hadn’t a clue. Being a nurse is a very responsible job.”

Belinda became an SRN in Jersey but missed her home: “I got married and I was pregnant and there wasn’t much support out there, so I finished the SRN course and it was time to come home.”

Once back in Co Down she worked for a while at the medical assessment unit in the hospital in Downpatrick, but gave it up when she became pregnant.