Absence can indeed make the heart grow fonder...
Re-born birder Helen Stockton sets her sights on a busy start to 2023 now she’s back spending her free time doing what she’s (nearly) always loved.
Recently, after a hiatus of some 30 years, I’ve returned to a hobby that I enjoyed in my youth. When I was a child, I was a keen birdwatcher. I lived in the countryside, where the family entertainment was often a long, rural walk that involved wildlife spotting, and we had bracing holidays with similar entertainment in various parts of the UK.
I saved my pocket money to join the junior branch of the RSPB, the Young Ornithologists’ Club, with its red enamel badge sporting a gold Kestrel, and I pestered my parents into providing nest boxes, a bird bath, and a bird table, all homemade. Our hobbies budget was very limited, but I managed to acquire an unwanted 8x30 monocular from an uncle, tried to ensure that my only coat was in a suitably subdued shade for bird stalking, and had some black Dunlop wellingtons, which unlike my school coat, were at least waterproof. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. With my trusty Mitchell Beazley’s Bird Watcher’s Pocket Guide, covered in sticky-back plastic (in true Blue Peter style) for extra protection, and a notebook for jottings and sketches, I set out to conquer the natural world, one bird species at a time.
As I got older, however, things got more complicated. Birdwatching, as a teenager, wasn’t considered cool, and at a life-stage when other’s opinions were an all-consuming preoccupation, this was a problem. In those unenlightened times, a typical male response was “I like birdwatching too…”, followed by a Benny Hill snigger. I soon learned to refer to it as ornithology, or not to refer to it at all.
This most respectable of hobbies became
a closet pastime. Then there were the preoccupations of leaving home, starting a career, finding a partner and subsequently establishing our own home. My partner, although a fellow enthusiast for the great outdoors and walking, found birdwatching, frankly, rather dull.
He committed a grave faux pas in the early days of our relationship, when he loyally followed me into a bird hide, only to produce a broadsheet newspaper which he proceeded to unashamedly read. It was almost the end of a promising beginning.
Our children, in spite of my attempts at indoctrination while they were at an impressionable age, resisted my attempts to enthuse them about birdwatching, and the only member of the family who demonstrated any interest was our omnipresent family dog, a terrier, who had a less than benign interest in anything furry or feathered. Over time, the hobby of my childhood dwindled to watching documentaries on the TV and putting out food, water and nesting places at our various homes.
Turning point
The turning point came, as many turning points do, at mid-life. We had fulfilled our dream of countryside living, and birdlife was abundant. Tawny Owls quavered at night, the occasional Barn Owl haunted the lanes, a Spotted Flycatcher nested in our clematis and Little Egrets were sighted in the fields next to the stream. As our semi-adult children embarked on their own outward migration, the Swallows in the lane, flitting restively from the telegraph wires in the autumn, provided a redolent metaphor. My husband, perhaps