Tales of a Tabloid Twitcher: Revealed: The Truth About Birdwatchers

By Stuart Winter

It may come as a surprise to some people, but tabloid newspaper coverage of the ornithological world does actually extend beyond cheap innuendos about tits and shags. For this we can thank one journalist more than any other Stuart Winter. A birder since childhood, he has maintained a constant presence in the world of the tabloid news since the mid-1990s, bringing innumerable stories about birds and birdwatchers to the masses in the process. This enthralling book offers a window into the sometimes shady worlds of tabloid journalism and birdwatching. In the process it explores the full stories behind the very best scoops. You may think that birdwatching would be a rather refined hobby, but you would be very wrong indeed. There are tales of obsession travelling the length and breadth of the country in pursuit of rarities; tragedy risking life and limb in the line of duty; celebrity both human and avian, from Jeremy Clarkson and David Attenborough to Sammy the Stilt; crime from felony to rivalries that turned nasty; and scandal just what is the most debauched use of a bird hide? In the course of its 18 chapters covering all the key birding events and personalities of the past two decades and beyond, this book may just become the biggest must-read book for birders since Bill Oddies Little Black Bird Book. What a scoop that would be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IMM Lifestyle Books
• Release date: Jul 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9781780090238

Stuart Winter

Stuart Winter has written a regular birdwatching column in national newspapers the Daily Star and the Sunday Express for more than 15 years. He is the winner of the 2009 BBC Wildlife Travel Writers Award and the RSPCA National Media Award 2009 for An outstanding and sustained contribution to the field of animal welfare. He lives in Luton, Bedfordshire.

Book preview

‘Hello, Bird Fair...’

The Bat that flits at close of Eve

Has left the Brain that won’t believe

The Owl that calls upon the Night

Speaks the Unbeliever’s fright.

—William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.

The indefatigable smell of Bird Fair was in the air – a distinctive concoction of wet grass, warm bodies, exotic foods, cold beer and fear. Mine. Every apology to Mark Cocker, one of my favourite writers, for plagiarising the opening lines of his seminal Birders: Tales of the Tribe, but I am a Fleet Street hack. It’s what we do: lurk in the shadows and beg, steal and borrow the words of others to inform, entertain and inspire our readers. We are neither celebrities nor banner holders, merely messengers. That’s unless we get shoved suddenly into the limelight.

Bird Fair, August 1998, and this was to be my Andy Warhol moment. Centre stage, enthusiastic applause ringing out and a glowing introduction as bright as the spot lamps beaming down from the light gantry; those 15 minutes of global fame promised to each and every member of humanity by the celebrated Sixties pop art legend had begun ticking on my watch. I sampled the sultry air in the lecture tent: still the essence of wet grass and still the aroma of my uncertainty. Newspapermen are not public speakers, a voice cautioned in my head. I hatched a small, dry cough and began to speak. The microphone projected my voice into the four distant corners of the darkened marquee. Each syllable reverberated in the humid, under-canvas atmosphere, making them sound mature, husky; perhaps even sexy. The front row faces laughed at my opening joke, a hokey one-liner rehearsed countless times in the days running up to my big appearance.

‘Hello, Bird Fair,’ I had wanted to scream like some rock god on an open-air stage massaging the crowds into a frenzy. I decided to stay with the script, one that I knew all too well and one that I hoped would pave the way to more public appearances. For this Bird Fair was to be my rite of passage, a metamorphosis from hackneyed wordsmith to ‘personality’ at the biggest, most eclectic, gathering of birders the world ever sees. Thousands of similar-minded souls, hooked on the pleasure derived from looking at creatures that weigh mere grams, had gathered like the wildebeest of the Serengeti to walk the tented meadows bordering Rutland Water – and celebrate birds in all their glory. Many, I had persuaded myself, were there to see and listen to me. Well, the Bird Fair programme had emblazoned my talk as one of the star attractions of the opening day. ‘Tales of the Tabloid Twitcher’, said the Bird Fair brochure, promising a ‘humorous account’ of the activities of a national newspaperman turned birder. Soon the joke would be on me.

After four years of writing the weekly ‘Strictly for the Birds’ column in the Daily Star, I had been convinced by others that I had enough material to fulfil a request to give a half-hour talk at the Bird Fair. Keeping tabs on the twitching scene, getting the occasional ‘exclusive’ from the RSPB and reading the newswires – one of my main duties as a news editor on the newspaper – helped me to produce a welter of stories for the first-ever weekly birding column in a British national tabloid. After the initial approach by the Bird Fair’s organisers asking me to give a lecture, I had set to work rifling through my newspaper cuttings for anecdotes that would bring a smile to an audience looking for something of a departure from the ‘birdier’ fare most speakers deliver. There was plenty of material but it would be the way, to quote a certain Irish comedian, I told ’em that would make a difference on the day. I set about honing my act, listening to stand-up comics on late night laughter shows and even setting up a video camera on a tripod in the lounge to polish my timing and delivery. The kids heard it so many times they became word perfect themselves, aping my mannerisms and reeling off the punch lines before I reached them. It would cost me a portable television set each to get them back up into their bedrooms so I could perfect my repertoire. As the countdown began, I assembled the slides I needed to illustrate my talk, begging many a national newspaper picture editor to let me borrow profile photographs of Prince Charles, Bill Oddie, Sir David Attenborough and Sir Peter Scott, to name but a few; name-dropping was going to feature heavily in my routine. On the eve of the Bird Fair, I had one final dress rehearsal in front of an audience of one – the cat – soaked up imaginary applause and went to sleep dreaming of showtime.

Anyone who has attended the British Birdwatching Fair, to use its formal title, cannot fail to have been touched by its unique atmosphere, a blend of merry olde England village fete and high-brow sales convention. By the late 1990s the Bird Fair had become one of the key dates on the birdwatching calendar, with only the most committed twitchers, those who feared that being ensconced at Rutland Water would leave them in danger of missing the arrival of an early autumn rarity on some Scottish outcrop or Cornish headland, being noticeable by their absence.

For all other enthusiasts, the Bird Fair is a great place to catch up with old friends, salivate at the latest optical equipment, browse through books for Santa to deliver, pick up holiday brochures to exotic locations from Alaska to Zambia, renew subscriptions to worthwhile charities, sample the specially brewed local bitters and pick out celebrities as they browse at the same things themselves. Television personalities such as Simon King, Nick Baker, Chris Packham and, of course, Bill Oddie, have become regular fixtures but I am sure I have also seen the likes of former Coronation Street and Royle Family actor Geoffrey Hughes and comedian and quiz show panellist Rory McGrath mooching around the marquees over the years. In fact, parodying radio and television game shows has become one of the Bird Fair’s stocks in trade, with some genius devising such spoofs as Just a Linnet and Call My Ruff to bring a smile to the proceedings. Perhaps one day the economy will allow for big money prize shows to be staged using titles such as Teal or No Teal and Smew Wants To Be A Millionaire.

It says something about the unique atmosphere created by the Bird Fair that, in order to attend, many visitors momentarily disengage from the very thing that drives them to be birdwatchers. Rutland Water, particularly now after millions of pounds worth of habitat creation, must rank as one of the best inland birdwatching locations in the country. The reservoir’s muddy margins are a great place to watch shorebird migration in late August, when waders such as Ruff, Black-tailed Godwit, Curlew Sandpiper and Spotted Redshank are passing through en route to their distant wintering grounds. Somehow there never seems to be enough time to see everything on view at the Bird Fair and then spare a few moments lapping up the ambience of one of the sheltered lagoons with its own bustling community of waders and wildfowl. To date, I have been to all 21 Bird Fairs and the only impressions they have left in my personal logs have been sightings of the introduced Ospreys and also a Great White Egret in 2003. It says something about the expertise and foresight of the organisers that the event is timed so that people can temporarily switch off their birding radar to socialise and grievously abuse their credit cards without worrying too much about their checklists. Not that it has been an easy transition.

One of my favourite memories relates to twitcher supreme Lee Evans at Bird Fair 1995 when news filtered through that a putative Middle Spotted Woodpecker had been discovered on the Kent coast. The bird was a potential ‘first’ for the British Isles and, although the species has been making a slow but steady spread in range across Continental Europe, only the most optimistic of commentators would ever have predicted that one would make the 26-mile flight across the formidable barrier of the English Channel. As the bush telegraph went into overdrive, Lee, a life-long collector of rarity sightings that has put him in the top echelons of the twitching community with a tally of more than 500 species seen in Britain and Ireland, went into a state of apoplexy. Thoughts of the woodpecker, with its distinctive sealing waxcoloured head markings, black-and-white body plumage and an open-faced, almost friendly, visage, were just too much for his sensibilities and he fell to the floor in a state of shock. Lee’s collapse caused more commotion than the story of the bird. When he finally came round, Lee told me of his ordeal. I did not know whether to smile or cry for him as he explained how he had to be at the Bird Fair to make a living.

‘I just had to be here,’ he said between gasps. ‘I make my living selling bird publications and this was the major event of the year. Then this bird turned up. It was a nightmare. There was talk of it looking weak and exhausted and that it would not survive, so getting there was imperative. Yet I was miles away at this event and I could not leave. It was too much and I collapsed.’

‘To make matters worse,’ he continued, ‘when I came round the lady who revived me was wearing special bird earrings and guess what pattern was on them? Yes, Middle Spotted Woodpeckers!’

Ironically, for all the hullabaloo the news of the woodpecker caused on that fateful Saturday, the British Birds Rarities Committee has never officially accepted its occurrence. Perhaps it was thoughts of another rarity of the magnitude of the Middle Spotted Woodpecker turning up that determined the fashion choices of those early years. It always struck me as a little strange to see people parading around the Bird Fair showground dressed in their best, if somewhat incongruous, outdoor cryptic camouflage garb and with their binoculars and telescope-tripod combos draped over their shoulders as if they had been beamed in by Star Trek’s Scotty from the North Norfolk coast. These days, most visitors dress as if they were at a county show or dropping in for a pub lunch, with smart windcheaters, linen jackets, pressed chinos and designer jeans replacing the disruptive-patterned parkas and weatherproof trousers of previous years. Indeed, it is only fitting that the event is treated with a degree of decorum. To start with, it is staged in quintessential English countryside on the outskirts of Oakham and under the glare of Burley-on-the-Hill House, a sumptuous 17th century mansion said to have been influenced by Sir Christopher Wren’s work, which forms a wonderful backdrop to an event that each year is attended by a VIP list of Government ministers, diplomats, powerbrokers, celebrities and more than 20,000 others who want to celebrate birds and birdwatching. Their efforts since the first event was staged in 1989 have been phenomenal. In all, the 21 Bird Fairs to date have raised more than £2 million pounds for conservation projects and 2009’s event, though staged at a time when the economy was in recession, saw both record crowds and proceeds. Bird Fair goes from strength to strength – but it still has moments of foreboding for me dating back to that fateful day in August 1998.

It all began so well. I felt as though I was being treated like royalty. Complimentary tickets and car parking passes had arrived in the post and, on opening the glossy Bird Fair programme, there was yours truly billed as one of the key events of the opening day, with some rather flattering introductory notes about my column. Tales of the Tabloid Twitcher had been given prime time billing and throughout the day I received many a back-slap and handshake from friends, acquaintances and others whose names escaped me, but all promising to be there for my ‘big moment.’ The butterflies took regular flight in my stomach but I was sure that by adhering to the old army adage of ‘perfect-planningprevents-p***-poor-performance’ I would win the day. Oh, how I had planned. My family had never seen me so obsessive in the weeks running up to the lecture. Every story I had ever written about birds had been committed to my memory banks and every funny anecdote regaled so many times that I was supposedly reciting them in my sleep. If I was going to put my head on the line – and there is no more discerning or discriminating group of people as birders en masse – then things had to be just so.

The stomach butterflies remained on the wing in the hours leading up to the early afternoon talk, only to be calmed by the reassurance that I could recite any part of my talk off pat. This I was doing under my breath throughout the morning, not only drawing many strange looks, but also meaning that as I was walking around the stands I was absorbing little of the buzzing atmosphere. The last time I had raised my head above the parapet at the Bird Fair had been when I planned to write a story a few years previously about the formation of the Gay Birders’ Club – purely from a positive point of how it would enhance the great birdwatching family – but as the message went round that a Fleet Street tabloid journalist was planning some scurrilous exposé, I began to sense a feeling of unease. People were coming up to me in quiet corners and asking how I could be so sleazy as to attempt to ridicule a new and worthwhile organisation? It could not have been further from the truth but left me understanding the evils of prejudice.

With the welcoming applause still ringing in my ears, and squinting to try and make out recognisable faces in the front seats to give me some sense of familiarity with the audience, I began to recount my tabloid tales. There were stories of my foreign assignments with a BBC crew and the most exciting and outrageous birding adventures of those dashing pioneers on the very frontline of the twitching scene. There were silly stories and Scilly stories; there were tales that had filled many column inches in the popular press and some that were too salacious ever to have been laid out in newsprint. The laughs and communal murmurs that punctuated each anecdote felt like a friend guiding me on a journey. As the microphone projected my voice, the slide projector threw up images with perfect precision until ...

Weeks of practice had seen me learning my script off by heart. I knew every story, every slide. With one last click of the carousel, the final image was projected on to the screen. This was it: time for some valedictory words and I could take my bow.

‘And those, ladies and gentlemen, are the Tales of the Tabloid Twitcher. Thank you,’ I preened, expecting a round of spontaneous applause.

It never came. Instead, from the wings I heard the voice of the master of ceremonies who had introduced me on stage.

‘You’ve still got 15 minutes to go,’ he whispered from the sidelines. ‘You’ll have to find some more material.’

I froze. Adrenalin took over my body functions and my stomach flipped flight-or-fight cartwheels. Those pre-speech butterflies entered my head and prevented any rational thought. Out in the audience the discomfort was tangible. People shuffled on seats. False coughs echoed. Before the lecture, someone had reminded me of the old public speaker’s tactic of pretending that the audience was sitting naked as a way of creating an air of superiority when on stage. Now it was me who felt stripped bare: bereft of ideas, exposed to ridicule. In my panic I tried to improvise. Bad idea. My words turned into an incoherent ramble about the beauty of birds and birding. People at the back began to leave. The nervous coughs got louder. I tried a joke but, in my haste, I remembered the punchline was far too risqué for public dissemination and so that got abandoned in mid, hesitant, flow. By now, the compère had seen enough and came to my rescue with a call for ‘Any questions?’ There was not a single one, except for the wag at the back who shouted: ‘Where’s the exit?’ It was the signal the audience had been waiting for. Like a party of shorebirds taking flight at the sight of a marauding Peregrine Falcon, they vanished. If anyone applauded I never heard it.

I picked up my belongings, collected my slides and began to ask myself where had the talk gone wrong? Only when I looked in my satchel did I see the tell-tale shape of another slide box. Somehow I had managed to blithely rattle off my talk without realising I had missed out a whole chunk of tabloid tales. At last, as they say in the finest traditions of red-top journalism, here is my chance to put the record straight.

Out of the Cold

Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark, that you always carry in your heart.

—Raisa Gorbachev.

The long, harsh winter of 1962–63, the so-called ‘Big Freeze’, left the land devoid of birds and many families bereft of hope. Whole communities were frozen in time. Chamber pots were squeezed under beds because toilet cisterns had become ice-bound. Meals had to be cooked on open fires as gas pipes cracked. Roads creaked to a standstill and cars were left abandoned under towering drifts for weeks on end. Factories shivered to a halt and schools shut by the thousand. An anticyclone sitting to the north of Britain was to blame; the high pressure blocking the warming influences of the Atlantic and leaving us in the grip of an endless stream of Siberian winds and snowstorms. I can still remember being carried home from a Boxing Day family get-together in my father’s arms when the first saucer-size snowflakes began to fall. Three months later an ugly veneer of dirty brown slush and ice still covered vast tracts of town and country. For many of our common birds, the cold and snows were catastrophic. The Kingfisher population crashed by 85 per cent as streams froze over, leaving them unable to feed. Death by starvation was the fate of millions of other creatures that could not adapt or depart. A nationwide survey was to later reveal that 23 species had suffered appalling losses because of the endless winter, with Grey Wagtail, Goldcrest, Wren, Stonechat, Barn Owl, Snipe, Long-tailed Tit and Green Woodpecker, all largely sedentary species, experiencing massive declines. For the rare and vulnerable Dartford Warbler, the sweeping drifts on its exposed heathland haunts spelt near extinction. In the entire country only 12 pairs made it through to the following spring.

While grown-ups shivered and complained, and conservationists fretted, youngsters thrived in the chaos. School closures meant studies were swapped for sledging. As the Pools Panel decided the results of postponed football matches, snowball fights became the national sport. For me, a somewhat sickly child overcoming a debilitating bout of measles that had kept me away from school for three months the previous autumn, the winter was witnessed largely from behind windows decorated with leaf-like ice patterns. Our terraced council house on a sprawling estate on the outskirts of Luton had no central heating, no double-glazing and, during this modern Ice Age, no means of cooking. Frozen gas pipes meant that my mother had to regularly rustle up sausage, egg and bacon on the living room fire. Power cuts also meant that our black-and-white television sat idle in the corner of the living room, but was I ever bored? No way. Two books, both birthday presents, were to become constant companions as the snows raged. During each day of confinement in our family igloo, I devoured every page, every fact, contained in my little Observer’s Book of Birds. Archibald Thorburn’s exquisite paintings, half published in colour, the other half monotone, created a sense of wonderment. The pinched-mouth Hobby produced by the artist’s delicate brush stokes was a particular favourite and I would often stare in the bathroom mirror, sucking in my cheeks to emulate Thorburn’s gaunt depiction of this incredible bird that, according to the food section of the book, could catch the fleet-flying Swallow on the wing. Staring with mouth drawn into the mirror was my way of paying homage to an enigmatic bird that seemed so rare and remote that I doubted I would ever encounter one in my lifetime. Thorburn’s ‘Sparrow Hawk’ was another bird that stirred feelings of adventure and awe. Again, I could not wait to see this fierce-looking scourge of garden birds for myself and to celebrate that pending day I would run around the house on outstretched wings uttering its call – ‘kee, kee, kee,’ as quoted by my Observer’s – much to the astonishment of my parents.

My other prized book had the words ‘Nature Diary’ emblazoned on the front page and carried a chocolate box country scene depicting Red Fox, Red Deer and Badger, as far as I can remember. Sadly, the book was lost long ago, but hopefully it is still languishing in a loft somewhere awaiting rediscovery one day so that it may inspire another child as it once inspired me. Not that my entries, mostly made from inside the confines of our ice-bound house, will carry any great revelations. Yet, more than 45 years on, I can still picture the largely garden observations that had me scribbling in the awful spidery writing that earned more black marks and black looks than anything else I did in an otherwise undistinguished junior school career. The first entry announced the arrival of a flock of Fieldfares in our postage stamp-sized garden. I can still picture these noble thrushes sitting atop the privet hedge, their honey-coloured breasts stippled with inky black flecking and their beady, jet eyes set in faces the colour of the foreboding winter sky. Driven from the farmland wastes that surrounded our island of council houses, the Fieldfares looked forlornly for anything to eat, although in those days old crusts were the only fare thrown out for the birds.

In an early test of my reporting abilities, one entry got headline billing. I can still picture the sight of a dark, shadowy creature dropping from the sky into a neighbour’s garden, wings outstretched and, most importantly to this young observer, obviously sporting fingered primary feathers. How I knew that birds of prey had such distinctive wing shapes when all the Observer’s raptors were painted at rest remains a mystery. Somehow, perhaps through watching too many films at the Saturday morning pictures with them ‘damn turkey buzzards’ soaring over cowboy-and-indian battlefields, I had become subliminally aware that hawks and eagles ruled the skies