Some years in the past – in all probability about twenty – I made the choice to cease chasing across the nation so as to add to my UK life record: though I’ve added maybe a dozen species since then, these have all been comparatively native. I have not flown in a passenger jet since 1992 (and that continues to be my solely industrial flight ever!) and each time I’ve a visit out birding, it is at all times within the firm of excellent buddies: solely very not often do I am going solo. Usually talking, I do not journey out of county so as to add a yr tick. An instance is the Crimson-footed Falcon in Suffolk: I’ve seen a dozen of those prior to now, so it will appear barely redundant to drive throughout the county to see one other.
Till Linda and I semi-retired from our house memorabilia and meteorite companies, we attended round forty occasions a yr, from Exeter within the west to Newcastle within the north. Finally we managed to remodel our business-model to on-line gross sales by way of our web site and these days solely attend two exhibits a yr – each in East Anglia. Our motivation was, at the least partially, attempting to cut back our ‘carbon footprints’.
When you learn the web tweets and blogs of many – if not most – of the better-known UK birders, hardly any of them appear to have thought of an analogous change in angle: a number of declare to have seen over half of the worldwide record, jetting off a number of instances a yr to distant places so as to add one or two endemics. Others drive 100 thousand miles a yr to keep up their rankings as high ten listers. (I am not criticising the primary lister: he makes no pretence of being a conservationist and is completely trustworthy about his endeavours!)
Within the larger scheme of issues, this in all probability has little or no impact on the partial strain of atmospheric CO2 or local weather change, however it’s somewhat galling to listen to a few of these people pontificating about defending the surroundings or how their vegan food plan is saving the planet!
