Sometimes you blog about birds, and sometimes you just wander off and look at them wherever you can find them. I did the latter for most of June. I am only now seriously back at my desk, and ready to share some of the glories of my meanderings.
I did a week and a half in England, followed by a week in Iceland. In that short time, I added almost 50 new species to my year list. There is really nothing like watching the new bird names pile up on your eBird list when you’re not even really trying to spot them. It’s like Nature throwing gifts at you. Neither destination was chosen FOR birdwatching. That was just a happy add-on. But from here on out, my travels will always be done with a little notebook tucked away for adding to the lists.
A Rook (Corvus frugilegus) in silhouette on the Cotswold Way in Gloucestershire, UK.
The England leg was a long-planned, pandemic-delayed hiking adventure. I lived in London for a summer as a student way back in 1987. There were several side trips into the countryside involved, and the experience left me with an enduring hankering for sheep-filled meadows, dry stone walls, and idyllic country pubs serving local cask ales. I had a UK hiking adventure more than half-planned for Spring 2020, intending to rent a little cottage on the southern coast for as many friends as wanted to join me. We’d use the place as a home base, and take on some of the coastal trails — the Seven Sisters cliff walk between Seaford and Eastbourne called to me. And then… of course… 2020 happened.
By the end of 2022, I’d nursed family through Covid, had a bout or two of it myself, and was thoroughly sick of the idea that maybe the new normal meant giving up international hiking dreams. I researched a set tour on one of the UK’s National Trails, reset my open invitation, and prepared to lock down a date in combination with a previously set writing retreat in Iceland. Recently-retired Pete, a buddy from all the way back in high school, jumped on it, and the plan was set. We’d hike pub-to-pub for five days at the north end of the Cotswold Way.
Follow the signs from Chipping Camden to Painswick. Do not stop for heatwaves... or maybe do.
Pete is even more bookish than I am, so at the end of our hike, he would head off to Hay-on-Wye in Wales, hoping to deplete that famous used-book destination of as many Penguin paperbacks as he could stuff into a checked bag. I would head back to Heathrow, and from there make my way across the North Atlantic to meet up with my lovely wife, Julia, and her family in Reykjavik.
So, I downloaded United Kingdom and Iceland bird databases from eBird, packed my binoculars and log lens camera, flipped a travel journal and bird-list notebook into my carry-on, and away I went. The very first bird of the trip? One of the slightly miraculous indoor fliers at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. It looks a bit washed out on my camera photo, but it was an American Goldfinch.
Sorry for the poor photo quality. My camera was packed away. An American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) in the departures lounge at Pearson International.
But the very first new bird of the trip was not far behind. Well… an eight-hour overnight flight, and an hour commute from Heathrow in between, plus breakfast and the bleary, coffee-assisted shaking off of jetlag… but then I was ready for birds. Walking to my appointed stadium tour at Stamford Bridge (home of the mighty Chelsea FC, my longtime home club), I cut through old Brompton Cemetery. Brompton is one of London’s Seven Sisters of cemeteries, and is an idyllic parkland oasis (well, an oasis filled with dead bodies) in the middle of a bustling world city. Ten steps in and you’ve already forgotten the traffic and hurry outside. And for me, the world became all about birds. A gaggle of Rose-ringed Parakeets (Cyanistes caeruleus) squawked by overhead, too fast for any early-morning camera work, but not too fast for my Merlin birdsong identifier.
I would come to depend on that birdsong app more than I’d anticipated. Travel birding is nowhere near as straightforward as the domestic variety. You’re constantly looking at maps, finding your way, talking to your companions, wondering where the next pub is, and looking at every fabulous sight other than birds. I would say that I saw almost all of the 48 new species the app IDed for me, but I sure didn’t get my camera on that number.
Recently-retired Pete looking for birds along the Cotswold Way. Not really… but he put up with my near constant bird-chatter.
Impossible to name a favourite travel bird. I was pleased to meet each and every one. But my camera had favourites. And here they are:
A Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) just being all appropriate to the setting in Brompton Cemetery.
A very curious Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) over the Thames river in Oxford.
An owl painted onto the interior wall of the 12th-century Hailes Church in Gloucestershire, UK. That church was a cool escape from England’s epic mid-June heatwave.
This Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) took a while to reveal itself on the hill above Broadway, Gloucestershire, but when it did it posed like a pro.
Not a bird… just your trail-weary correspondent enjoying a pint in poet Laurie Lee’s favourite pub, in Slad, Gloucestershire, UK.
“O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.”
Coming next… Iceland!
Just one of Iceland’s approximately 10,000 waterfalls. Look closely to see birds on the cliffside.
Currently reading:
Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, Iceland’s Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. A book about sheep, more sheep, some birds, and the grim and fierce folk who live among them. And sheep.