Keith Betton - Behind More Binoculars: Interviews with acclaimed birdwatchers

Behind More Binoculars

Behind More Binoculars

Interviews with Acclaimed Birdwatchers

Keith Betton and Mark Avery

PELAGIC PUBLISHING

Published by Pelagic Publishing

www.pelagicpublishing.com

PO Box 725, Exeter EX1 9QU, UK

Behind More Binoculars: Interviews with Acclaimed Birdwatchers

ISBN 978-1-78427-109-1 (Hbk)

ISBN 978-1-78427-110-7 (ePub)

ISBN 978-1-78427-112-1 (PDF)

Copyright 2018 Keith Betton & Mark Avery

Keith Betton & Mark Avery assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this document may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher. While every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Pelagic Publishing, its agents and distributors will be held liable for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Puffins by Robert Gillmor

Contents

The interviews

Preface

This is the second of our books of interviews with birders, birdwatchers and people interested in birds. When it came out a couple of years ago, Behind the Binoculars was well received and we had plenty more people on our list of potential interviewees, so we decided to produce another volume.

Producing a book like this is fun for the compilers we meet interesting people, ask them impertinent questions and hear their stories. We hope you enjoy reading the interviews too.

One or other of us talked to each of the people in this book, and the interviews were transcribed, edited and then approved by the people we interviewed.

Spoken English is very different from written English, and we have tried to retain the conversational nature of the interviews but also make them relatively easy to read.

There are a few terms scattered through the interviews which might perplex some readers, and most of these are to do with the field sport of twitching. Not all, in fact rather few, birders are twitchers, even though the popular media cant seem to get that fact straight. Twitchers are people who rush after rare birds hoping very much to see them. They twitch with a mixture of excitement and nervousness when they hear of a rare bird that they wish to see. If they fail to see it, then they have dipped, whereas if they see a bird theyve never seen before it is a lifer as it has been added to their life list of birds (and by definition their year list too). Many British birders have British lists, some have county lists, and others might have garden lists some have longer lists of lists.

Many birders do much of their regular birdwatching at a regular spot, often close to home, known as their patch.

The order in which the interviews appear in this book bears no relation to the order in which they were done or to anything else, except to what we thought was a good order.

When we paused for breath, with all the interviews completed, we saw that we had been lucky (maybe skilful?) in picking some fascinating people with a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. We also realised that this book takes the reader behind the binoculars of famous birders and into their heads, their thoughts and emotions.

Each interview stands alone as an interesting account, but there are also some common themes, or differences, that leaped off the pages. We discuss these in the last chapter.

Keith Betton and Mark Avery

March 2017

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Nigel Massen at Pelagic Publishing for encouraging us to put this book together, our interviewees for their openness and patience, and our partners (Esther Betton and Rosemary Cockerill) for their patience and help too.

Abbreviations