Remarkably my son now has an eBird account. I genuinely did not think this would ever happen, I felt sure that all of the birding trips I took him on, starting from when he was about six years old, would put him off for life. Well not for life, but certainly for many years. I am not sure what exactly changed, but it seems that one of new friends at University is getting into birding and dragging Henry along too. This guy is stunned that somehow Henry knows what he is looking at and what is more can identify some birds on call alone. Now this I did forsee, but not in this context. I thought that he would be walking along one day with some friends and unconsciously point out a Goldfinch or something, whereupon his mates would look at him aghast etc, and he would have to confess it wasn't his fault and so on.
I suppose that in some ways this is the scenario playing out, although without the "oh my God you freak" part. I knew about the little excursions he has been going on, but I did not know about eBird until this weekend when we went on a family trip to the Peak District. The weather was essentially disgusting throughout, but mid morning on Sunday a short respite allowed us to walk to the top of Mam Tor without getting totally soaked. Instead we got soaked walking down again, with lots of slipping over, mud, various minor injuries and a huge amount of water. Drying off in a local cafe I went through the inevitable eBird list I had made, and somehow this led to the monumental news that Henry had an eBird account that he uses for he and his mate to work out where to go locally.
And so to the title of this blog post. Throughout the childrens' childhoods I maintained a list of the notable birds that they had seen, but not really ever expecting that these would see the light of day. B-o-ring!! Until now. Back home today, I dug them out and sent his to him. There are some absolute gems on there I have to say, and I am sure that he will remember at least some of them. Trumpeter Finch in Norfolk, ooof. Even though this covers 2009 through to about 2014 I have eBird lists for all of them, retrospectively entered during a particularly bloody-minded period I went through a few years ago that coincided with a pandemic that predented me from leaving the house.... Would he like me to share these with him I enquired? Go on then came the reply. I was flabbergasted and delighted in equal measure, and have spent a bit of time working out which eg Hoopoe it was that he saw. This blog has been supremely helpful in this respect as back in the day I used to publish up to the minute views of what I had been up to (rather than half-arsed trip reports nine months in arrears) and in many cases I can line up the eBird list with a post that confirms that he came along. Sorry, what I meant was that I dragged him along against his will, but that now fifteen years later he is pleased that he came. Or at least that he didn't resist. It is also quite interesting to have a read of some of old 'parenting' posts - what a fun time that was. These days fun is in distinctly short supply it seems but back then I was having a whale of a time. I wonder what the difference could be?
No comments:
Post a Comment