Confessions of a lapsed birder

Yellow-throated Vireo – Kenidjack Valley, near St. Just, Cornwall, 22^nd September 1990

Whoosh! Behold the stonker!! Once again, I was rescued from a possible / probable dip by persistence and good fortune. So it was that Mike, Susie and I were at the scene to witness the object of our quest perform.

And did it! There were memorable scenes early on, a proverbial, 'Lane full of twitchers'. After some initial brief glimpses, I eventually got gripping views from an ideal situation.

Prior to seeing the bird circumstances were a mite fraught.

At this time, I was living in St. Albans and working for ERL in Gloucester Place, in Marylebone, in London. Amongst other things I was working on the early stages of the route planning of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, with its myriad of route corridor options through Kent and into London. These routes involved various station options; I’m so old I worked on what effectively was HS1, let alone HS2!

So it was that on Friday the 21st of September I had been charged with visiting the potential sites of two such stations and undertaking what would nowadays be considered as a preliminary ecological assessment survey – a quick look-see to ensure there were no real (ecological) showstoppers on site. This necessitated hiring a car and getting myself off through London and out into rural Kent. This I did, having arranged to hire the car through ERLs usual channels earlier in the week, before collecting the car early on the Friday and driving to the two sites involved. Now, necessarily, navigating and driving out of London to the motorways and major roads of Kent, and then to first one site and then the other, and undertaking the site visits themselves involved a good deal of time. Therefore, on the way back, I decided that it was going to be too late to take the hire car back to the depot in Central London, and to cut my losses by simply driving around the M25 back to St. Albans (and then return the hire car on the following Monday morning).

This I did, which proved to be very fortuitous when Mike, Susie and I discussed going to the far western tip of Cornwall for the Yellow-throated Vireo that had been found in Kenidjack Valley on Wednesday the 20th of September..... . The obvious solution (given that we wanted to go, that Mike didn’t drive and that I didn’t have a car) was simply that I should take the hire car to west Cornwall and back.... [1].

This we did. Having arrived somewhere out beyond St. Just overnight, we all three slept in the car, and emerging at dawn, walked down into the valley along a footpath through small fields divided by granite drystone walls. On reaching the valley itself we joined the procession down the rough track to join the throng along the lane in the vicinity of a large house and garden, in and around which were large privet, holm oak and sallow clumps. We duly saw the bird, but first more about the scenes. No sooner had we arrived than vehicles from the house began travelling along the lane, through the crowds of birders, at speed. Consequently, birders clambered into the adjacent fields over the walls. But all was sorted out quickly, and immediately the bird began to show.

After initial brief glimpses I eventually got gripping views from an ideal situation in the field as it moved about in the shrubs around the house. It was of similar size, shape, etc., to Red-eyed. It had striking double wing bars and yellow under-parts including the mask, which was emphasised by the black eye. It had white-edged tertials and wing-bars reminiscent of Chaffinch or Siskin. The rump and nape were grey, and the back and head were yellowy olive-green. It also recalled Firecrest and Red-breasted Flycatcher.

[1] This whole scenario was so much in contrast to my experiences working on the HS2 Project in 2018/2019. By then adherence to strict HSE and land access procedures was paramount at all times. On CTRL or HS1 (for that’s what it was, in effect) 28 years earlier no one was bothered about where I was, whether I had got to site, whether I had spoken to the landowners (or their representative’s) before accessing the sites involved, whether I had got off site / home, or what I was doing with the hire car....).