Bird News - Part 5: Birdline

Some time in 1986, the recently-privatised BT (or British Telecom as it was then) introduced premium rate telephone services. Prior to this, the money you paid for a phone call went to BT*. A premium rate number was different. A percentage went to BT, but most of the revenue went to whomever the number was registered to, i.e., the service provider. The technology required to turn bird news into money was finally here.

Birdline was an early premium rate service. Its original number is etched indelibly in a dusty corner of my brain...

0898 700222

How did Birdline begin? Inevitably there is a story here, but it's not mine to tell. So, for the moment at least, I'm planning to concentrate on the fact that it did begin, rather than how. Having said that, there is one documented version I can offer...

You can find it in the Independant newspaper of 27th January 1993. A piece entitled 'Twitcher devotes his life to an obsessive flight of fancy' features the activities of one Mr Lee Evans, 32, of Little Chalfont, Bucks. The article reports that Mr Evans spent 11 years searching for a way to fund his passion for twitching, and then finally...

Inspiration came in 1986 when he quit his job as a design stylist at Vauxhall Motors to open an 0891** 'Birdline', recording up-to-the-minute sightings.

Obviously the usual caveats apply regarding what you read in newspapers.

Anyway, by early 1991 Birdline was in its fifth year, and milking me dry. I really wasn't a full-on twitcher, but even now I can hear Richard Millington's leaden drawl as he confirms that yes, I have reached Birdline, and that this is the mid-morning update of the exact day I think it is, before plodding laboriously through the rare bird news. Rare birds that are of no interest to me, or too far away, or have been present for a month already. A small fortune later, I can rest easy that I don't need to rush to Kent this afternoon. Still, it is September, and there's loads of stuff about, so probably I ought to check again in a couple of hours...

How much did it cost to phone the 'line?

In 1991 it was 33p/min cheap rate, and 44p/min peak/standard rate. Very roughly that's the equivalent of 75p/min and £1.00/min respectively in 2021.  The following year saw an increase to 36p/min and 48p/min. But that was fine, because you were paying for 'news you can trust, from the team you know', as the service's tagline put it.

In 1992 the 'team you know' apparently included six of the top twelve British life-list holders, three BBRC members and nine county recorders and committee members. Which demonstrates just how deeply the whole twitching, listing, rarity-centred ethos was embedded into the British birding establishment.

So, one minute we were just ringing our mates for bird news, or Nancy's, or accosting random birders with a cheery 'Anything about, mate?' and the next, paying through the nose for it. Looking back, there was little if any resistance to the switch. As someone commented on the previous post, it could be argued that Birdline brought order to chaos. Maybe. But it did other things too.

But that's for another post...

*  BT lost its monopoly in 1982, so theoretically your phone call might have been generating revenue for another telecomms provider from that point on.

**  Premium rate numbers changed from 0898 prefix to 0891 in the early 1990s.

Bird News - Part 4: Ripe for the Plucking

I'll start with an apology, because I'm going to be a little untrue to the closing sentence of my last post; this one isn't quite going to be about Birdline. It struck me that I ought first to paint a picture of the early-1980s birding scene in order to demonstrate the inevitability of what was to follow. Obviously this is a personal take, so it's highly likely some of my contemporaries will have a different view. But for any younger readers, hopefully it will provide some insight, and maybe food for thought...

In 1981, when my enthusiasm for birding really took off, I was 22 years old. And I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of birders I met in the field back then were more or less of the same generation, i.e., predominantly young.

The vibrant grapevine and the very existence of the Nancy's hub illustrate the strength of that 'need to know' what's about - especially rarities - and speak volumes about the birding ethos of the day. Seeing 'new' birds was a massive thing. Listing, ticking and twitching were regular topics of conversation, and some popular contemporary literature basically encouraged it all. For example, I would say the three most influential books on me at that time were Discover Birds (1979) by Ian Wallace, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book (1980) and A Twitcher's Diary (1981) by Richard Millington. I still have all three...

Discover Birds. While in no way promoting twitching, DIM Wallace's enthusiasm made me hungry for birdy drama. The book featured North Norfolk and its birds - reinforcing my desire to go there - and introduced me to Walberswick. And his thrilling account of 1st May 1978 at Flamborough Head effectively conveyed the excitement to be had from a hatful of rare and scarce birds.

Bill Oddie's LBBB. To the youthful me, this terrific little book basically said 'twitching is cool'. Rereading the relevant chapters now, it still does.

A Twitcher's Diary. The book is exactly that. Richard Millington's 1980 quest for 300 species in a year was an absolute inspiration. Full of birds I could only dream of, it revealed what was possible.

For me, this book was the new birder's equivalent of an Argos catalogue. Fatal.

So there you have it. My early influences. The birding clan was mostly young, and driven by an engine which had been steadily revving up through the 1970s: twitching. And I found myself very much up for the ride, along with loads of my contemporaries.

But, as I mentioned in the last post, bird news was still basically free. Despite the obviously massive demand for it (would 'aching need' be an exaggeration?) there was no obvious way to turn bird news into money. Well, not yet...

I don't know much about telecommunications technology, but I do know that all we had back then were landlines. By the early 1980s I would imagine most homes had a phone, but certainly not all. Otherwise you had to rely on public phone boxes, many of which were typically vandalised, or toilets, or both. In May 1985 I made my first ever calls from a car phone. A BMW-owning birder at Staines invited me to use his to phone out news of a couple of Temminck's Stints. I've not used one since, and they were incredibly rare even then. A few home phones had a facility for leaving a message. My memory pictures a tiny little cassette tape (on which you recorded your greeting, along with the sad news that you were currently out and therefore unable to do anything with the gripping gen the caller was about to share) plus a lot of flashing lights and unreliability.

So that's the technology side of things. Not quite ready...

Interestingly, A Twitcher's Diary contains a dedication. I quote:

Dedicated to-
The finders of rare birds - many whose names I do not know, but without whose unselfish attitude twitching could not exist and this book would not have been written. Thank you.

And the preface contains the following paragraph:

Twitchers cannot exist without the goodwill of the birdwatchers who are the lucky finders of the more exciting birds. It is these generous and unselfish birdwatchers who start the telephone 'grapevine' working, so that other people can come and enjoy the birds that they have found.

Ironically, the unstinting 'goodwill' of these 'generous and unselfish' folk was just about to become a vital element in a fascinating business model. Just as soon as the technology was ready...

Next: yes, definitely Birdline next.

Bird News - Part 3: Nancy's

Nancy's Café was the oddest bird news hub that you could possibly imagine. I cannot do justice to its idiosyncratic excellence here, and recommend Mark Cocker's Birders - Tales of a Tribe, where it features prominently. Suffice to say, the telephone number of this modest, Cley-based emporium of cheap eats was once writ large in the front of every twitchy birder's notebook...

0263 740767

In the previous post I probably gave the impression that the grapevine was basically a network of individual birders. Mostly it was, but with one or two notable exceptions. For example, on occasion you might call a bird observatory and ask if there was much about. Fraught with danger though, especially if the phone was picked up by some twitcher-hating wind-up merchant.

'Yes mate, ten Golden Orioles in the trapping area, two Subalps and a Sardinian Warbler. Do drop by.'

And then there was Nancy's.

Next to the Nancy's Café telephone was a log, with all the latest bird news listed out. Anyone seated near the phone knew the score: answer the phone; read out the news. On the other hand, if fresh gen was being phoned in, make a note in the log and call it out to the room. Nancy's operated on a 'quid pro quo' basis. For example, if you successfully twitched the Wilson's Phalarope, you found a public call-box, coughed up ten pence and phoned an update through to Nancy's. At the same time of course, you would hear the latest gen.

Looking back, Nancy's Café strikes me simply as a serendipitous product of its time. Its location , Cley next the Sea, was already a focal point for birders, and those birders were inevitably attracted by the prospect of good-value grub. The proprietress, Nancy Gull, was happy to let the birders use the phone as a bird news hotline, and those birders were as eager for bird news as for beans on toast. Win-win.

The photo of this vintage clipping was kindly sent to me many years ago by Tom McKinney...

Nancy on the right. And look at that phone. It has a proper dial!

Thus far in the bird news saga there has been no real talk of money. Okay, yes, it cost a few pence to make a call, and every birder in those days had a small stock of 10p coins for the public call-box, whether that was to let your mates know about the Velvet Scoter you had just found on the reservoir, or to get a rarity update from Nancy's. But we are talking peanuts. And in the early 1980s, peanuts was just about all you could possibly spend on bird information. However, that was about to change. And change mightily.

Next: Mammon. Oops, I mean Birdline.

Bird News - Part 2: The Grapevine

In a cathartic act of heresy I ditched all my old notebooks several years ago, so can no longer view the list of names and telephone numbers at the beginning of each. They were my bird news contacts. My precious links to the grapevine.

Though I don't consciously recall it, there must have been a time when I had zero contacts, a blank page. But gradually, mainly through regular visits to the Staines area in West London, I began to meet other birders and acquire a few contacts. I guess this began to happen from autumn 1981 on. At this stage I wasn't much of a twitcher, but nevertheless keen to know what was about. 

As the months and years passed, and my interest in twitching grew, the grapevine became ever more vital. Like anyone else with a 'need to know' about the latest rarities, I was always on the lookout for those extra-special contacts, those birders with access to branches of the grapevine otherwise closed to me. In those pre-digital times it was all very well learning that there was a Stilt Sandpiper at some place called Frodsham, but where on earth was that? And even if you found it on a map, you still needed to know where to park, and where exactly the bird was. Enter Bob Eckersley of Leeds, my prized 'northern contact'. I don't recall us ever meeting, but there were plenty of telephone conversations. Ditto Paul, my excellent Lea Valley and East London contact. Back then there was an unhappy disconnect between West and East London for some reason, but our telephone link bridged it quite well.

It all sounds rather clunky and primitive doesn't it? And it was. But it worked.

So, here is a real-life example of the grapevine in action...

Staines Res in the early 1980s. North basin on the left.

It is 14th October 1982, a Thursday. The north basin of Staines Res has been slowly emptying over the past two or three months, and looks amazing, like a massive inland estuary. I notice that the Dunlin flock is unusually close to the causeway this afternoon, so have a go at counting them...

Thirty-five, thirty-six... Hello, what's this?

Long story short: it's a Baird's Sandpiper!

Present on the causeway were myself, Sandra, Jon Herbert and Gordon Richards. We took a while to settle confidently on the identification, but it helped that Sandra and I had seen our first Baird's as recently as August - an adult at Salthouse in Norfolk - so the diagnostic features were pretty fresh in our minds. But obviously we were still very cautious. This was a serious London rarity!

In 2021 it is easy to predict what would happen next. There would be photos taken and uploaded straight from camera to smartphone, then punted out via WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. The first twitchers would be there within the hour.

In 1982, this is what happened... 

That evening I phoned Pete Naylor. Pete is sadly no longer with us, but back then he was one of the London area recorders and, along with Andrew Moon, pretty much a Staines Res fixture. He seemed the obvious person to call. Apart from my description of the bird, I had nothing to offer in the way of evidence. From our few meetings in the field thus far, Pete would probably have known me as a keen young birder, but also a bit of a newbie. Could he trust me enough to widely broadcast news of a Baird's Sandpiper at Staines Res? Er...no.

Unbeknown to me, Pete passed the news to someone who could check it out the next day, which was a Friday. I have a feeling that that someone was Jeff Hazell. But whoever it was, the identity was confirmed, and on Saturday the causeway was rather busy.

In fact the causeway was busy all weekend. And how did all these Baird's twitchers become aware of its presence? The grapevine. That intricate web of telephone contacts.

However, one aspect of the grapevine that I've not really mentioned yet, and which no doubt had a role in disseminating news of that Baird's Sandpiper at Staines Res, was a tiny café in Cley, Norfolk.

Coming next: Nancy's.

Cirls

Well, I actually have some classy bird stuff to blog about for a change. Today was my first back at work for a fortnight, but I only gave myself a few jobs to do and took it very easy. By lunchtime I had finished. Pleasingly I felt pretty okay, so made tentative plans for a gentle walk later on. But where to go...?

An unexpected call from Mike Morse quickly decided that for me. He and Alan had just discovered two Cirl Buntings - a male and female - in exactly the same spot which held two females last winter.

When I first arrived it was quite sunny, and among the small gang of buntings and finches diving in and out of the hedge I quickly spotted a likely candidate for female Cirl. Rather obscured, and preening, but through the scope it was instantly identifiable. A year ago I would never have been able to identify a female Cirl Bunting on face pattern alone, but now they seem a doddle. As I watched the Cirl I could see movement just below it, and deeper in the hedge. To my amazement, a stripy black and yellow face suddenly popped into view. It was the male! Well, that was easy! Getting a decent photo, not so easy...

Male a female Cirl Buntings. The best I managed of both birds together. Trust me! The arrows point to the top of their heads.

They weren't in view for long, and the whole flock was very mobile. I didn't see the female again, and it was quite a while before the male reappeared. Unfortunately it was rather distant, and the light was now rubbish...

Male Cirl Bunting in the late afternoon gloom.

There was also a major bonus in the shape of a spanking male Brambling...

Male Brambling. Very sexy.

Technically we are still in meteorological autumn, so it is early days for the bunting flock. Plenty of time for its numbers to swell beyond the current 20-odd. I spotted 2 Reed Bunts among them, but what else might appear before winter is out? Kudos to Mike and Alan, the West Bex & Cogden stalwarts, for creating such a terrific little hotspot.

Cirl Bunting is still a rare bird in Dorset, but they are definitely creeping this way.

As I walked back to the car at dusk, a falcon hammered past. It was either a Merlin or a male Peregrine, but I couldn't safely call it. I'm not sure that I like falcons much any more...

Bird News - Part 1: The Need to Know

Once upon a time I had absolutely no interest at all in bird news. I simply went birding, saw what I saw, and was quite content with that. This morning it occurred to me that lots of us must have started this way, perfectly happy in our ignorance. I hadn't intended to begin a series of bird news posts in quite this fashion but, because a birder's 'need to know' is exactly what drives the market, I thought it might be worth exploring how and why bird news suddenly becomes valuable to an individual. I'm sure each of us will have a slightly different take on it, but this is mine...

Until I married in 1980, birds had always been a second-string interest. But Sandra really enjoyed our days out birdwatching, and by the autumn of 1981 I was taking it pretty seriously. We lived near Northolt back then and, though we visited a few spots on the western fringes of suburban London, our number one location for a birding trip was the North Norfolk coast at Cley. There was a reason for this...

I have written briefly before about boyhood holidays at my grandparents' place in Weybourne, a few miles east of Cley; about boat trips from Morston out to Blakeney Point, and the long trudge back to Cley Coastguards. I enjoyed pointing my monstrous ex-army bins at the countless birds, and could even identify a few. Most of all, I came to equate that coastline with avian abundance; I just knew it was brilliant for birds. So it seemed the obvious destination for two keen new birders.

'Twin Pines', Temple Drive, Weybourne. My grandparents' old bungalow in Norfolk. The year is 1979. A friend and I were on a motorcycling jolly in East Anglia, and I couldn't resist dropping by for this memento. My grandparents no longer lived here though; by now they had been in Budleigh Salterton for a year or two. Norfolk winters were a bit too much.

A few weeks after our marriage, Sandra and I had a day out in North Norfolk with a couple of friends. The date was 6th September, 1980. We enjoyed point-blank views of our first Little Stint and Curlew Sandpiper on the Eye Pool at Cley, and at some point learned there was a Sardinian Warbler at Weybourne Camp, a place I had explored with my sister when we were kids. I had never heard of Sardinian Warbler, but we nevertheless popped over to see it. Ha! No chance. It was deep in some thicket, surrounded by loads of loafing birders waiting for it to show. Bo-o-o-ring! We didn't stay long. There was no sense of disappointment at our failure to see it. Birding was still a casual interest, and Sardinian Warbler was just a bird.

Almost exactly one year later, on 5th September 1981, we were at Cley again. By this point the birding bug has bitten. We have discovered the Walsey Hills migration watch-point, run by the Norfolk Ornithologists Association, and park just below it. On top of the little hill is a concrete bunker thing. Inside is the friendly warden, Roy Robinson...

Roy features again later in the bird news saga, but for now his role is very straightforward: Roy was the bloke who knew what was about. In 1981 Sandra and I were newbies. We had no idea that Nancy's Café was just down the road. Actually we had never heard of it. But no matter. A quick chat with Roy that day acquainted us with the fact that a Buff-breasted Sandpiper was on Cley beach. So we went to have a look. What a corker! We sat on the pebbles and watched this characterful, super-tame Nearctic wader poking about just feet away. I can see it clearly in my mind's eye. I remember too being aware of its rarity, and therefore - possibly for the first time - its value.

From this bird on, we always made an effort to find out what was around. The following weekend we were back again. On Saturday, 12th September 1981, we watched our first ever Bittern from the Walsey Hills watch-point, showing superbly in the reedbed below. Gen from Roy gave us our first Pectoral Sandpiper that day, and a Black Guillemot offshore, another tick. We failed to see the Spotted Crake that was making regular appearances in front of the viewing screen in Snipe's Marsh, so kipped in our van overnight by the roadside, and enjoyed cracking views first thing in the morning. Tick again.

Yes, seeing new birds had suddenly become important. And, crucially, so had bird news. I blame that Buff-breast.

I'll close with this vintage photo...

Roy Robinson's rusty old Ford Escort was even more of a banger than our little Bedford van.

There are...er...clues in that photo which date it to autumn 1982, by which point this old car and its noticeboard had become a very welcome sight. It guaranteed that Roy would be up there, in or near the bunker, and that we could therefore find out what was about. Because now there was - very much - a need to know.

Next: The Grapevine

Forty Years of Bird Information 1981-2021 - Introduction

This morning a Brünnich's Guillemot drifted past Holkham and round into Wells Harbour, where it beached on a sandbank and eventually died. The whole saga was broadcast live on Twitter and the bird information services, from start to finish. I say 'live', but of course the bird itself went from that happy condition to 'moribund', to 'dead' with each news update. Anyone twitching it could, at the same instant, examine both their chances of getting there in time and their morals.

Such is the speed and efficiency of bird news dissemination in 2021.

To many birders, bird news is important. Especially when it involves rare birds. So important that they are prepared to pay for it. In the forty-odd years I've been birding, a number of individuals have made the most of this fact and turned bird news into a commodity. Eleven years ago I had a stab at documenting the emergence and growth of that market, but the time is ripe for an update. So, over the course of a few posts I shall endeavour to describe the Bird Information Revolution, and chart its course from Grapevine to Smartphone.

Of course, the chances are that someone, somewhere, has already done this, and done it better than I ever could. Certainly, many will know the story better than I do. Even so, the NQS version will be unique. Its errors and inaccuracies will not be mirrored elsewhere. They will be found only here, the product of my unreliable memory, and mine alone.

I shall close with a disclaimer:

What follows will be completely...er...made up, and if any names, places, activities or motives attributed to the genuinely fictitious characters herein bear any resemblance to real life, that is utterly coincidental. And anyway, suing me for libel would be very unbirderly.