The Records Committee. Part 3. The Process - Devon Today

As in London, bird recording in Devon is steeped in history. The county bird club has existed since 1928 and published a Bird Report more or less from its inception. My membership began around 2004, coinciding with revitalised birding urges induced by our move to Seaton. A few years later I was on the Devon Birds Records Committee, once again throwing my weight around in a judgemental sort of way...

How on earth did that happen?

Well, when it comes to recruiting new members onto its records committee, Devon Birds (or the Devon Birdwatching and Preservation Society as it was until very recently) has an actual, proper procedure, the nuts and bolts of which are even published right here on their website for the whole world to see. Talk about transparent.

Following a period of shrewd networking and intensive lobbying I was formally invited by the County Recorder to apply for a position on the Devon Birds Records Committee. To apply! With a CV, no less. Blimey, if there was more than one applicant there would even have to be a vote, which I might lose! What on earth motivated me to go through this potentially humiliating process? Naturally it was a self-sacrificing desire to serve my fellow Devon birders in whatever humble role they deemed me worthy. No ego involved at all. And so it was that my devoted followers elected me to membership of the DBRC.

My tenure coincided with the move from postal circulation to digital. With the former you would receive a fat envelope of descriptions, review each one, then write your decision and any comments on a separate sheet. The idea was that you shouldn't look at the decisions and comments of those committee members who had received the package before you, but of course you could do exactly that if so inclined. Digital circulation did away with such naughtiness! Periodically - maybe two or three times a year, and certainly not monthly as in London - the County Recorder would call a meeting. The descriptions discussed at the meeting would almost invariably be only those upon which there had not been unanimous agreement, and you were notified in advance which they were. Plenty of time to review those descriptions and do some research if needed. At the meeting would be just the five committee members and the County Recorder, who had no vote and acted only as chair.

I thought the system worked superbly. A real effort was made to recruit committee members who were experienced, were respected by their peers, and ideally from different parts of Devon. This resulted in a broad base of understanding of both the county's birds and its birders, and gave the committee a good level of maturity and integrity I think. And by limiting each member to five years it meant that fresh blood was introduced every 12 months; there was absolutely no room for some cliquey little gang of buddies to go on a power trip...

The job even came with a contract of sorts, unambiguously explaining what was expected of you. If you didn't measure up, well...you were out.

This is the last county rarity description I sent to the DBRC - a gorgeous Caspian Gull on the Axe estuary, 9 April 2013. Hardly a text-book description, but at the time of submission (early 2014) I had been off the committee for more than a year and was going through a bit of a birding trough. I couldn't be bothered to write a proper description and simply used this annotated photo which had appeared on NQS MkII. I emailed it to the County Recorder along with a couple of other pics. I assume it didn't give cause for much debate. Oh, but if only all records were so easy...

Record assessment is a subjective affair and therefore inherently imperfect. However, if you insist upon keeping a county or national database of birds, bees, butterflies - of anything - it is obviously going to need long-term credibility. Some kind of vetting process is a logical necessity in my view. But a truly successful vetting process needs to do more than just ensure that the database contains trustworthy, dependable records; it also needs to encourage a maximum number of submissions. To achieve these dual aims that vetting process must have two vital things:

• An efficient system of record assessment (obviously)
• As trusted and respected a records committee as is humanly possible

To be frank I would be surprised to learn of a county that does it better than Devon. Though of course, you may know different...

I enjoyed my time on the DBRC. Particularly the bit following the meetings, when we would all go down the pub for a bevvy and a have good laugh about the field sketch of a so-called Hoopoe that was clearly a parrot.

No, I'm kidding again. As in London, we never laughed.

Next up: Part 4. The Decision.

The Records Committee. Part 2. The Process - London in the '80s

Although I was interested in birds from a young age I didn't get the bit between my teeth as a truly keen birder until autumn 1981. Mrs NQS and I began to travel far and wide in search of new birds, guided - obviously - by the sage words found in Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book. And then, in October '82, I was jammy enough to find a Baird's Sandpiper at Staines Reservoir. To execute such an audacious move right under the noses of the Staines regulars inevitably brought my name to their attention. One of them was editor of the London Bird Report, and three others were London Recorders...

The London Recording Area is somewhat idiosyncratic. It is simply a circle of 20 miles radius centred upon St Paul's Cathedral. Consequently it includes bits of Bucks, Herts, Essex, Kent and Surrey, along with the nonexistent county of Middlesex. This must be a right pain for those neighbouring counties! And for Berkshire, in fact, part of which falls within the 20-mile circle, but isn't recognised as Berks by London...if you get me. Oh, I almost forgot: there was another bit called 'Central London', the definition of which I cannot remember. That's seven discrete zones. Each zone had its own recorder.

As an observer in 1982, what you did with your bird records was divide them up by zone and send the resultant lists (which might number anything from one to seven) to the relevant recorder. Each recorder then transferred your records - by hand - on to file cards. A laborious undertaking, especially for the late Pete Naylor, who looked after Middx for many years. As an observer you were hopefully aware of London Rarities that required a description, and duly sent one in with your records. If not, the recorder was responsible for sending you a request for a description, by post of course. And eventually your description would wind up before the London Records Committee.

Let's go back 80 years...

The first London Bird Report, compiled from the records of 83 observers, all of whom were no doubt members of the London Natural History Society. Within the pages of the report there is no list of London rarities for which a description would be required, but note the existence already of a record-vetting body: the Recording Committee of the Ornithological Section.

I can't tell you exactly how Messrs Homes, Bayne, Morgan, Parmenter and Paulson came to be members of the Recording Committee, but I can tell you how I did....

In the early '80s the London Records Committee comprised the seven zone recorders, the LBR editor, and two or three others whose reason for being there escapes me. Around 1983 or 1984 the Bucks zone lacked a recorder, and I was asked if I'd like to take it on. My memory is a bit ropey, but I think it was Pete Clement, then editor of the LBR, who asked me. Bucks was easy. It was the smallest zone, with a correspondingly small number of records to worry about. To be honest I was flattered to have been approached. Here I was, in my early twenties and a proper birder for about 5 minutes, being co-opted into the London Birding Establishment.

Your job as a London Recorder was to collate records, correspond with observers and in various other ways push paper. It's interesting to note that membership of the Records Committee was actually a secondary role, and simply a consequence of your primary, administrative one. Which explains how it came to be that a young, rather inexperienced birder could wind up sitting in judgement on the rarity descriptions of his much older, much more experienced peers. It seemed fair enough to me at the time, but with hindsight...er...not ideal.

Once a month we would meet in central London, each recorder bringing along whatever descriptions he'd recently received. They would be read out and discussed, maybe handed around, and then judgement would be passed. To be fair, there was a great deal of experience around the table, and I'm sure we almost always got it right. But even in those days the British Birds Rarities Committee had postal circulation, whereas the first almost all of us would know about any description was when it was read out at the meeting. No opportunity to research, or even to think about it much.

Anyway, we'd plough our way through the descriptions and then several of us would adjourn to the pub to eat, drink, and have a good laugh about the field sketch of a so-called Hoopoe that was clearly a parrot.

No, I'm kidding. We never laughed.

I have absolutely no idea what London's recording arrangements are these days, or how their records committee currently works. But it's easy to see flaws in the old way. For example, I was on the committee for about five or six years until I resigned my recordership, but it was theoretically possible to be on it for decades. In fact, for the same people to be on it for decades! Heaven forbid...

More recently I was a member of the Devon Records Committee. In the next post I shall compare and contrast...

PS. I would just like to say thanks for all the comments on the last post. To be honest that came as a surprise, and I am grateful when something I write is enhanced by a bit of robust, but friendly discussion. Cheers.

The Records Committee. Part 1. The Request for a Description.

Chances are, if you're a birder, you will on occasion have submitted a list of sightings to your County Recorder. However, it may well be that your efforts to make an altruistic contribution to the local fund of avifaunal data met with a response like this:

Dear Mr Archer,
Many thanks for your 2015 Ambridge records, which are of particular value from such underwatched farmland. I note that on Oct 26 you saw a Lapland Bunting at Brookfield Farm. This species is one of those on the Borsetshire rarities list, for which a written description is required. Therefore I have attached a rarity description form and would be grateful if you could fill it out and return it to me at your earliest convenience.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
Timothy Decent-Chap (County Recorder)

Ah, the request for a description! The wording so polite, the grateful acknowledgement of your efforts so disarming. Naturally you complied immediately, filled out the description form and sent it in with sentiments only of willing cooperation. Or did you?

It is true to say that to some birders correspondence such as the above would be like the proverbial red rag. In fact they would fail to see the actual words, but only the imaginary subtext:

Dear Mr Stringer,
Lapland Bunting? Ha ha! Yeah, right... Go on, give us a laugh and fill in the description form so we can pass it round the Borsetshire Records Committee and make fun of your rubish speeling. Before REJECTING IT!!
No thanks at all.
Unkind gestures,
Timothy Pedant-Nazi (County Bird Police)

So, which scenario do you identify with? Your answer likely depends at least in part upon your view of the whole records committee institution. You might feel that although imperfect it is a valid, indeed necessary arrangement, and gives a measure of integrity to local and national bird records. On the other hand you might feel that records committees are nothing more than writhing pits of prejudice and favouritism, populated only by oily, sneering buddy-buddies.

And how might you have come to adopt your particular view? Probably through your dealings with such bodies, and the positive or negative experiences gained thereby.

Scattered throughout the land there must be dozens of records committees presiding over their respective fiefdoms and sitting in judgement on our rarity descriptions. There are many questions we might ask. For example:

• What gives anyone the right to such authority?
• What motivates a person to assume such a responsibilty?
• Where do they learn how to fulfil it properly?
• Why was my record rejected?

These are tricky questions. Except the last one of course. Your record wasn't rejected, it was 'not proven'.

I thought it might be interesting to explore the world of records committees a little bit. And amusing possibly. I am slightly qualified to do so, having submitted several rarity descriptions over the years, both at county and national level. Oh, and I have been on the other side of the fence also. Twice. But I'll save that for Part 2...

Forty Years

Last Wednesday I went pike fishing with my son, Rob. I think this was the second time in about 15 years that the nation's pike have been troubled by my attentions. I doubt they worried too much though - I am no expert in their pursuit. In a few hours we covered about a mile or so of water, thrashing it to a foam with plugs, spinners and twitched sprats. Just one fish was daft enough to fall for this unsubtle approach. Thankfully it fell to me...

14lb 8oz of freshwater shark, with a liking for sprats

This venture comprised the first step in our Exeter Canal campaign. Next week we're planning another go, on a different stretch. Eventually we'll settle on somewhere and give it a protracted effort with assorted deadbaits, and see what happens.

By the way, if you're a birder reading this, please excuse the slightly arcane terminology. I realise that plugs, spinners, twitched sprats and deadbaits have no place in the birder's lexicon. In case the context didn't give it away, they're just things you chuck in the water to tempt pike to come and join you on the bank.

Pike have serious teeth and are truly impressive creatures. As we watched the fish swim majestically away it was difficult to appreciate that this fearsome predator is actually quite vulnerable to careless handling and needs treating very gently on the bank. In my youth it is probably fair to say that the majority of coarse anglers viewed pike with contempt and it was not unusual to come across the occasional dead one, callously killed by some ignorant idiot. I'm glad to say I never felt anything but respect for pike, and though I didn't often target them specifically I was always up for an opportunist dabble if one appeared in my roach swim, say. Like this fella...

It's the summer of '76 and the earliest photo I can find of me with a pike. The fact that it was taken 40 years ago is very sobering. A lot has happened in that time. On a personal level, my specs have gone from cool and optional to quite the opposite; my hat, from silly to...er...to red.

And what about the bigger picture? Well, on a normal workday I will often listen to Radio 4 as I toil away, so I was mighty glad to be fishing last Wednesday because Radio 4 would have been wall-to-wall US presidential election that day. Trump, Clinton, up-to-the-minute news and analysis...I'd have been bored rigid. In the summer of 1976 Gerald Ford was the incumbent. Ford had fallen into the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned following the 1974 Watergate scandal (which is, incidentally, younger readers, where we get all our 'xxxxx-gate' event-of-infamy terms from) but lost it to Jimmy Carter in the November '76 election. After Carter the US populace decided they would like a retired Hollywood actor to lead the free world for eight years...

I think I caught a few pike during that period also.

Why Stringing is to be Avoided

Veteran NQS readers might recall the following strange episode...

On Thursday, 11 November 2010 I experienced a rare twitching urge and headed to Turf Lock (adjacent to Exminster Marshes) to see the American Robin that had been found the previous afternoon. Jammily I got quite a decent photo.

1W American Robin at Turf Lock, 11 November 2010

All very nice.

Shortly afterwards I stumbled upon another blogger's account of his own twitch to see this bird. He too was thrilled to have got photos, and showed two of them to his readers. Unfortunately one of 'his' photos was actually mine (reversed, to show the bird facing left) and the other was of a completely different individual (an adult!) and likewise lifted off the internet.

Of course I had heard of various birding frauds perpetrated over the years, but this was the first I could recall being personally affected by. At the time I was pretty annoyed, but to be honest that feeling was quickly overtaken by bafflement. Why would anyone bother doing it? What was wrong with them? Soon I just found it all rather sad.

To be honest I'd almost forgotten about it, but recently it came to mind again in a different context.

Stringing.

Of course, passing off someone else's photo as evidence of something you have seen isn't stringing. No, it's just plain lying; it's fraud. But I can easily imagine it's the kind of dark place the stringer is in danger of ending up if he isn't careful, actually committing this kind of fraud in order to back up a stringy shout. Maybe after years of patient tolerance, someone has finally challenged yet another of his dodgy records, and in a desperate attempt to save face....

And once you do that - and are caught - any shred of integrity you might ever have had as a birder is gone. Who wants that? No one. So how can we make very sure that we never, ever end up in the Land of Pariahs?

Okay, let's start at the beginning.

What is stringing? Well, it's easier to describe what a stringer is: a birder who repeatedly claims dubious sightings. Dubious species or dubious counts, often flyovers, or 'passing through' in some way, and characteristically NEVER seen or witnessed by any other birder.

How, or why, does it happen? Well, I can only guess. There are probably various reasons, but a logical one might be this...

I suppose we generally identify birds by weighing probabilities, perhaps subconsciously for the most part. A Robin perched on a garden fork at 10ft for half a minute will be easy - the probability that it's actually a Robin is clearly 100%. But what about a Starling zipping past as a silhouette at 50 yds, seen for just a second or two? Well, that might be just 10% or so, due to the potential number of other species it might have been, like Waxwing for example. But as a birder we are totally safe calling it a Starling, and even if it wasn't one, there is no danger of us ever being labelled a stringer in this scenario. But what if we did call it a Waxwing? If we were in North Norfolk in the late autumn of a true 'Waxwing Year' we would easily get away with it, but in South Devon in July we'd be laughed out of town. And tucked away in that last sentence lies the reason stringers wind up with the label, I think. Because between the extremes of those two examples there is a wide spectrum of relative probability, and I wonder if some birders are simply bad at weighing that probabilty in a way that brings them to a reasonable conclusion. Perhaps they are incorrectly calibrated in some way, their needle already set way off into the 'optimistic' quadrant before they even start? I don't know, I'm guessing really, and trying not to be too uncharitable.

I'm kind of hoping that a birder might be able to recognise in himself the insidious rot that is the tendency to string, and do something about it before it's too late. Asking oneself a few searching questions might help.

• Is caution your watchword when it comes to ID?
• Are you acutely aware of the relative scarcity of species in the area where you bird?
• Are nearly all your decent birds single-observer jobs?
• Have you noticed that your sightings are in a different league (a much higher one!) than everyone else?
• Do you find that other birders no longer bother going to look for goodies you tell them you've seen?
• Etc...

Whatever the case, winding up having no one believe any of your records unless they've seen them with their own eyes is a sorry state of affairs. Please avoid.

A First Love Rekindled

When your children are young I guess it's quite normal to expose them to your own hobbies and pastimes in the hope that they might share your interest. Both my sons went through this process. Birding-wise, I'm afraid too much twitching shrivelled any nascent enthusiasm there might ever have been. It is difficult to convince a child exactly why it was worth standing around in the freezing cold and wet to see the little brown thing. Angling, though, was another matter. My eldest, Rob, loved it...

Rob in 1995, aged 12, with a hefty perch from Startops Reservoir, Tring

Rob is still mad keen today, and his enthusiasm very infectious. His current circumstances find him working right here in Bridport, so I'm not surprised that he's rekindled my passion for an old flame and got me involved in planning a little fishing 'campaign' with him.

Decent coarse fishing venues near Bridport are non-existent; there are a few commercial day-ticket ponds and little else. You have go east to the Stour and Avon valleys to find the good stuff. Or, in the opposite direction, there is the Exeter Canal...

If the word 'canal' conjures images of picturesque and intimate little waterways dotted with moored narrowboats, think again. This is the Exeter Ship Canal; it is mostly rather large and deep for a canal. About six miles long, it runs from the city centre to Turf Lock*. The major attractions from an angler's perspective are twofold: 1) it is relatively underfished, and 2) it contains some very big carp and pike, or, more specifically, some very big unknown carp and pike. This latter point is so important - to fish such a water adds that crucial element of mystery. Mystery is part of what I loved about fishing as a kid, the notion that your next bite might come from some huge, unanticipated Leviathan. If you search the internet for clues as to what the Exeter Canal has produced in recent years you find scant information. This suggests to me that those who fish there do not particularly publicise their captures. Good. I know the place has serious big-fish history though, with pike to over 30lb and carp to 43lb 2oz, and that's good enough for me!

So in recent weeks we have walked the bank a couple of times in preliminary exploration. On Wednesday afternoon we covered about two miles from Turf Lock, up to just beyond the Topsham Ferry. Overlooking the RSPB reserve of Exminster Marshes this is a very scenic stretch, which is a big plus. Another big plus: not a single angler.

A weedcutter in action. The canal is very weedy right now, which all adds to the challenge of fishing it.

Alongside Exminster Marshes

The River Exe runs parallel to the canal. That's Topsham over there. Obviously.

This was as far as we walked. The elevated M5 in the distance, perhaps half a mile away.

I don't think we're going to fish it properly until January, but I do foresee one or two investigative efforts for pike before then, armed with some plugs, spinners and a bag of sprats maybe. Normally I would say "Watch this space" but I'm wondering just how much I ought to publicise any success we might have. After all, anyone can google 'exeter canal carp pike' and I wouldn't want inadvertantly to give away all our hotspots. Ha! What am I saying? Before I go all Secret Squirrel I should remember that I am expert at Blanking for England, and will probably catch nothing. In which case expect to read all about it!

* If you twitched the Devon American Robin then you've been to Turf Lock.

Suffering

Suffering is frequently an integral part of a hobby. Maybe not all hobbies, but certainly the ones that I've been drawn to over the years. Why is that? And why am I drawn to such pursuits? Take fishing, for example. I can recall many long, sweaty walks with a ton of gear; uncomfortable wet nights beneath inadequate shelter; bitterly freezing weather that numbed fingers and toes... Couple that lot with innumerable days when the fish refused to bite ('blanks') and the non-angler is bound to wonder why anyone would bother. As any fisherman will tell you, it's because of the rewards. Rewards which are all the sweeter for a bit of suffering.

Birding too. Have you ever walked out to Blakeney Point? Approximately one hundred miles of shingly slog. However, it's one thing to walk out there for a bit of on-spec birding, and quite another to twitch a bird at the very end. In August 1983 I did just that, arriving at Cley coastguards well before first light and then rushing out to the very end of the point as rapidly as possible to see a Royal Tern. None of us knew if the bird was going to be there, but that made no difference to the sense of urgency, and covering such a vast acreage of shingle at speed is utterly, utterly knackering. But the bird was there! Who cared that their legs felt like jelly or that they could hardly see through optics steamed up by sweaty brows? No one! All the suffering was worth it because of the reward.

Of course, the bird was actually a Lesser Crested Tern. And there was also the small matter of the walk back, but...

That particular twitch was a midweek affair, and the following weekend I did it all again so that Mrs NQS could see the bird too. At the time we had a 10-month-old baby to consider. No worries, I would simply carry him in our state-of-the-art Mothercare baby-backpack-thing. I have no idea how much Rob weighed at the time but, let me tell you, it quickly felt like I was carrying an ever-growing lump of concrete on piano-wire straps. Agony doesn't come close. By the time we got to the point I couldn't get the thing off quick enough. Predictably, the bird never showed. And then there was the walk back...

I swear, my shouder blades still carry the notches carved that day.

What about cycling? Well, cycling is all about suffering. For example, google 'pain cave'. Just about every time I go out on the bike there will be a degree of suffering; a ride doesn't seem complete without it. An easy way to suffer is to go uphill, and a steep upward gradient is virtually guaranteed to achieve the desired effect. Here is one of my favourites:

Strava tells me I've been up this hill 52 times. Let me describe it. The slope is quite steep to begin with, and soon ramps up to a vicious 18%, as marked in the screenshot above. This kind of gradient is impossible to cycle up 'easily'; here we have guaranteed pain. Muscles will be demanding oxygen that the blood is struggling to supply, so heart rate and breathing rate increase quickly in a vain effort to compensate. Your quads are rapidly accumulating lactic acid almost to the point of seizure. Then, just as your poor little legs are screaming for some relief...please!..they get it. Not much though. Just enough to recover suffiently to keep going. Oh, and is that the summit ahead, just after that next increase in gradient? No, it isn't. And in fact there is another false summit to negotiate before a genuine levelling off, and then a final steady rise to the trig point which marks the actual top. And that's it, done. One and three-quarter miles of heady joy.

I love Eggardon Hill. Why? Well, for the rewards, obviously. The satisfaction of overcoming the physical challenge, and, if I've been in the mood to really go for it, perhaps the pleasure of a decent time - for my age group, my best effort puts me third out of 77. So, I suppose there is a kind of triumph involved here. Or madness. Who knows? Anyway, in addition there is one other priceless reward...

An absolutely superb view!