Diary notes: Pre-blog years (1975-2012)

Diary notes: Pre-blog years (1975-2012): 

by Owen Mitchell

This paper is a follow-on from the earlier 'History of the Blog' and 'Birding at Selsey Bill - a Personal Review' which can easily be found by clicking the relevant links on the title bar, so this current paper effectively completes a bit of a trilogy.  As will be seen, the 'Personal Review' in particular already includes several examples of pages from my birding diaries. I have religiously kept detailed Birding Diaries/Yearbooks since I started birding way back in 1973. My first notebook from that year, followed by the 1974 edition, both sadly went astray after a house move, but I have kept my annual diaries since the year 1975 until the present (2024), this year marking my 50^th consecutive year of these birding compilations. 

Times change however, and these days I find myself spending increasing amounts of time in front of my computer, with some duplication involved in running both a diary and birding blog(s) and I've now reached the point where maintaining a written diary has now become a bit of a chore. I’m now well into my seventies and I've been giving things a lot of consideration, finally coming to some decisions. So, to cut a long story short, the time has come for me to bow to the inevitable and embrace digital recording more fully and I’ve already adopted some changes with the increased use of Bird Track, Bird Guides and other formats. I've therefore decided that 2024 will see my last diary in this format, completing fifty years of filling my bookshelves. Truly the end of an era.

The end of an era - 50 years of birding diaries. Note the various notebook styles until the loose leaf folder covers were adopted.

I’m still reasonably fit and active for my age at the present time, but I don’t take that for granted. Inevitably I am slowing down a bit, with health issues playing their part and me also doing less driving, resulting in fewer trips being made to the Peninsula. I've previously spent a huge amount of time at the Bill and on the journeys back and forth from home, but now feel the need to just step back a bit. I'm really pleased to see there has also been a welcome influx of fresh faces and younger blood on the Peninsula birding scene of late, so it's timely for them to carry the baton forward as I ease back. That doesn't mean I've lost interest or have given up going there, just that I make fewer visits now as suits my lifestyle best.

Well, if you've read this far, you might now be thinking 'OK, no more diary, so what?'.... which brings me to the point. Amongst these dusty diary pages there is a wealth of information on how bird numbers and populations have varied over time....flocks of Tree Sparrows, roosts of Short-eared Owls, numbers of Spotted Flycatchers, resident Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers and so on. Such details will be largely unappreciated to newer observers on the Peninsula. When I started the Selsey Blog in 2013 I could not imagine that it would turn out the way it has, and I am eternally grateful for the effort and assistance provided by Andy House along the way, for he has been the catalyst that made it all work.

Since the inception of the blog, there has been a great deal of data gathered, stored and documented in respect of the Peninsula's birds from 2013 to the present time. Prior to that however, from 2012 right back to 1975, this was not really the case. Certainly there are records for that period in the Sussex Bird Reports, published annually by the Sussex Ornithological Society (SOS) but that doesn't often capture the 'flavour' of the day. As small examples, my first diary-recorded visit to the Peninsula was on 6th Feb 1975, with Bernie Forbes, when we walked around the entire harbour and back (!), seeing amongst other things two Scaup and a roost of eight Short-eared Owls. And then on 27th October 1979 at the Bill, with Dick Senior and Mick Hay, we came across a Lapland Bunting, with back-up birds including a Little Auk, five Black Redstarts, three Tree Sparrows and five Redpoll. I could even tell you what the weather was like that day.

So, I wondered if it would be of interest to add some selected sightings reports from this period, starting from year 1975 and slowly moving up to 2012. I don't envisage a whole mass of data, but perhaps a couple of pages or so of interest from the relevant year, thus filling a data gap to some degree. This would be on an occasional basis, with updates as time and commitments allow. Have a read then of what follows - and see what birding patterns may or may not have changed....plus the odd scarcity. And do bear in mind I was new to birding in the 1970's....! Here goes:

1975:

This 'Isabelline' Shrike is still the only one recorded on the Peninsula thus far, so is still tickable for our Peninsula list purposes at present, although recent taxonomic changes have since split this form to two species. A fine rarity for a fairly new birder....I remember being so excited!

Cracking views of a Dotterel but some nice other common migrants too.