on monday 12th april 2011 4 bee-eaters were found in todmorden and roosted for the night in a garden. this is what the finder had to say......................
''I knew of no way of alerting local birder-conservationists without activating the twitcher grapevine. When I explained the reasons for my decision not to contact you folk, Andrew saw my point.
But there was also a wider point that I perhaps didn't make clearly enough. Over and above wanting to avoid disturbance to a 'shy' and 'wary' species of bird whilst roosting, wanting to increase the chances of them staying around, and potential nuisance to my near neighbours in whose gardens the tree(s) happened to be, I also wanted to keep twitchers away because, in these days of climate change, I regard their activities as verging on the anti-social.
Conversations with a few friends locally confirm that I'm far from alone in this view. They have mostly said that they'd have responded in the same way that I did. The reality is, therefore, that the Bee-eaters might still be in the Valley, being watched by people who haven't told you about them because you are, sadly but inevitably, associated with twitchers.
If you don't make it clear that people can contact you without exposing themselves to an avalanche of car-borne individuals who only want to add the birds to their lists, then these kinds of situations are only likely to become more common.
I'm not sure how practicable it would be, but I'd like to see bird clubs dissociate themselves from twitchers. As well as the question of climate change ( and car fumes being implicated in the massive loss of insect life ), these people are still ( if a recent BBC4 film was representative ) mainly socially inept sexist men, abandoning spouses and children to gratify an obsession. They bring birdwatching/birding into disprepute, and treat sentient beings, birds, as commodities, to be collected. In the process they debase the language of birdwatching, so we end up with 'ticks', 'megas'. 'getting' birds, and evven 'not needing' birds already listed!
If only for conservation reasons, it's arguably now become socially responsible to withdraw co-operation from this kind of activity. So perhaps there's an opportunity for Halifax birders to take a lead, - and do yourselves some good in the process.
If I find some time (!!) I may write this up in an article, but will in any case be interested to see what you think. The reality is that quite a lot of us out here, feel the way I do on this.
That said, I hope you get the chance to see the Bee-eaters. They're magnificent.
With all best wishes
Brian.
( p.s by all means circulate this as apropriate ).''
to be honest i think the record is bollocks and made up to make a point,
firstly it would be the first april record for yorkshire,though 2 the next day at spurn does seem to add some credence to the record.
secondly in this modern world we live in and despite being in someones garden they were not photographed by any of the 3+ people that saw them
and lastly the comment in the e-mail seems mocking........
''That said, I hope you get the chance to see the Bee-eaters. They're magnificent.''
