A huge thank you to everyone who has supported the Epiphany Birdwatch for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)! I am moved and so grateful for your generosity. I have completed the Birdwatch  and am delighted to be able to share with you these words from Aimee Shalan, the CEO of MAP:

‘Sending all the best and heartfelt thanks to you all for supporting Philip’s Epiphany Birdwatch for  Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the globe, we are witnessing devastating impacts upon the Palestinian communities we serve. I continue to be so moved that, despite everything our supporters are going through here in the UK, they continue to stand with Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees. The funds raised today will help MAP to continue delivering our emergency COVID-19 response, ensuring Palestinian health workers have the vital equipment and medical supplies they need to support infection control efforts and treat patients. It is individuals like you who give me hope that, the other side of this global crisis, we can build a world of health, dignity and justice for all.’

You can continue to support MAP via my Just Giving
Page:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Philip-Crispin

Here is the Epiphany Birdwatch for MAP report.

I went to Farlington Marshes, my local nature reserve just off Portsea Island, on Friday 8^th January at lunch time and under a bright sky.  

A crew of some twenty bearded tits, accompanied by a lone reed bunting, were foraging in reeds. The males have striking black whiskers as splendid as those adorning the chops of Emperor Franz Josef. When they flew from one from reed-head to another, the stems gave way like the giant bamboos in the balletic martial arts sequence in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

A marsh harrier flew lazily over distant reedbeds, with the odd zig-zag change of direction, before ascending up and away. Three dabchicks dived and consorted in nearby shallows, near resting mallards. Teals
piped gently to each other in a rivulet through mud flats. Redshanks bobbed and ran over these.

Dark-fronted brent geese were ubiquitous. Some swam on the ponds and watery expanses. More grazed, often in family groups, with generally two youngsters flanked by their parents, one of whom was generally more upright, keeping an observant weather eye. Many of these would have flown down from Arctic Siberia to these crucial over-wintering grounds.

Canada geese were also numerous, and I was amused to see an odd couple of a barnacle goose and its faithful companion, a ‘farmyard white’ (like a white greylag) in among them. (When the future Pope Pius II was on an embassy to Scotland in the fifteenth century, he wrote down what is believed to be the first account of the belief in Scotland that barnacle geese emerged fully formed from goose barnacles. This was at a time before winged migration was known about.)

Three black-tailed godwit flew by overhead. The precise etymology of ‘godwit’ is unknown but now there seems to be a consensus that the name derives from the Anglo-Saxon god wiht: ‘good creature’. Numerous references throughout earlier centuries attest that the bird was good to eat with Sir Thomas Browne writing in the seventeenth century that they were accounted ‘the daintiest dish in England’.

Curlew and lapwing could be found among the grazing geese, and across the marshes. Both these birds have onomatopoeic names. ‘Courlee!’ is the bubbling cry of the former. ‘Peewee!’ the plaintive call of the latter – hence its alternative name of peewit (still a third monicker is green plover). It was lovely to hear both in fine voice and to see decent numbers. Populations of both are in freefall, alas, due to the modern methods of agribusiness, inimical to nature. I remember once spying a lapwing parent dragging its wing along the ground on Hounslow Heath. I expected to see a fox or other predator but no, a muntjac deer (admittedly dog-like) materialised, to take a drink from a pool. Lapwings are ground-nesters and it is a joy to see their stripy chicks who are able to camouflage themselves so well against the ground.

Sweet, speckled meadow pipits foraged among cow pats. I see their cousins, rock pipits, on my strolls along Southsea beach, most regularly by the Castle, where they can often be found near to plump purple sandpipers who have migrated here from the Arctic Circle. The orange-billed oystercatcher also haunts the castle foreshore; I saw several of these large, pied waders at Farlington and heard their shrill cries.

Robins lisped watery songs from bushes, a stonechat flitted from a fence, and crows and gulls, black-headed and herring, were a constant presence. A heron rested among the reeds, raising its sinuous neck skyward when the harrier flew near. A couple of little egrets stalked the watercourses, their black legs terminating in bright yellow claws.

Cohorts of dunlin, small grey and white waders, fed busily in the estuarine ooze. The last time I was here, I saw a great flock wheel and twist over the waters like an airborne shoal, their white underparts flashing in the sunlight. Today they remained wedded to the mud. It was the geese who swept the sky at a certain moment, rising in yapping, panicky clouds.

A large flock of whistling wigeon grazed over a section of the marshes, the drakes sporting a creamy buff stripe up the middle of their head. Shovelers patrolled shallow marshwaters, a group of pintails negotiated the straits of Langstone Harbour, and shelduck were ‘showing nicely’ in several locations.

A pair of mute swans, a conventicle of coots (they make me think of puritan ministers with their all-black plumage), some skittish moorhen, and a pair of blue tits were the other birds sighted.

A beautiful walk and Epiphany Birdwatch for MAP. Yours in deep gratitude and solidarity.

Philip

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

I’ve long wanted to do something to help an excellent charity I support: Medical Aid for Palestinians. You don’t need me to rehearse the suffering of the Palestinian people. It has struck me forcibly during the past months of lockdown that our privations pale into insignificance compared to those in perpetual lockdown in Gaza or languishing in the West Bank.

While humanity’s movements have been largely curtailed during the Covid crisis, nature has carried on – and what a blessing this has been. My heart lit up when a tiny chiff chaff visited my garden back in March and now the Brent geese are back, yapping to each other in companionable grazing flocks. Migrant birds are heedless of human borders and barriers – Palestine’s own national bird the Palestine Sunbird lives right across the Middle East – but of course birds too are vulnerable to human predation and mindless killing.

So, thinking of birds’ incredible freedom and capacity to voyage across the globe, and the joy they give, and mindful of the Palestinians’ suffering both within and without their territories (millions are in refugee camps across the Middle East), I thought I would go on an Epiphany Birdwatch in the New Year some time around the feast of the Epiphany, in the hope of a renewal of peace and justice and enlightenment, and to show my solidarity and support for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). I heartily recommend this charity to you and if you fancy it you can make a direct donation to the charity via my Just Giving Page:

 https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Philip-Crispin

I will gladly supply a report of the outing once it is completed.

Wishing you a Joyful Christmas and a Happy, Peaceful New Year.  

Philip

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.