I had never heard of Ringing Permits until I was well into my teens. I didn’t know that there were enthusiasts who spent a great deal of time putting tags or rings on birds for a variety of reasons and even when the reasons were explained to me at a later stage I couldn’t really work up much enthusiasm for the idea. On the other hand my ornithologicaly obsessed brother demonstrated a great deal of enthusiasm. For some time, and for the life of me I cannot now remember when the Ringing Permit preoccupation began, he was most anxious to become a member of the British Trust for Ornithology and be granted the required permission to put plastic identification tags onto the legs of birds. His uninformed and largely disinterested family couldn’t for the life of them see the attraction although as hobbies go it was relatively harmless and kept him nicely away from diversions that might well prove more damaging and possibly even shameful for the rest of us. Unhappily the activities that were to harm his reputation were already sitting in the future mapped out for him so perhaps no matter what hobbies were allowed there was no real chance of changing that.
The only problem that seemed to emerge was, our mother said, as plain as the nose on your face and it was clearly down to his face not fitting. She said this once she learned that if you wanted to be welcomed into the particular fraternity that so attracted him it paid to be just a bit posh if you could manage it. No-one in their right mind would have described any member of our family as remotely posh so you could say a distinct disadvantage existed from the very start and it was never going to be easy. On the other hand what we lacked in poshness we perhaps made up for in determination.
The ringing scheme in Britain had started in 1909 and was really a combination of schemes, one instigated by a certain Harry Forbes Witherby and the other by Arthur Landsborough Thomson. A third scheme launched by Country Life Magazine also began around this time but WW1 intervened and by the 1930s all these systems had morphed onto one – the British Trust for Ornithology known by those familiar with it as simply the BTO.
In its earliest years it seems that the BTO pioneers simply set out to find answers to some of the most basic questions of the time. Where did those birds arriving in summer actually spend the winter? Where did the winter visitors spend the summer? Where did they breed? Back in the earliest days of these studies, even the migration routes were only realised from observations of groups preparing for journeys in Spring and Autumn and at one time there was even a suggestion that swallows spent their winters at the bottom of ponds. Old Nan for one firmly believed that. From her point of view it seemed a likely alternative to the far-fetched idea that they would embark upon a journey of thousands of miles. Apparently the first recovery of a ringed swallow came in December 1912 as far away as South Africa. This caused astonishment to Harry Witherby reporting in British Birds, Volume 6 who noted that it seemed to him quite extraordinary that a bird that bred in the far west of Europe should have somehow reached the South-East of Africa. Information gathering regarding swallows and where they spent their winters henceforth became a trendy pastime that attracted the middle classes and those emulating them.
Bernard was certainly captivated by these awe inspiring avian journeys and became ever more determined to join the ranks of those considered trustworthy and responsible enough to document them for the purposes of posterity via the possession of a Ringing Permit. But achieving that goal took much longer than he could have possibly anticipated on account of his face not fitting. He thought it might be to do with the fact that the efficient funding of the organisation relied upon donations from prominent citizens in various areas and as he grew older he was fearful that those in and around the Thames Estuary might well be too familiar with his unhappy history as a Gravesend butcher’s assistant and the rapid termination of that employment. Securing an early record for what was then termed Robbery With Violence did little to enhance anyone’s reputation and was an abomination as far as many of the Good and the Great of Gravesend were concerned. It was a definite problem that at that particular time a cluster of them were avid bird enthusiasts.
Old Nan did not endear herself to any of us back then by pointing out that being somewhat Light Fingered in general did not help matters when it came to creating a good impression with Toffs. As she was undoubtedly Light Fingered herself this observation was never likely to be received well and my mother steadfastly insisted that it was more to do with his face not fitting than anything else and what’s more you could never really tell in advance how your face was likely to be received. Luckily as time went on things changed and bird ringing became less the province of the middle classes and eventually presented in many guises from individuals in urban areas to large groups over a wide geographic area. It was no longer quite as necessary to make absolutely certain that you had a spotless reputation. Ages eventually ranged from under ten to over eighty and of course in due course the much coveted Permit was granted despite the fact that the earlier transgressions did not simply disappear and the reported habit of light fingered-ness definitely remained.
Bernard saturated himself in more and more stories of awe inspiring migrations and even as recently as 2015 told me in some excitement that a Sand Martin ringed at a Hampshire colony was re-captured by the very same ringer the next winter in Morroco! These remarkable recoveries graphically illustrated impressive and regular journeys that for the truly addicted are hard to overlook although for the uninitiated sometimes the detail is difficult to truly appreciate. I still struggle to understand why it was so unpredictable that an Arctic Tern should fly into a Japanese whaler off Antarctic pack ice thus finding notoriety as the only BTO ringed bird to be found at a Southern latitude higher than the Northern latitude at which it was ringed. Why should it not do so if it so chose?
I learned these facts bit by bit over time whether I wanted to or not because every conversation with my brother over at least two decades was peppered with them. I was told that as the ringing scheme itself grew in size and in age then so did the recorded ages of the focus of its very existence. Apparently very few wild birds reach anything like their potential age simply because too many factors work against them. They deal with not only accidents and predators but weather, disease, starvation and old fashioned bad luck. This came as no surprise to Aunt Mag and Old Nan also privy to this particular monologue. It was their opinion that birds were a bit like the rest of us because we could all do with a bit more good luck. That aside, some of the longevities seemed quite staggering. A Manx Shearwater had apparently recorded an age of 51 years, a Razorbill 42 years, an Oystercatcher 40 years and a Pink-footed Goose 39 years. These records seemed even more remarkable when the vast distances covered in their lifetimes were considered. The Manx Shearwater from Wales would have spent all of 51 winters off the coast of Argentina thus covering 1.5 million kilometres just travelling to and fro.
Although Bernard quickly realised that the ringing process was carried out by those with skill who had the utmost consideration for the welfare of their feathered friends he quickly became a vocal opponent of the most frequently used method, the mist net. These were erected between poles and designed to catch birds in flight. It was apparent that they could only be removed safely by the most experienced ringers. The problem seemed to be that from time to time the procedure resulted in the death of many birds and he was thus far more attracted to the idea of ringing chicks in the nest and justified this standpoint by saying that at least the precise age and origins was then known.
In spite of the fact that his views did not always win him friends he served an elongated apprenticeship under the close supervision of others and eventually learned the essential abilities that involved the safe and efficient catching and handling of birds, the identification, ageing, measuring and record keeping. The only setback seemed to be that on each occasion that his permit needed to be renewed there was invariably rather more delay in the process than he felt was usual or necessary. Our mother shook her head knowingly on every occasion this happened, bent over the current piece of knitting she was involved in and said she had told him over and over again it was on account of his particular face and that was a fact no matter how reliably he turned up at 5 am on the North Kent Marshes.
It was certainly another fact that Bernard had always been drawn to the Northfleet and Gravesend marshland and throughout his ringing period had diligently progressed through the study of a variety of Estuary migrants together with tits and finches on bitter cold winter mornings. During the breeding season of warblers he was reliably on site at least thirty minutes before those whose faces had always fitted. His conscientious attentiveness eventually paid off and when he suggested that he was more than anxious to make the leap to owl chicks in nest boxes and hawks of every persuasion after some discussion he was allowed to do so. He began to think that perhaps in time he would even have the good fortune to tag a Golden Eagle.
I was definitely aware of his ambition regarding the Golden Eagle. I knew that from the time he first became aware of its existence he had nursed a desire to become more acquainted with it. I fully understood that it was the Golden Eagle that drew him so frequently to the North of Scotland and that eventually became the prime reason for him making his home there in the last ten years of his life. His wife on the other hand, uprooted from the comfort of the Kentish village surrounded by friends and family, took longer to come to terms with it and called it an Obsession. It was clear that pleasing everyone was impossible.
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