50 Years of Non-stop Birding, 1972 to 1985

I meant to do my mid-century obituary-while-not-dead-yet last year when I turned 50 in September but I wasn't bored enough. However now we are in the depths of winter and as cabin fever bites hard it's time for more drivel on this blog. So here's the first part of my life story, one of the 8000 million insignificant human stories now playing out on this tiny lost planet floating around the eternal universe.

So there are few places worst in the universe to be born into than a South London council estate in the 1970s. Roundshaw Council Estate was so bad that they literally blew the whole thing up and started again. Here's my mate Wayne's flat getting blown up. 

   

Roundshaw was a brutalist style socialist project of the 1970s inspired from the Communist tenement blocks of Eastern Europe. My mum was a 'societal refugee' from Malta  (her fiance died when he was 17 so she was on the scrap heap by not being married by 16) and my dad was a postman (who pulled my mum in the Cats Whiskers night club in Streatham with pick up lines she couldn't understand because she couldn't speak a word of English). They didn't particularly  fall in love but were equally hopeless and being driven by cultural pressures they got married. By the time my mum understood what my dad was saying and realised what a penniless cockney wide boy he was it was all too late. Like a lot of people in poverty they thought it was a good idea to bring six children into the hell they were in and ended up in council housing and on benefits.   

I was born with the umbilical chord wrapped around my neck, seemingly trying to hang myself before it all started but I didn't succeed. My childhood was on a slab of concrete (called a deck). The commie idea behind the deck was the shared space at the front of the flats where all the kids could play. As it was a 'floating' slab of concrete there were no cars to worry about. 

The deck, where I grew up. 

This was such a natureless hell that I don't even remember seeing a Feral Pigeon or House Sparrow there. 

Anyway at age seven (1978) Margaret Thatcher had started her mission to rid the UK of socialists and commies so she encouraged 'council scum' to buy their own homes. On a below minimum wage my parents were able to get a mortgage and buy a 4 bedroom house (eight of us plus my nan later had to share rooms). Granted the house we bought was next to a sewage farm and we were one of the few people in Hackbridge (the crack) that had 'moved up in the world' to get there- most others there had fallen from grace. 

As the only money we had went to pay off the mortgage, we couldn't keep up with the 'flash jacks' (now called Chavs i.e. poor people who spend all their money on consumer shite) so in the late 1970s and early 1980s we couldn't afford the ZX Spectrum, Acorn BBC, Commodore 64 computers , video recorder or even a colour TV. They couldn't even afford to dress me in Farahs and a Y-jumper so I had to go round dressed up in a Jamaican boys clothes (complete with tropical patterned pants and vest) who my mum knew from her church and was two years older than me and was growing out of his clothes. I was basically perpetually bored (despite the oversized dazzling underwear) so we had to be creative to pass the time- which usually meant fighting and torturing my siblings. 

Just before we escaped Roundshaw Council Estate, Fundamental Christian Evangelists from the southern states of North America had launched a 'mission' on the estate to 'save souls'. They were from a cult called the Church of Christ (which featured on the TV a lot during the 1970s for brainwashing). Anyway, they brought the 'good news' to my mum and dad, basically convincing them that they were actually global elites instead of 'council scum', and were chosen by God to build a spiritual empire on Earth (for a small weekly donation and signing up to be a member- a numbers game to keep the preachers funding coming in as part of US Jesus Imperialism). 

So by the time we got to Hackbridge I had two choices, either stay around the entertainment free house with all the bible bashing, hymn singing, american evangelists and cult members or bugger off over the nearby sewage farm with my mates to throw stones at the gypsy horses penises when they got erections. So I chose the latter and we also split our time between trying to hit the balls eye (literally) and stoning the ducks in Beddington Park. We also did a bit of arson (setting fire to Mitcham Common and Beddington Farmlands) and mild vandalism (although my mate Tim went to prison eventually as things used to get out of hand when we went out with him). When at home I used to pass the time by pulling the legs off spiders (I even wrote a song about that here). So I was slowly 'connecting with nature'. Meanwhile my brother used to sell soft drugs and pirated porn at the front door during prayer meetings when my parents were occupied talking to Jesus.  

Anyway it was on one of our Horse ball-eyes missions with Wayne and Chris to the sewage farm that I saw something stranger than anything I'd seen before (and I had seen a lot of weird shit). There was a bloke looking through a telescope over the sludge beds. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was looking for a Lesser Yellowlegs. This was in 1984. I remember thinking WTF is a Lesser @@ing Yellowlegs. Just then the Thames Water van started driving towards us so we had to leg it (as we were trespassing as it was permit only). As we legged it off we did the standard thing and shouted insults at the telescope bloke. 

Shortly after, an ex- Devil worshipper in my parents cult (he'd been converted!) gave me a bird book and a poster of garden birds. I put the poster up on my wall and read the book because I didn't have any other books (apart from the Bible) or any other posters that my mum's religion would permit me to put up. Meanwhile at school we started doing nature studies too. Then my parents bought a caravan in Bognor Regis and we started going to the coast on weekends and visiting Arundel (the free bit outside the WWT reserve). We also visited my mum's island of Malta and I met my cousins and uncles who were bird hunters and had stuffed bird collections which I found fascinating. 

Now on family weekends to Bognor and in between soft vandalism with my mates in the local green spaces (we also built camps along the River Wandle) I started noticing birds from the ex-Devil worshipper's bird book and poster. I started ticking them off in my book and so I went back to the sewage farm on a new mission and started asking more questions to the strange bloke with the telescope, Garry Messenbird, who started showing me what he was looking at through his telescope. I was electrified and soon became obsessed. In 1985 I started my first birding notebook here. So it began.  

Bulgaria Project Winter Work Update

I sometimes hate the winter.  It's a good time to catch up with data entry and report writing etc but I do miss the daily excitement of not knowing what you're going to see today. There tends to be little mystery in the winter, the answer is, for birds, usually exactly the same thing that arrived in November (unless there is a bit of hard weather) and for moths its about one of a small handful of species that fly this time of year. I promised myself years ago to migrate south with the birds to the tropics in the winter and I started doing that but since the boys have arrived it's not so easy.  

Anyway, seasonal affective disorder aside  I have been getting through various bits like the Azores rare bird reports, processing rarity submissions with the PRC,  Ebird data entry and also trying to get more names on the moth species from the Bulgaria project. Now on 100 species of moths and butterfly for the site HERE. The Ebird list is now on 140 HERE. 

The I-Naturalist Bulgaria project HERE

Luckily I get to escape for a bit next week as I have to go to Malta on a business trip. Considering what's happened at the Old Vic with the passing away of Bryan, the Malta project (and all the other investments we started in order to save up for farm/nature project) could now be an inconvenience (aka burden) as we will probably have to move out the Old Vic much sooner. So as usual, I make plans and the universe wipes its arse with them and sends me off somewhere else. One of the main advantages about drifting around this planet for 50 years is, thanks to experience, it comes as little shock as you watch your latest hopes and dreams flushing down the pan. Anyway I trust 'The Process' rather than my own tiny brain to make the best decisions so all good and quite exciting really to wonder where we are going to get washed up next. 

Capitalist Realism

I was reading some stuff on Capitalist Realism today. I guess 50 years old must be a standard epiphany moment for many people who have experimented with alternative systems and socio-environmentalism. You get to 50 and nothing you do is working out the way you hoped; it kind of means its never going to work. I guess for me my main loss of faith is mainly due to just far too many 'betrayals' and lack of support but perhaps more so the realisation that keeping up high energy commitments which add or maintain natural and social capital over long periods of time just cannot compete with value extraction systems and it has nothing to do with 'educating' people or lack of choice (more or less everyone in the Beddington Farmlands project choose supporting value extraction and they were all highly informed of all the details).  It simply requires too much effort to avert value extraction so we are faced with a very frightening realism- capitalist systems will push us all to the brink of extinction and before anything fundamentally changes, we will have to nearly 'touch the sun' first. At some point the energy inputs to attempting to extract value will be higher than the energy inputs to regeneration e.g. if farmland is depleted so much that crops become increasingly more difficult and expensive to grow, it becomes cheaper and easier to use regenerative methods. There are plenty of examples were i.e. fish stocks have become depleted and local industry collapses which has led to quotas and sustainable fishing systems being introduced. 

So this is Capitalist Realism- value extraction, environmental decline and transfer of wealth into smaller and smaller group of elites (those who take the loot from destroying the planet facilitated by everyone who engages in the systems they govern)  is inevitable, disaster is inevitable and if there is any chance of recovery, disaster must come before recovery. 

Indeed there will always be examples that buck the trend of e.g. well managed nature reserves and parallel structures but these exceptions to the rules simply prove the rules and are also held together very weakly by trade offs and compromises (e.g. the way that the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts are mainly funded by blood money i.e. money earnt from the main Capitalist system e.g. Viridor funding these NGOs).  These exceptions are valuable in that they may well inspire recovery after disaster models but ultimately they are more likely to be out competed if ever main stream systems adopted some of their principles (like we have seen with natural capital companies like Foresight, L'Oreal funded Rewilding Estates and millionaire led nature conservation like Knepp etc suddenly exploding onto the scene challenging the NGO model as the ecological emergency intensifies and the first signs of mainstream change hoves into view) .  

In short, things have to get worse before they get better. However that short sentence means immense suffering and immense loss at global scale, possibly, probably, inevitably the greatest period of human suffering in all our history as we push our planetary life support systems to breaking point. At that breaking point there will be (if we project current population growth trajectories) maximum numbers of us living (fighting) to survive. The cracks are already appearing, the writing is on the wall and very few people are treating this emergency like an emergency. I'm not talking about a teenager fantasy held by the likes of Greta Thunberg appealing to those elites to stop this disaster (of course they fucking won't- they are engineers and designers of it, they are loving it all coming together as planned) but I'm talking about cretins like you and me. We can all see it coming but very few people are actually preparing adequately for it. Indeed plenty of people are using the threat of the emergency to gain political power or followings by sowing the seeds of false hope  i.e. capitalising on the threat as their way of surviving it. However if that's not your thing but surviving is then a bit of realism is helpful. 

Capitalist systems will push us all to the brink of extinction and there is nothing that can stop that. Hope is for fools.  That is Capitalist Realism. You are fucked, your kids future is fucked, nature is fucked, everyone is fucked (including the looters eventually and they know that which is why they are trying to stay on top of the collapsing pile, have multiple homes around the world with panic rooms and bunkers and private security forces and hoard as much as possible to last as long as possible) and very soon  we will all be fighting to the death (literally and metaphorically). Here’s the World Economic Forum saying that with a bit more class Here  

There is very little anyone can do about the situation but there is a lot that anyone can do to increase their chances of survival and helping to drive the evolution of the new sustainable systems. The only hope is in the hopelessness of Capitalism . 

Here's a little ditty from Thee Bryans about Capitalist Realism: The bubble will burst

Peter Alfrey/Thee Bryans · The Bubble Will Burst Sample

End of an era at the Old Vic

Sadly Holly's dad, Bryan, passed away unexpectedly over the xmas holiday so it looks like 2023 is going to be the start of a new chapter for us all. Bryan was the greatest of men, an ex-BBC sound engineer and worked on some great projects including being part of the team behind the Top of the Pops dancing girlband Pans People and did work with Monty Python (it is even rumoured the Life of Brian film title was inspired by his name), he created a beautiful place for his family here, ran the whole thing calmly and decisively, was appropriately stubborn (he earnt it), he taught me all about growing food and looking after animals and lived the most active of lives (he was out on the pheasant shoot a week before his sudden departure) and was the best grandad to Jacob and Isaac. He will be greatly missed and we all are a bit lost without him at the moment, particularly as he used to do the electrics for the animal fencing and now the Pony and the Cockerel are running wild around the garden. 

The great escape (above and below)

Latest Portuguese Rarities Committee Report

Thanks to Pedro and Matthias we've recently published the next SPEA report HERE. 

 

Surviving the ecological emergency part 3

We've done the background to this is part 1 HERE  and in part 2 HERE we did Get a stake in the game, Go birding and Build Resilience. In this final part of this sick bed ramble it's time for Connect to a Network/Affinity Group and Defence.

 

4, CONNECT TO A NETWORK

Having your own personal stake can only be optimised if you multiple it's impact by connecting into a network which is moving and growing in the same direction as you. There is an organic club/society out there, i.e. not one under a centralised banner or control like an NGO, the UN or political party etc but just the naturally evolving network of people that are into nature- a galaxy of groups, individuals and organisations. Engaging primarily with the organic network by-passes much of the power struggles, political agendas and inefficiencies of anything centralised and puts the power in the hands of the individual to amplify their personal stake by contributing into supporting and growing that organic network. The whole thing can be rather ego-less and collective, in fact anonymity/insignificance is a feature of contributing to a vast galaxy like network which is ironically very empowering- quietly contributing to building an immensely powerful network and not stressing over popularity contests or having constant applause for every micro-effort you do is liberating and deeply affirming.   

It would be difficult to list the individuals, groups and resources I link into on a daily basis because it is so vast but some of the big resources I network into include the new big data/ big information systems and their apps like Ebird, Birds of the World,  Irecord, I-Naturalist, Birdguides, Lepiforum, ResearchGate, GBIF, Wikipedia, countless blogs, spotify podcasts, websites and social media accounts and I still subscribe to good old fashioned periodicals such as Dutch Birding, Atropos, British Wildlife, British Birds, Ibis and Ardea and because I'm an old bastad I still even buy books and have an extensive birding and natural history library which I pour over regularly. It's an entire universe. 

In addition to all the natural history and science groups out there there is also the nature/environmental friendly business and producer network. How we spend out money has to be the single biggest impact any of us can have on contributing to building the survival network. Each pound spent is a vote for either a nature destroying producer/company or a nature friendly product/company. In terms of democratic power, every transaction made in the global economy is orders of magnitude more important to how we cast our once in every three or four year votes for political 'leaders'. Of course it also not just about how we spend our money but how we earn our money too. Basically it's pretty obvious but the values we support and link into in the world will determine our probability of survival and degrees of success in it.  

The creative global organic natural history community is a beautiful, dazzling and extremely complex community/network with so much mind blowing stuff going on and whole heartedly welcomes contributions, data, papers, photographs, content etc etc at any level ability.  Being part of that is surely anyone's greatest chance of surviving the ecological emergency.  

5. DEFENCE

As everyone knows there is an entirely different network out there- the dark side of nature conservation and the dark green transition. Democracy has a dark side which is why elites always justify their crushing of the masses to keep them down. Indeed look no further than social media to prove the point of the Elites- it is full of toxicity,  gossip, trivia, mob lynching, talentless moron herders and the mass affirmation of low standards. Democracy really can be pure hell. Look no further than Beddington Farmlands to see this hell at a larger scale democratic process- two billionaire cousins through a chain of subsidiaries and shell companies, use the promise of ecological outcomes to exploit an area and destroy it's wildlife, an exploitation supported by hush money from groups like the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts (In the Crane Country project, they have named one of the Cranes Viridor!) while their tracks are covered up by CIEEM Ecologists and Local Authority Ecologist (who also conspire to destroy local nature conservation effort) and the local community are bought off with doggy biscuits (a community fund) and the local birders and naturalists are trained to obey and keep quiet by threats of access denial. There is no better example of the Dark Green World than Beddington Farmlands but unfortunately this 'algorithm' is one going on everywhere that leads to over-development and exploitation. Its almost the standard planning process. 

Look closer and you can see even though this exploitative process is billionaire driven, people at every level of society are helping them do it- even the local bird group is helping these billionaires destroy their own patch. This is how Elites crush the masses- through manipulating them to destroy themselves and their resources. Making them feel part of something important and then eating them for breakfast. It's basically a livestock model of dealing with humans- pat them, feed them up and then eat them.  This network is the destructive network of the planet. Death and Life cycles are just the natural order and these are the algorithms/ systems where things die. These cycles wax and wane and few would disagree we are now at a time of global crisis where destruction/chaos is increasing.   

So how can anyone defend them self from this growing destructive network/process.  You can't stop it (I proved that at the farmlands- too many people are compelled to follow near-obsolete system orders). Knowing it and recognising it is the best defence. Disengaging from it and engaging in the survival network is key. If you want to live- get in the correct lane, get out of the way and let nature takes it course.  Death and destruction eats itself eventually. Our old systems will eventually be replaced with AI and global computer management systems, democracy will be digitised and growth indicators will become more complex. The giant systems of our time will die like the dinosaurs- cataclysmically and suddenly. Eventually chaos will lead to a new alignment/a new order.  As an old order dies and a new one forms it is possible to see that new order/network forming today in embryonic form. Being part of that, staking out your own ground, building resilience, connecting into the network and going birding seems like not a bad idea as the best way of defending yourself and nature, getting through the evolutionary bottleneck and surviving the ecological emergency.   

Surviving the ecological emergency part 2

So here's part 2 of my sick bed ramble. Part 1 HERE. Basically I have no idea how anyone else is supposed to navigate through the self interest-infested waters of the climate and ecological emergency and the competing and conflicting narratives attempting to draw people into their control for better or worse. Like everything in this universe every poor wretched soul has to work out their own unique solution to thriving in the cosmic shit fest. The only advice I have to anyone is make sure you're full of your own bullshit and not some other fuckers', write your own narrative, specific to your unique and complex needs. 

So here's my bullshit. Here's how I'm trying to capitalise on this crisis. If anyone is genuinely passionate about nature the more naturalists capitalising from the crisis and building a new nature-centric system- the better.   

1. GET A STAKE IN THE GAME

You've got to be in it to win it. As nature becomes a more threatened and declining resource it becomes more valuable. The capitalisation of nature through Natural Capital Accounting, Carbon Credits, Biodcredits (announced recently at COP15), Offsets, Net Gain Frameworks, net zero and net positive frameworks, public goods for public money incentives etc etc have all exploded onto the big finance scene over the last two or three years. Seems like the game is up for charity CEOs like Carter Roberts, the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund who famously earns over $1,000,000 a year from the subscriptions we all give that bastard as now everyone can see they can get rich off the back of the ecological emergency. Instead of (just) giving that money to bank roll these charity moguls, believe in yourself and get in there. 

I wouldn't recommend anyone from the bottom of society (like me) invests directly in these new financial instruments and organisations yet. It's the wild west out there and the whole thing is full of scammers and self imploding start ups. I've invested in green transition funds, renewable energy companies, nuclear, carbon credit tokenisation block chains and carbon credit trading and I've lost on everything (although these are supposed to be long term investments- yes right, no room for bullshitting there) . Trying to pick a winner (and there will be some winners) in this gold rush is probably impossible without being on the inside track. If you thought crypto was full of scams, the whole carbon and nature offset stuff is even worse.  However if you're stupid like me, it's a bit of fun and interesting to watch how this whole thing develops because out of the melee- something useful and important will emerge. 

So I would definitely not recommend  investing in any of this new stuff unless you enjoy a flutter but I would definitely recommend that you buy actual natural capital- ie. land. Land is an investment anyway and in the future there will be added value for ecologically important land. So buy, buy, buy. Land is not particularly expensive, about £8000 an acre for agricultural land and is even cheaper in other parts of the world. 

As we begin to re-define concepts of wealth in the transition from a fundamental capitalist financial system to an ecosocio-capitalist 'financial' system, status symbols associated with dominance hierarchies will change. Celebrities and corporations are already falling over themselves to re-identify as being nature positive or carbon neutral. Even former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell has a rewilding project going on here in Oxfordshire. This stuff will trickle down into middle and lower income society with a growing trend of people owning estates or houses with rewilded areas of land and natural capital. For some people the main appeal of a property could be not how many bedrooms the house has but how many acres of land for rewilding, carbon sequestration, carbon credits and offsets it has.  Millionaire nature conservation is already a big thing and the democratisation of that is one of the biggest sitting ducks in nature conservation that I can see. A lot of the start ups in green finance are to do with carbon rather than biodiversity so to me there appears to be a massive opportunity for any smart people to crack the democratisation of natural capital financing.  

Anyway, it's a growth area and owning natural capital is good anyway as a lifestyle choice and personal empowerment and private ecological husbandry. Add to that the potential of a speculation bomb and sustained gold rush and you cannot go wrong.     

If you want to know more of this sort of stuff than sign up for CarbonCredit.Com newsletter, InkCap Journal covers everything weekly going on in nature conservation including traditional and new stuff, listen to Financing Nature on Spotify (a United Nations podcast), Dieter Helm's podcast and Mongabay Podcast. Read, read, read, read everything constantly but act slowly and carefully .You won't get this stuff from the RSPB newsletter or the nature conservation establishment because it's all a potential threat to their self preservation societies and their charity mogul model.     

 2. GO BIRDING

The defining feature of a post-capitalist world in an ecosocio-capitalist system (sustainable) is a slower, less rampantly consuming growth model with a wider multi-index value system. i.e a broader definition of capital e..g the concept of natural capital. 

Birders have known this for ever anyway. Instead of pursuing the dollar a lot of birders for years have been pursing the rarity or life list tick. This is an 'economy'  in it's own right. A life list is an extremely valuable commodity and each tick is a valuable currency. 

This idea will presumably be cemented further as biological recording and big data systems gain more power. Your birding data is valuable and at the moment most of us are slaves, building big data systems for free. Having a stake in the game, owning your own land/reserve and using these free to use platforms to monitor your own natural capital is a way of getting your investment back. Presumably in the future in order to mobilise a global reserve big enough to accurately monitor all the world's birds on a daily basis there will need to be incentives to using these platforms and maybe as eco-social credit systems are introduced, universal income will be linked to big data system use. This is a fascinating topic, as it appears birders will evolve from a pioneer/ odd ball community to a valued mainstream global citizen science community central to global ecosystem management.  

So wait for the wave, keep birding, keep building your big data system profile and combine that with your own stake in the game and happy days. 

3. BUILD RESILIENCE

I've got to go so will do this one quickly. The transitioning of our global financial system to a green one will be a total cluster fuck. There will be so many disastrous strategies and stupid ideas (although low-carbon birding has already set the floor in birding). So we are already getting used to this- sudden price rises, inflation, more taxes, lockdowns, insane rules to follow, spiritual leaders telling you slaughter yourself and your personal stake  etc etc. 

Basically during chaos it is critical to have a base camp that is stable and self sufficient. Like the whole of life you want to be in a position to tell anyone or anything to go fuck itself if it's asking you do something against your values and that's what resilience is.

So growing your own food, producing your own energy and having the capability to go off grid and be self sufficient means that no matter what happens out in the fucking mental world it doesn't really matter. If you need to go to ground and disappear and come up when the coast is clear then great.  No money- no problem. No food at the supermarkets- no worries. AI gate has refused you entry - no stress. Everyone is infected with  a real killer virus - time to make an omelet. Pronoun meltdown - top up the feeders. 

If your dependant on the system, which is becoming increasingly chaotic and psychotic as the old world dies and a new world evolves then you could get dragged into all kinds of knee jerk reactions and scams and shams (like the whole covid circus and there is plenty more of that shit coming). 

So build a self sufficient bunker and use that as HQ to coordinate missions from. 

Ok part 3- coming soon- building a network/affinity group and defence.