Wader Quest the Newsletter Vol 3 Issue 3 2016
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Volume 3 Issue 3 SUPPORTING October 2016 SHOREBIRD Wader Quest the newsletter CONSERVATION Forthcoming talks: The Inspiration of Waders — Editor’s reflections 10/11/2016 Colchester RSPB local group. 19.45 Shrub End Community Ever since the stone-age Hall, Shrub End Road, Colchester, CO3 4RH equivalent of Banksy started defacing the inside of his living 06/12/2016 Wigan RSPB local quarters by depicting the world group. 19.45 St. Anne’s Parish Hall, around him, waders have been Church Lane, Shevington, Wigan. inspiring humanity. WN6 8BD Back in Ancient Egypt the hieroglyphs depict the 14/12/2016 Watford RSPB locl Northern Lapwing Vanellus group 20.00 Stanborough Centre, 609 St. Albans Road, Watford, vanellus as a symbol of the Herts. WD25 9JL people of Egypt. In some eras it represented the people of the 09/01/2017 Stockport RSPB local lower Nile an obvious choice as group 19.30 Stockport Masonic Lapwings winter in the delta Guildhall 169-171 Wellington Road there. From the 18th Dynasty South, Stockport, SK1 3UA forward, the lapwing was often portrayed with human arms in 11/01/2017 Worcester and Malvern RSPB local group. Powick Parish the act of giving praise. This has Hall, Powick, Worcester, Worcs. been interpreted to mean ‘All the Words: W. B. Yeats / Photo: Elis Simpson WR2 4RT (Plover Lover’s World of people give praise.’ It is easy to Delights) imagine why the Lapwing would In Elizabethan times new series of articles ‘Waders in be used to represent ‘the people’ the great bard himself William Art’ by the artists themselves; 18/01/2017 Leeds RSPB local group. 19.30 Friends Meeting House, 188 as the Ancient Egyptians Shakespeare was inspired in his the first can be found on page 25. Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9DX probably saw plenty of them. writings by no less than the Poetry too has paid Coming a bit closer to Lapwing. It’s precocial habits had homage to the waders. Inevitably 22/02/2017 Friends of Linford Lakes the present day, but not much, been noted and this trait was it was the Eurasian Curlew’s Nature Reserve. Linford Lakes we have the wader inspired used to indicate in Hamlet that Numenius arquata calls that Nature Reserve, Wolverton Rd, Easter Bunny story. But how so? I Osric was precocious with the drew attention rather than its Milton Keynes MK14 5AH hear you ask, where does a phrase uttered by Horatio to drab looks. You won’t find many wader fit into a bunny bringing Hamlet ‘This lapwing runs away articles written about the curlew 03/03/2017 West Midlands Bird chocolate eggs? Well, it goes with the shell on his head.’ that don’t contain the word Club (Solihull). 19.30 Guild House, Knowle, Solihull, West Midlands back to Pagan times. Before Art however was slow evocative. With its tremulous call B93 0LN there were Biologists, Zoologists to pick up on the possibilities of epitomising the seemingly barren and Ornithologists to tell them waders. If you check out any landscapes in which it is found any different the Pagans noted work by one of the ‘Old Masters’ the cries of the curlew fill them Inside this issue: that the forms created by the landscape painters that depict an with a sense of melancholy. Poor hares often, in the springtime, estuary you will see many ships old W. B. Yeats was so moved by Wader Quest news 2-7 also contained eggs. Without too blasting seven bells out of each this sound, as it reminded him of IWSG conference 8 much investigation they put two other, poor fisher folk going a lost love, that he wrote ‘O and two together and came up about their business but not a curlew cry no more in the air..’ The Flock 9-11 with five deciding that the wader will you see, it almost It is even possible to Banded Dotterels 12-13 provider of the eggs was, on the appears that the estuaries were say that the discovery of the New evidence before them, the hare. devoid of them in those days; World was inspired by waders. It Uitkerkse Polders 14-15 Whether as a result of surely that cannot be the case. is said that a large flock of land The Curlew Walk 16-17 this or not, the hare was a Pagan The only birds at all that you will birds overflying Columbus’ trio of symbol of fertility so when the see will be the child-like vs of ships led him to believe he was Latham’s Snipe 17 Christians came along they were gulls and the odd L shaped duck. close to discovering the New Wing Threads 18-19 happy to adopt the story of a There is one exception World, or what he though was Leporid producing eggs, but that I found in a painting by van the East Indies. Seeing the vast Black-tailed Godwits 20-21 spurned the idea that it was the Goyen, where a bird low over the flock of birds flying over he hare due to its connection to water could, just could, be a concluded, quite reasonably, that Snowy Plovers 22 Pagan fertility and morphed the Common Redshank Tringa they would be heading for land Raining Knots and Godwits 23-24 hare into a cuddly un-Pagan, totanus that has been flushed by and that following them was a nothing-to-do-with-fertility- an approaching boat full of men. good plan. So it was then that he Waders in Art Szabolcs Kókay 25 in-any-way-whatsoever bunny. However of course, of came across one of the West Inspired by Waders 26 Of course they may have missed late many more people are able Indian Islands. Admittedly if he the point a bit when it comes to to express the beauty of waders had not seen the birds and Photo gallery 27 the fertility bit, I mean rabbits do through the medium of art as continued on the course he was Magellanic Plover update breed like… well, rabbits! you will see from the first in a heading he would have bumped Contact details and sponsors 28 © Wader Quest 2016. All rights reserved. Page 2 Wader Quest the newsletter Editors reflections — cont’d into the Americas sooner or later. But what Europeans to the Americas since it was they that I never looked back. would these birds have been? Well, the that shot them in vast numbers and degraded It was naturally a wader that description was of a vast flock of them, the their habitat until they were all gone. inspired the creation of Wader Quest. In this like of which we imagine when talking of the It is also true to say that it was a case it was the plight of the Spoon-billed Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius, but wader that inspired the creation of the Sandpiper that inspired Elis and I to embark that species was a terrestrial species and Guinness Book of Records. The inspiration for on our world quest for waders and it was were never known to fly out over the ocean a book of records came when Sir Hugh witnessing the problems that waders are in their vast flocks. There are two candidates Beaver, the Managing Director of the facing along the way that inspired us to which have migration routes that cross the Guinness Brewery in the 1950s, joined a create the charity Wader Quest as it stands Atlantic from Canada to South America; shooting party in County Wexford. An today. American Golden Plover Pluvialis dominica, argument ensued about which of the game There is no collective noun for a which still does this to this day and Eskimo birds was the fastest when a Eurasian Golden mixed agregation of waders. Given all that Curlew Numenius borealis which sadly is now Plover Pluvialis apricaria flew by at a great has been written here I put it to you that extinct. It would be a cruel irony indeed if it rate of knots. The members of the hunting when you come across a multitude of them were the Eskimo Curlew which directed the party couldn’t find the answer anywhere and swirling as one living being over the estuary, later the idea of collating such miscellaneous describing impossible turns and manoeuvres, facts to settle pub arguments became the flashing from dark to light as they go, that, Guinness Book of Records. referring to them as a flock is inadequate. More recently on the pages of a That collective noun is suitable for a bunch of previous issue of Wader Quest the random sheep on a hillside or an unruly gang newsletter, Trustee Oliver Simms wrote an of pigeons in a town square, but surely not article entitled ‘Waders with the power to noble or expressive enough for our majestic inspire’ about how it was this group of birds, waders. What about those who call them a above all others, that sealed his obsession murmuration, usurping the noun for with birds. Now, in this issue, Alexia Fishwick starlings? That is just plain wrong. continues this theme in an article entitled Henceforth, and from this day ‘Inspired By My First Wader Roost’ (page 26). forward, let it be known that such magical It was also a wader, and once again gatherings of the birds that have been that old favourite the Northern Lapwing that inspiring us since we came down from the inspired me to become a birder when still a trees, should, I humbly submit, be small child.