gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

Forty years ago today I picked up my very own binoculars for the first time, saw a bird I didn’t immediately recognise and looked it up in my very own field guide for the first time and wrote a note of it in my very own birding note-book for the first time.

I had made the transition from being merely interested in birds to being a birder.

It was one of the best decisions in my life and I never looked back. Around 8200 species worldwide and 500 the UK, about 130 foreign trips looking for birds and countless hours in Britain and a very large part of my income later, I can honestly say that I’ve never regretted it.

Sure I’ve regretted individual decisions, but that has usually been because I’ve missed a (the) bird(s) but I’ve never regretted taking up birding. It has made me what I am and glad I’m I stuck with it and committed so much of my time and money to it.

Perhaps the only regret is that I didn’t start earlier so that I would now be celebrating 50 or even 60 years of birding.

I’d like to do an full blog post on my early birding history but I’m trying to get all my Costa Rica photos sorted and uploaded before my next birding trip in June and haven’t really got the time.

So here is a photo the species that I saw in my back garden in Leeds on 20/05/77 – one that any birder in Europe will be very familiar with, but one that a non-birder could easily dismiss as a sparrow.

Dunnock