Fieldcraft Note
Rob Lambert on the Isles of Scilly
Whether Scilly's decline as a birding destination has been exaggerated, and what changed: with a historian of British birdwatching.
Rob Lambert is an academic at the University of Nottingham, a lifelong birder, and a frequent contributor to BBC natural history programming, with a particular interest in the cultural history of British birdwatching. This episode was about the Isles of Scilly.
Scilly occupied a specific place in British birding for decades: the autumn destination, where American vagrants made landfall and where a large part of the country’s birding community gathered each October. The question raised here was whether its decline had been overstated, and, if it had declined, what actually changed.
Several candidate explanations were in play. Better coverage elsewhere means rarities that would once have been found only on Scilly are now found on the mainland too. Information moves instantly, so a bird anywhere is reachable rather than a reason to be somewhere in advance. And the social function the islands served, a fixed annual gathering of a scattered community, has weakened as birding culture has changed.
The underlying question, which is the interesting one, is how much of a birding destination’s reputation is about the birds and how much is about the people who go there.