The North Sea Bird Club 1979–2019: Birds, bats and beasties – forty years of offshore wildlife recording

When it comes to migration hotspots, most birders will immediately conjure up windswept headlands, wave-battered islands, or perhaps famous far-flung locations as Gibraltar or Point Pelee. And, thanks to the efforts of a few dedicated souls stranded on massive industrial infrastructures out at sea, we may even think about the somewhat less glamorous migrant-magnets that are oil and gas rigs.

The North Sea Bird Club was something of a niche organisation, that produced detailed annual reports from 1979 until it was wound down four decades later. This impressive new volume, painstakingly edited by Andrew Thorpe, collates 40 years of records from some 640 observers, into one single accessible book, allowing us landlubbers the opportunity to peer into a world of birding from which most of us are thoroughly excluded.

For those interested in common and regular migrants, these reports throw light on large-scale movements, helping us get a sense of the numbers of birds crossing, primarily, the North Sea. And for birders interested in rare and scarce species, most years would provide a few exotic surprises that would leave many of us wondering just where (and if) they eventually made landfall!

But this book is so much more than a compilation of interesting bird records, and other observed taxa including cetaceans, bats, invertebrates and even a Common Frog (!); it is also an acknowledgement of the many people involved in the club’s 40-year history.

Illustrated with photos of an array of avian waifs and strays, many of which show spectacular species in highly incongruous industrial habitats, this really is a fascinating book that celebrates a world most of us can barely contemplate.

On a final note, with ship-assisted vagrancy currently being a hot topic in birding circles… how might listing purists consider a bird landing on a static, human-made structure 80 miles offshore? Do these windblown birds lost at sea become invalid ‘ticks’ the minute they seek refuge on a rig? And if not, is it only a matter of time before bird tour companies start offering week-long holidays to distant oil platforms in autumns to come?

To purchase a copy of this book, please email: andrew.thorpe147@btinternet.com

Book reviewed by Jon Carter