Being in my 50's, I experience a lot more JOMO (Joy of missing out) than FOMO (Fear of missing out). A social event that has to be wrapped up by 10pm is nothing short of heaven. Lockdown has been a relatively enjoyable experience for me, but I'm pretty sure I would've hated it at 18. At that age, being with others was as necessary as oxygen; missing a party was like losing a limb; it felt truly devastating.
When the term FOMO was first coined it brought back so many teenage memories. When I was 14, a friend of mine, Paul Obey, had got me into birdwatching. His dad had taken me on holiday to Cornwall - they were the family type who just seemed to explore all day every day - no beach days or animal farm parks. It was all relentless hikes, rarely with a map and if the we got caught out by the tide we just had to climb the cliffs to escape. I loved it.
What irked me slightly was noticing that Paul was having a much richer experience than me during a walk; he just knew everything that flew. His excitement and enthusiasm for each new species of bird was infectious. I had never taken any interest in birds before.
"...the holiday became rather irritating"
One evening, Paul suggested we go badger watching. As we were crossing a field on our way to the badger sett, the sky was full of swifts; he explained how they spend up to 10 months on the wing...it's always been my favourite 'bird fact'. This was a new and exciting world.
The rest of the holiday became rather irritating though. Paul not only had binoculars, he also possessed the identification knowledge. I was suffering with FOMO. With my holiday spending money I bought a bird book. Within a short time I was pretty competent at identifying most birds that I spotted. I just needed him to hand over his bloody binoculars so I could identify what he was seeing.
Just as one swallow doesn't make a summer, my enthusiasm for birdwatching never really took off again in my teens...the usual distractions. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that the love of birds returned. I was wild camping with my soon to be wife in the Lake District. We were camped by a river in the middle of a valley watching a beautiful fawn coloured bird, the size of a thrush, flitting from rock to rock. Keen to find out more, the next day in Ullswater we bought some binoculars and and the Readers Digest Book of British Birds. We identified the bird as a Wheatear (still a personal favourite) ; and so the journey recommenced and never abated.
Badgers and Polecats
Recently I have been watching a badger getting the sett ready for spring. It's all via my Trail Camera that I have set up. I figured that when the evenings get a bit warmer we can go down to watch them now we know the sett is active.
Things have got a lot more exciting though; one clip showed a much smaller mammal zipping out of a rabbit hole. My immediate thoughts were of a Pine Marten but they are localised, in England, to the Forest of Dean. Having compared my footage to other mammals on Youtube it became clear that it was possibly a polecat. I sent the footage to the Vincent Wildlife Trust who are a charity that specialise in the study Mustelids (Pine Martens, Polecats, stoats, weasels). Their main focus at present is the re-introduction and monitoring of Pine Martens.
I then recorded my sighting on a national wildlife database , iRecord - they came back and said that they can't accept it as there are, to date, no verifiable records of polecats in the area. To be fair, until I get a daylight glimpse it could be a polecat-ferret. These are hybrids as a result of domestic ferrets breeding with polecats. The lovely white mask on the polecat face is the money shot. Annoyingly, night vision cameras burn out the detail so coupled with them being nocturnal, confirmation maybe sometime.
Have you seen a polecat.......they are quite rare and elusive. Get in touch johnnie@johnniethewoodsman.com
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