Friday, 19 September 2025

Reading RSPB

Reading RSPB

KEITH Betton gave a talk entitled “Twenty Places to go Birding” on October 8, which took us on a tour of a few of the 116 countries he has visited building up an astonishing list of 8,830 species seen in a lifetime of enthusiastic birding.

He has been volunteering for the RSPB for 50 years, having given his first official talk to a local Women’s Institute at the tender age of 15. He is very active in protecting stone curlews and peregrine falcons in his local Hampshire area and recently updated the guide on Where to Watch Birds in Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Starting with the vast seabird colonies of Shetland, Keith moved through Spain’s drought-ridden Coto Donana National Park, on through Asia, Africa, North and South America and down to Australasia, highlighting the vast diversity of species and some of the challenges they face.

Illustrating the journey with wonderful photographs we learned about birds on the brink, such as Thailand’s Gurney’s pitta, thought to be extinct but rediscovered in 1986 only to be lost again when the forest it lived in was cut down.

Bhutan came next, with its record-breaking yellow-billed chough which lives at an altitude of 27,000ft, the highest of any known species, and the bar-headed goose which holds the record for flying higher than any other bird, reaching 33,000ft on migration, higher than Everest.

China also holds a record-breaker in the form of the alpine accentor, which has the largest testicles of any bird in relation to body size. Moving on to Japan we saw magical snow-covered landscapes with dancing cranes and the magnificent Steller’s eagle.

Africa holds a special place in Keith’s heart and he has visited 34 countries, the favourite being Uganda where there is a fascinating relationship between birds called honey guides which can find beehives but need man or other mammals to break them open allowing both to benefit from the honey found inside.

Other fascinating highlights included the boreal owl in Alaska, which buries its prey in the snow to keep it cool then sits on it to defrost it when the chicks need feeding. California produced the world’s only hibernating bird, the common poorwill, which sleeps its way through three or four months in winter. In South America, a wide range of tiny hummingbirds contrast with the huge Andean condor, which vies with the wandering albatross of Australia for the biggest bird in the world.

Arriving in New Zealand, Keith highlighted the work being done by conservationists to eliminate the non-native rats which have caused the extinction of many species and still threaten those remaining. The tour ended in South Georgia among vast congregations of king penguins numbering 250,000 and the little Arctic tern which breeds where we started in Shetland but migrates to South Georgia in the Northern hemisphere’s winter.

On Wednesday, October 16 we met on a dull but dry morning for a walk round Woolhampton gravel pit. We found tufted ducks, a few pochard, two pairs of gadwall and about 12 shoveler with a number of mallard, as would be expected. A pair of mandarin ducks flew in and were a surprise. A tit flock in the wooded section allowed us to see a marsh tit with the usual long-tailed, blue and great tits. A few chiffchaffs were also with the flock but a treecreeper or two were harder to spot. We also saw our first redwing of the autumn, a clear sign that winter is on the way.

On Sunday, October 20, we had the first minibus trip of the season to Warsash on the Solent, just to the south east of Southampton. Our trip coincided with the arrival of Storm Ashley which meant it was very windy and often raining but it was not as bad as had been forecast.

The wind meant most small birds would be sheltering in the bushes, although we just caught a glimpse of a robin flying from one bush to another as well as meadow pipits in flight. The salt marsh and lagoons contained ducks and waders who don’t have anywhere to hide.

We saw curlew and redshanks, then we spotted a group of five elegant greenshanks. About 20 wigeon, four teal and two mallard were all the ducks we saw. There were a few black-tailed godwits in flight and in the lagoons and a single turnstone flew past us at speed in the wind.

When the tide was at its highest four grey plover were sitting on posts as there was little dry land for them to stand on. In fact, the high tide flooded one of the paths we intended to walk along, so we only visited half the site. In all we saw 21 species which is a lot less than expected but, considering the weather, was not too disappointing.

On November 12, Nick Martin will give the talk “Secrets of a Wildlife Garden”. The last meeting of the year will be on December 10 with short talks by members of the group followed by festive eats.

There is a long weekend in Norfolk by minibus from November 14 to 17 and on Wednesday, November 20 there will be a morning walk at Dinton Pastures. On Sunday, December 15 there will be a morning walk at Staines Reservoir and on Tuesday, December 17 there will be a walk on Watlington Hill looking for raptors and farmland birds.

All indoor meetings are held in Pangbourne village hall, starting at 8pm. Visitors are welcome. Entry is £5 for non-members, juniors half price. New members are welcome with annual membership £15 (£10 for juniors). For more information, visit group.rspb.org.uk/
reading

Judith Clark

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