JUST WHY DID THAT LONG-BILLED MURRELET END UP OFF DAWLISH ON THE DEVON COAST?

Graham Catley (centre) chats with birders at Covenham Reservoir in Lincolnshire

Hats off to Lincolnshire Bird Club stalwart and former county bird recorder Graham Catley for his excellent  illustrated talk at the December indoor meeting of the RSPB’s Grimsby group!

It was packed with amusing anecdotes, solid information and breathtaking photographs of rare birds - many of which he has found in Lincolnshire (some 10 of them being first records for the county).

Since he was a schoolboy, starting out in the late 60s with a pair of basic 8x30 Prinz binoculars and a Peterson identification guide, his birding has taken him to all parts of Europe and beyond, but he has retained a special affection for his own home patch around Barton-on-Humber, Goxhill, Killingolme and Alkborough in northern Lincolnshire.

It was at Far Ings in 1969 that he encountered his first hoopoe and, at Goxhill, he once had a remarkable spell of witnessing four golden orioles on separate occasions over a five-year period.

In the early days, he had no car, so he was often reliant on his bike, lifts from friends and hitch-hiking to get out and about.

Because of his skill at detecting and identifying difficult species, such as certain gulls, warblers and flycatchers, he was invited to serve on the prestigious British Birds Rarities Committee during the late '80s and early '90s, and he remains in demand as a foremost UK consultant and commentator on matters ornithological.

His portfolio of photographs is probably unsurpassed, and he treated the 50-strong audience at the Grimsby group meeting to some cracking shots - particularly flight studies of vagrant pratincoles, swifts, terns (including an American black tern he found at Covenham reservoir) and gulls.

Of the ivory gull, he described how a sense of smell is crucial to the species because its habitat is the Arctic where there is very little daylight in the winter month. 

Its diet includes the corpses of porpoises and seals, the scent of which it can detect from as far as 30 miles away, prompting hopes that, perhaps one day, one might turn up at Donna Nook.

Of this species, he enthused: "It is one of those birds you always want to see more of."

Earlier in his birding career, Graham was also an accomplished sketcher, and, as longstanding LBC members are aware, his illustrations featured extensively in the county bird reports of yesteryear.

He described some of his birding techniques, for instance decamping under a bush to await the company of some vagrant warbler, but he acknowledged that fieldcraft - plus putting in hours of time and effort - are not the sole keys to birding success.

“Luck is also important, “ he noted.

His tally of sightings is impressive - some 320 species within the UK alone - but, as he freely (and ruefully) admitted, there have been plenty of instances of "ones that got away", perhaps the most frustrating being when a rarity has been reported on the local patch while he is tracking another rarity hundreds of miles away. 

After more than 50 years’ birding, there has been no waning in Graham’s enthusiasm - it is as intense, if not more so, than ever.

The mysteries of bird migration continue to intrigue him - for instance, why the travels of individual birds of some species, such as white-billed diver, sora rail and Pallas's leaf warbler incline them to veer thousands of miles off their traditional migration routes.

Another famous case was that of a long-billed murrelet which, in November 2006, Graham photographed when, amazingly, it turned up on the coast of Dawlish in Devon - a ridiculously long way from its proper home in the Pacific. 

Another feature of the  talk was its relentlessly inspirational undercurrent. 

"Keep watching," seemed to be the message. "You never know where a Siberian rubythroat or some rare thrush from America might turn up - perhaps even in your back garden!"

Next meeting of the Grimsby group, which holds its indoor meetings at the Holy Trinity parish hall on Grimsby Road, Cleethorpes, is on January 20 when Dr Michael Leach will give a talk entitled Beneath the Dark Canopy.