The Derby Yo Yo

The Derbyshire Yeomanry was a train, or rather a steam railway engine.  I first came across it as an eight year old. Some of my friends were keen train spotters and I was persuaded to join them, on an expedition that became a regular feature of the school holidays, to the nearest main railway line where they watched the trains and underlined the numbers in their Ian Allan railway guides. Standing on the bridge looking over the LMS line the third or fourth train I saw was drawn by a splendid green engine. I was enthralled and showed my enthusiasm. My friends were unimpressed. "That's only the Derby Yo Yo" one of them said. Its nickname was down to its regular habit of going up and down the line at regular intervals. They were only interested in the unusual trains or ones they had never seen before. However fine the Derbyshire Yeomanry was it meant nothing at all to them. And as a boy anxious to fall in with the group I quickly learned to identify with this judgement.

The point being that, for many of us, scarcity or rarity has huge value but whatever is commonplace easily gets dismissed. That memory always surfaces when I come across bird watchers. To most of them the common birds have little or no value. I recall the RSPB/BTO man who sneered at those who talked of blue tits. And if a freak weather event brought to our shores an American bird of comparatively unexceptional appearance there would be hundreds of punters wanting to 'record' that they've seen it despite its lack of character. In fact there might be another species closely related and more commonly seen with much greater life enhancing qualities. Who could deny that blackbirds are more worthy of our protection than, say, Dartford Warblers bearing in mind their respective qualities of musicianship?

With this in mind here are two visitors to our bird caff this morning. I think both would be easily dispensed with by some birders in favour of the curlew or the tree pipit. (1) top, a female chaffinch. (2) a coal tit.

Who is so godlike to decide that they are dispensable?

Coal Tits were the most timid of visitors to the caff. Family pressures have changed that. They are now first to the food bank.