I am about to move to Albury as the new principal of Albury High School.
That job, together with travelling back and forth to Nowra and Sydney on
most free weekends, should keep me out of a lot of birding mischief. I will
need, however, the release of recreational birding, a phrase that is
normally an oxymoron to persons like me.
With this in mind, I will be living for a while in the Chiltern area. That
way I can get some Vic-ticks. Whilst I can happily find what I can, the
twitcher in me cries out for taking short cuts --via gen. Perhaps there can
be more networking and systematic publishing per this medium for Victoria
(and other states and territories) in the way that this is done for NSW and
the ACT. Many correspondents are diligent in their supply of information,
but it seems to need a collator like Chris Gladwyn or Ian Fraser.
For those who know them, my birding sons, James and Alexander, are unable
to twitch as much as they have done. James may have been able to go to the
Antarctic and the Middle East last year at the same time as he was
completing his final year at the Defence Academy, bristling with HDs: RMC
(Duntroon) will corner him this year. Alexander's immersion in his uni
research, although giving him by its nature a big chance to bird
incessantly, is proving an impediment to the exercise of the free spirit
that is the essence of twitching. He seems to put great store by academic
success. Who knows, he may end up churning out those splendid articles that
would be wonderfully enlightening if one could drive oneself to read them.
By that stage, he would be on his high horse about the puerility of looking
for birds, and would have a proper bird list of three.
But this is fantasising. They're relatively locked in; I can get some new
state birds.
If, as some of you have done in the past, you want to call on me at school,
please present yourself appropriately. If you are mud encrusted, imply to
the office that you are there on business (it's an old achool that needs
upkeep). If you can get away with appearing like an academic guest, say
that you are a research scientist. If you really are, and the field is
ornithology, you'll probably be in the infants school.
Bill Watson.
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