Arrivals and Rivals: a birding oddity. Adrian Riley (Brambleby Books, 2004)

The blurb on the back of this esoteric but enjoyable book describes its contents as being “all about determination, ‘true grit’ and the obsessional desire to become the top birder in the British Isles”.

It’s not really about that actually - it is indeed all about determination (bordering on lunacy - the author nearly froze to death overnight in a damp hut in the Shetlands but (quite rightly in my opinion) bounced straight back in the morning when there were potentially more birds to be seen, for instance) and grittiness (ditto), but the ‘obsessional desire’ is to see more birds in a year within the British Isles than anyone else. It’s about listing - and whether that is the same as becoming a “top birder” is debatable…

Books about listing, or Big Years, are nothing new of course, as most birders will know. Single-minded obsessives have been chasing birds around various countries for many years (I remember reading and re-reading James Vardman’s “Call Collect and ask for Birdman” many years ago, and recently read Phoebe Snetsinger’s remarkable “Birding On Borrowed Time“), but what makes ‘Arrivals and Rivals: a birding oddity‘ somewhat different is that it focusses as much on the intense rivalry between the author Adrian Riley and the self-appointed King of British listing, the many-time UK “year-list” record holder Lee Evans as it does on the birds the author sees.

To readers outside the rarefied bubble of British listing who may wonder who on earth Lee Evans is this may not particularly be a ‘good thing’. Minor celebrities from one country rarely cause even a ripple of interest in another (try watching TV in, for example, the UK, Singapore or Germany and make sense of the crowds turning out for faceless individuals that any sane commentator knows would make no impact whatsoever if they got on a plane and went abroad), and whether anyone in, say, the US cares a jot about who holds the British Year List record is debatable - but nevertheless this is a surprisingly interesting and readable book.

Adrian Riley is an academic (he is a well-known and published moth expert and at the time of starting his Big Year had just retired from working as a scientist at Rothamsted Research Station in Hertfordshire) and he does have a good way with words - the text is scattered with well-written descriptive passages (”As evening drew in, the pastel air enveloped us. A liquid atmosphere of soft pinks and blues caressed us and then flowed into the heavy green and purple of the [sea])”, and interesting metaphors and similes, some bird-related, some sports-related (Adrian is a die-hard Leeds United fan and cricket supporter - I loved his description of cricket commentator Henry Blofeld “guiding us impishly through the last few overs of the day”), and some alcohol-related (Adrian’s capacity for getting up early after an evening’s drinking is quite remarkable all things considered - I know I’d have collapsed by the spring if I’d tried to year-list fuelled by so much beer).

The above-average writing certainly broadens the appeal of a book that is essentially the story of a UK birder seeing lots of birds in the UK in twelve months - certainly too many birds to give much in the way of individual species’ descriptions in a book of this relatively short length. There’s no doubt that Adrian Riley really likes birds, but to some extent the birds he sees are secondary to this story - at the core of the book is that rivalry between the author and Lee Evans.

Anyone familiar with the twitching scene in the UK will know (or know of) Lee Evans. Depending on who you ask, Lee is either a notorious twitcher vilified for his ruthfulness and ‘counting methods’, or a birding legend always willing to share his vast knowledge. He is undoubtedly the most famous birder in Britain, somehow seeming to inspire either loyalty or derision in equal measures. I’ve met Lee on a number of occasions and have been in sporadic email contact with him over the years: he’s never done or said anything objectionable to me, and I certainly feel that British twitching would be a less colourful place without him. However, by the end of “Arrivals and Rivals” there’s no doubt that Adrian Riley feels justifiably - well, ‘differently’ would be one way to put it. As the year wears on and the huge effort of trying to take Lee’s UK “year-list” record bears down on him, the author’s battles with Lee burn off the pages with a fiery intensity. I was determined to remain neutral - I’ve never met Adrian and obviously the whole tale is told from his viewpoint - and I think I did, but, boy, are the feelings expressed ever strong…

It’s almost a shame really: at the start of the book Adrian and Lee are apparently birding buddies with some measure of mutual respect, by the “Scillies season” in the Autumn there is so much pent-up anger crackling through Adrian that he can’t even bear to be on the same island as Lee. I say ‘ almost a shame’ because much of the fizzing narrative would probably be comparatively flat without this hostility of course. Their loss is undoubtedly our gain.

So, how should a birder who’s not up on the British twitching scene approach this book (apart from ‘with fire-gloves’)? I have to say that I think they should approach with slight caution, but as long as they come armed with the knowledge that it’s the “Rivals” aspect that gives “Arrivals and Rivals” much of its energy I would guess that they’ll enjoy what they find immensely. It’s not life-changing, or a particularly deep treatise on what drives people into ‘listing’ - but it is a well-written account of a year’s birding and watching the gathering storm that will inevitably burst one way or the other at the end of the year is fascinating.

As for for whether the ‘year-list’ record was broken or not? Well, the paperback version isn’t particularly expensive - why not buy it and find out…

Softback, 165 pages (though this includes a foreword, prologue, and an 18 page “List”, 4 pages of colour photographs