Clayhanger Marsh and Ryders Mere are essential habitats that appear to be losing a great, loyal champion.

Here’s a really nice thing that caught my attention yesterday – fellow local blogger for Clayhanger Marsh and hero of mine (whose mail I must get around to answering, sorry) Chaz Mason has written something wonderful and very, very engaging.

Rather than ramble about it, I’ll let the man tell you about it himself – all I’ll say is that Chaz – birder, old rocker, grumpy bastard and local historian is an in actual fact, despite his protestations an intelligent, sensitive and kind man who really cares about the place he lives, and he’s a hero of mine.

You can read the piece Chaz has written – about how he came to be the remarkable man and wildlife champion he is – here.

Chas wrote in a post on his blog yesterday:

OK – I confess, I am a bit nervous about this!

Don’t you hate people who ‘big themselves up’ or try to make out that you should be interested in them? I do!

And that makes what I have done feel very uncomfortable!

I am a very ordinary bloke and a middling birder with a genuine belief that we are all on the same ladder when it comes to life and that there is only one person at the top and some poor sod at the bottom. Essentially I feel that we are all climbing that ladder, looking up at someones behind and with someone behind us looking up at our behinds. So I am not trying to draw attention to myself (when you are big and hairy, six foot three and a half and weigh-in at eighteen stone you really don’t have to try to be noticed, trust me, I wish that you did).

My sons have been pestering me to do some writing and I have eventually sat down and done it. It is the honest story of how I came to be a birdwatcher but it really doesn’t have to be about me. The fact that it is my story is inconsequential, it could be about anyone who has become a birder, its just that the people mentioned and the anecdotes that are related are actually my friends and my anecdotes.

If you are not interested please don’t bother to read it, I wont be offended. If you are only interested in the birding then skip the first chapter because that is essentially about me and is just for context (and if you are not old enough to remember the nineteen fifties and sixties you won’t relate to it anyway).

It is forty-odd pages long and split into chapters that chronologically relate my journey from when I started to becoming the idiot you all know who writes the blog and I hope it will demonstrate that wherever you are on that ladder I have probably been there at some point and if you look carefully you will find my footprint on the rung on which you stand.

I don’t expect you to understand that for me, putting this in the public domain is very courageous. I have endeavoured not to be unkind to anyone in particular although I have been frank about some aspects of the greater birding community. Feedback will be welcome, but if you don’t like it I would rather not know. I may or may not leave it on the site, I am undecided at present.

If you are interested in knowing more you will find it on the pages list marked ‘Clayhanger Birdman’ I appreciate that this is a very pretentious title and I’m afraid that if you want to know why I used it, you will need to read the very last paragraphs.

I hope it passes a spare few minutes in an entertaining way and if possible inspires one or two of you to take your birding further – Chaz