James Lidster
James Lidster was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire in 1976. At the age of 4 his parents moved to a new house with over 4 acres of land including fields, orchards and the River Idle at the bottom of the garden and had their holidays in Dorset every year. His older brother was the first to get the bird-watching bug and of course whatever “big brother” does must be cool. James soon joined the YOC (junior branch of the RSPB) and became hooked on their articles, quizzes and stories. His brother would often head out on bird-watching walks with his friends but for some reason wherever they said they were going they were never there when James arrived! With so much habitat at home, and not many similarly aged children around, James spent most of his time birding his garden or playing soccer (on his own!). The headmaster of the local school (as well as his maths teacher and next door neighbour) was very keen on birds and lessons included a natural history walk once a week. These trips soon led further a field and memorable sightings in those early years included Whooper Swans on a nearby gravel pit and Hobbys chasing hirundines at an evening roost. The garden list continued to grow as well and James learnt for the first time how birding bridged all age and respect gaps. One day when he was off school due to illness he found a Hawfinch being mobbed by the local breeding Tree Sparrows (all from his bed!). Deliberating for all of 30 seconds he phoned the headmaster and after a couple of quick questions to confirm the ID was told to call back if the bird reappeared. Sadly it never did but the fact the Headmaster never even queried why he was birding while sick still makes him smile to this day. His brother eventually gave up birding as he got older but soon took up fly-fishing. This meant that weekends were spent with their grandparents and while brother and granddad fished James and his Nana would go birding. Once his brother was away at boarding school these trips became more and more bird orientated and weekends were then spent visiting the East Coast. At the same time bi-annual trips were made to Mallorca with his parents.
In 1989 James too went away to boarding school, with the added pressures of school, new friends, girls etc he felt his birding might suffer. It didn’t and everyday for five years he recorded every species seen or heard while walking between lessons. In his final year and preparing for his A levels he spent most of his time watching the soccer world cup (in the USA so it meant staying up late and sitting 2 inches from the TV so as not to alert the housemaster) and planning twitches to birds such as Bufflehead and Black-faced Bunting. On his final evening at school his housemaster and assistant discussed what they saw him doing in the future. The former said he could see him living in his car and just going birding, the latter said he thought he would be a lavatory cleaner! “One step up from a music teacher!” he replied and thankfully he proved them wrong.
After this James spent 2 years at Bishop Burton college studying Countryside Management. Here he met several other like minded birders and was given the opportunity to learn from others as well as continuing to teach himself. Trips were made all over the UK and anniversaries with girlfriends were remembered by which bird he had seen the day before (if they ever got that far!). On one occasion he was asked by his lecturer “what’s more important, the Killdeer or my lecture?” Silly question!
After college he headed to the south coast to live in Dorset with his mum. James soon met a few local birders and was invited down the pub to meet some of the other Dorset birders. Here he met Mark Constantine, a local birder, who offered him a job in his cosmetics factory (come back lavatory cleaner all is forgiven!). In his first year he pushed the limits with the boss and managed to spend 5 weeks banding at Long Point bird observatory during the spring. From then on it was count down to the next birding trip and on Mark’s recommendation James and his best friend joined the Sunbirder to Israel tour with Killian Mullarney. Shortly after we returned we decided to book on the Sunbirder to Beidaihe with Paul Holt. Unfortunately for us (and him) Paul had injured his back and was unable to lead the tour but this didn’t stop us having a superb trip with over 100 lifers and such dreamed about birds as Siberian Rubythroat, Needletail and Eastern-crowned Warbler.
Having maintained a friendship with Killian ,James made it known that tour leading was what he wanted to do and in Feb 2001 Steve Rooke emailed him asking if he would be able to co-lead the Beidaihe tour with Paul. Silly question! After getting over the initial thoughts of “was he just there to carry Paul’s luggage?” he obviously did something right and joined Paul again the following year. At the same time he set about designing tours to countries that Sunbird didn’t lead to including Sweden, Spain and Mongolia.
New tours included Japan, spring in Morocco and taking over the ever popular Mallorca tour. His main interests are in those species that are vagrants to the Western Palearctic and in migration and he still believes there is nothing more exciting than seeing migration first hand at sites such as Gibraltar, Falsterbo, Beidaihe or Eilat and sharing those experiences with other birders.
James has recently taken over as county bird recorder for Dorset and is chairman of the Dorset records panel. His mum is ever supportive and when time allows they run birding tours in Dorset. One of them does the birding and the other does the cooking and he openly admits that his mum’s not a birder, although with a garden list of 103 it looks as if the enthusiasm may have worn off at some point! And to all those people who asked if he will ever grow out of birding, silly question!