Birder falls to his death from larch tree while checking out unusual nest

Martin Wainwright Saturday May 27, 2006 The Guardian

Colin Watson's prey was precious, rare and hidden in dangerous places. And on a windy afternoon this week his risk-taking finally caught up with him.

While a friend watched in horror, Watson, 63, lost his grip on the slender trunk of a 12-metre (40ft) larch tree he had climbed to check out yet another unusual bird's nest. The former power station worker tumbled to the ground in woods in south Yorkshire, a region where collectors have often played hide-and-seek with police. Paramedics arrived soon afterwards but the father-of-three had suffered massive injuries and was declared dead at the scene.

Article continues It was the end of a life which saw a schoolboy hobby develop into a passion that made Watson the most notorious collector of wild birds' eggs in Britain for two decades. He was convicted six times under wildlife protection laws, fined thousands of pounds and finally had virtually his entire collection - the largest in Britain - confiscated after a raid on his home by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

"This is a very tragic incident, but Colin Watson's misuse of his great knowledge was also a tragedy," said Grahame Madge of the RSPB yesterday. "He undoubtedly knew more about birds than many of our own people, but his egg collecting put the very species he hunted in danger. It was in the true sense of the word a perversion of expertise and talent."

Watson's family and friends claimed he had given up egg collecting more than 10 years ago, with the advent of tough additions to the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Although disturbing the nest of a protected species is also an offence, south Yorkshire police said there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances at the wood in Campsall, near Doncaster.

But Watson remained on informal lists of some 300 known or suspected egg collectors, whose cars are logged if they go near the nesting sites of rare birds. His many run-ins with the RSPB led to claims he was the vandal who tried to cut down one of the country's best-known sites, the osprey nesting tree in Loch Garten, Scotland, which was vandalised with a chainsaw in 1986.

Kes

Watson's background resembled the novel and film Kes, about a lad from a Yorkshire pit village who found and learned to train a young kestrel. As a boy, Watson was fascinated by the fragile beauty of eggs and the excitement of knowing that rarities such as peregrines and goshawks nested on the nearby moors of the Derbyshire Peak district.

Schoolboy birdnesting at the time was considered a virtuous interest in natural history, with older neighbours in Selby, where Watson settled, skilled in the art of blowing eggs - removing their contents through a tiny hole - and willing to help in building a collection.

Celebrated ornithologists such as Thomas Coward, who published the standard guide to British birds in the 1920s, acknowledged the help of scores of village collectors.

"There was a tradition of collecting in Victorian times which has taken a long time to die out in some parts of the country," Mr Madge said. "The old collectors played their part in natural science, but nowadays we have good, easily accessible cameras and there can be no justification for robbing nests."

The handful of diehards occasionally include hawk breeders, who can get £2,000 on the illegal market for a young peregrine falcon. But most collectors are believed to suffer from obsessional neurosis, a condition identified by a Finnish psychiatrist who examined two British egg thieves who were jailed in Finland 10 years ago. They also come from every type of background.

Watson worked as a maintenance man in the big power stations that line the M62 between Ferrybridge and Drax. In his spare time he scoured the country for rare nests. "It requires a lot of knowledge and skill to find the sites, and Colin must have been one of the most successful collectors," Mr Madge said.

Obsession

The scale of his obsession was revealed in 1985 when the RSPB raided the home he shared with his disabled son near Selby, and found more than 2,000 eggs, including those of golden eagles and ospreys. Watson was fined £1,700 despite claiming the eggs had been collected before the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act outlawed the practice. He later appealed successfully against his conviction for illegal possession, but he was fined £2,800 after subsequent raids.

In the meantime, south Yorkshire became one of several police forces to appoint specialist wildlife officers with time to monitor remote sites. By last year, seven egg collectors had been sent to jail for up to three months. "The message is getting across that the police are taking this seriously and the courts are, too," Mr Madge said. "It is very sad Mr Watson's life should end like this, but it is also a shocking reminder of how dangerous these sorts of activities can be."

Submitted on 05/27/2006

Submitted by: David Hammonds
Reference: Guardian

Copyright © 2006 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
Perhaps the most detailed write up on this incident we'll receive. Definitely add to the pile for the readers' edification!

Greg said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes

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