Research or rabbit hole

One of the things I am good at, or bad at ,depending on your point of view, is researching and not giving up. It has lead me into several deep dark rabbit holes of enquiry in the past which have been very fascinating  but totally off the point I started with.

This next research I will share with you - did exactly the opposite – one small rabbit hole led to an Alices adventure in absolute wonderland of the brilliance of science and thanks to two wonderful researchers Dr Joanne Cooper  Senior Curator, Birds from  the Natural History Museum and Ms Dale Serjeantson is a Visiting Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Southampton.

Having set myself the task of trying to work out what birds would be around in  the Yorkshire Dales National Park throughout history I had looked and read various articles and tried to piece bits together. During one search I came across Ibis , the  International Journal of Avian Science   published continuously since 1859 – that’s 160 years of  cutting-edge science! Founded in 1858, the  British Ornithological Union ,BOU ,is one of the world’s oldest and most respected ornithological organisations .

In this journal I found a paper which was written by Dr Cooper and fellow colleagues which seem to be the answer I was looking for The birds of ancient Britain: first recommendations for Category F of the British List Joanne H. Cooper, John R. Stewart, Dale Serjeantson  14 June 2022 British Ornithologists' Union, which basically is a data base of archaeological and referenced material which shows specific bird species through time. 

 I was chuffed as some of my own research cross checked with this published paper, so I was on the right lines!

I wrote to Dr Cooper who I was thrilled wrote back and suggested additional information and books to read , including the one written by Dale Serjeantson – The Archaeology of Wild Birds of Britain and Ireland and also Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory, Investigating the Missing Majority by Linda M Hurcombe, Senior lecturer in Archaeology University of Exeter. 

After  lots of reading and lots of note taking, I complied a spreadsheet of information along with my own , my birds which I have chosen to concentrate on and what historical time period I was going to assign each bird. 

Birds it turns out have been important to us humans for as long as we have co-existed on the planet; as a source of food, an indication of seasons, to act as foci for worship as animistic icons, using feathers for adornment and to simply watch and marvel at. Now of course bird species globally are under threat . 

The birds I have chosen as part of this project are all red or amber listed in  Birds of Conservation Concern 5 and Category 1 and 2 of the Nature Recovery Plan for the YDNP and what were plentiful and reliable species to find here are no longer the case.

My next task was to identify areas in both Swaledale and Wensleydale where the species can still be found, to look for archaeological evidence for previous dale inhabitants and use the extensive archive at The Dales Countryside Museum to find artefacts for each locale. 

Slowly, bird, place, historical time and artefacts began to crystallise into some sort of plan of action.

Now the drawing , observations and  compositions could begin!