In memory of Martin Garner
My first memory of Martin Garner is from the Isle of Sheppey in March 1983. He was, as always in those days, with Bill Morton and we all stood together watching a Rock Thrush. The memory of the Rock Thrush has faded a little in the intervening thirty-three years but my memory of Martin has not. He greeted me as though we had known each other for ever and we immediately became great friends. For the next few years Martin was amongst my most frequent birding companions and we went on numerous wonderful trips together - watching Leach’s Petrels at Hilbre, twitching the Slapton Little Swift and the Ballyvaughan Belted Kingfisher, finding a young Lesser White-fronted Goose at Southport and enjoying Scilly’s best-ever autumns, including that heady American passerine-filled October of 1985.
My overwhelming memory of those years is, however, not just of the birds but of what fun it all was. Martin’s enthusiasm was infectious and each new bird was duly greeted with a loud ‘Whoo!’, the same joyful appreciation which would later become his trademark ‘Boom!’ Even then I was struck by Martin’s genuine pleasure in the birds he saw, one of his greatest excitements being a Yellow-browed Warbler in his Frodsham garden, a really rare bird for Cheshire. His constant desire to learn and communicate was also obvious, and led to his first publication -‘The Birds of Frodsham Marsh’ - produced with Bill Morton in 1987.
In 1991 Martin moved to Luton, responding to his new environment by spending precious birding time on one or two carefully chosen projects rather than trying to see everything. Chief amongst these projects was his study of his local Yellow-legged Gulls. This led in turn to further questions, research, correspondence and the eventual unravelling of the identification and true British status of Caspian Gull. Though Caspian Gulls are now verging on the routine, we need to remember that we were looking right through them for years. It required someone to point out what was right under our noses, and that person was Martin. The ‘British Birds’ papers he published with David Quinn and Bob Glover in 1997 were truly ground-breaking and are still an essential reference.
It was no surprise to hear of his successes in Northern Ireland either where, together with Anthony McGeehan, he brought much fresh thinking about what was possible. I envied his early explorations of ‘Northen Eiders’ and his discoveries of ‘Grey-bellied Brants’ and a ‘Shore/Horned Lark’ but I was most jealous of his gorgeous young Thayer’s Gull in Belfast, written up with Anthony in a 1997 paper in ‘Birding World’.
Martin’s ability to ask the right questions and follow the evidence led in 2004 to another classic ‘BB’ paper, this time with Killian Mullarney, on the infamous 1988 ‘Chalice petrel’, their conclusion being that it was most likely to have been a Swinhoe’s Petrel. His forensic skills were also applied in 2005 in a ‘BB’ piece on the long-controversial 1956 ‘Fair Isle peep’, considered at first to be a Semipalmated Sandpiper then identified as a Western Sandpiper but, now argued Martin, actually a Semipalmated after all. Contributions to ‘Birding World’ continued too, most notably a major paper on Eiders.
It was inevitable that Martin would be invited to join BBRC where his knowledge, enthusiasm and willingness to tackle new problems were an immediate and lasting asset. In an inherently conservative committee environment, Martin’s input on some thorny issues was a breath of fresh air.
Once in Sheffield, and latterly at Flamborough, Martin spent more time developing his ‘Birding Frontiers’ enterprise, encompassing his twin loves of boundary-pushing and collaborative working. His 2008 book ‘Frontiers in Birding’ had really been the prospectus for this kind of approach, bringing together the contributions of a number of colleagues in the birding world. Tellingly, it was credited to ‘Martin Garner and friends’. The hallmark of this project, indeed of all his work, was this inclusivity, and it is noticeable that most of his papers are by ‘Garner and A. N. Other‘. He loved working with, teaching and inspiring others and learning from them in return. In this he was of course much influenced by his faith and the experiencess of his ‘other life’ in developing community-based missionary work at home and abroad.
Subsequently his ‘Birding Frontiers’ website proved to be a ‘must have’ on the ‘favourites’ list where he and an ever-growing team of friends contributed material on everything from cutting edge identification problems to digiscoping tips. He also developed a wide range of projects including lecture tours and speaking engagements, gull identification masterclasses, trips to Israel, Linosa and Lanzarote, an ongoing collaboration with the Biotope team in Varanger and the development of their annual ‘Gullfest’, the Spurn ‘Migration Festival’ and a series of autumn bird-finding trips to Shetland with ‘Shetland Nature’. On one of the latter he was instrumental in identifying (on Fetlar) Britain’s third Taiga Flycatcher. Martin clearly loved being at Flamborough too and, true to form, he found there some great birds which most would have missed, for example a non-singing Iberian Chiffchaff and a fly-by Brünnich’s Guillemot.
Martin’s cancer diagnosis was a shock to all of us but he continued to pursue his projects with the customary energy and enthusiasm. It was a great, if somewhat poignant, pleasure to work with Martin on his last venture, the publication of his two ‘Challenge’ books. Mine was a minor proof-reading/annoying pedant role but it brought home to me the true breadth and depth of his knowledge of identification issues and also the extent of his contacts and collaborations, both in Britain and worldwide. He was particularly proud of the part he played in helping to uncover the plumage and vocal (and subsequently genetic) differences between the members of the Water Pipit complex, just recently published in ‘BB’. The ‘Challenge’ books have been a deserved success, showcasing perfectly Martin’s ability to communicate clearly and simply and to make complex material accessible to a wide audience. It is a tragedy that there will be no more but we can hope that a planned collaboration on gulls may yet somehow see the light of day.
In all his adventures Martin continued to see himself as part of a team on a shared journey of discovery. He had a gift for communication, working with others and making things happen. In many ways his birding was not just about birds - it was also about people. He had the ability to see the qualities and skills of others and was always generous in acknowledging them. Being with Martin not only made you feel good about your birding. It made you feel good about yourself too.
The greatest loss is of course to his family - to Sharon, Emily and Abigail - but the world of birding has lost a family member too. Martin reminded us to enjoy our birding, to ask questions, to be ‘always discovering’.
Andy Stoddart
02 February 2015
