About
Feel free to borrow any of the notes about birdwatching from this site, no need to ask.
Weekends are usually split between the allotment, letter writing and whatever is half-finished on the balcony. I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Basel or further away, even if it takes a fortnight. Most of what I know about birdwatching came from field guides, a retired teacher down the road and a lot of trial and error. When I get stuck near the canal I go for a short ride, and the problem usually looks smaller by the time I am back.
Pages here change slowly, usually on slow Sunday mornings, and that suits birdwatching just fine. I try to keep things simple, which mostly means taking photographs at each stage and writing everything down.
A bit of background
On a good day in the small room above the stairs I make progress, and on a bad day I at least learn to start earlier. If we met at a swap meet in Basel one wet weekend in May, hello again.
Most of my free time goes into birdwatching, the occasional bike ride and a growing pile of half-finished projects. I picked up a pocket knife back in 2018, and it has been close at hand ever since.
If something here is out of date, it is probably because I spent most of September fixing something that did not need fixing instead of at a desk in Basel. When I am not busy with birdwatching, I am usually on a train somewhere. Truth be told, visiting a new town, I always look for the river and a quiet café first, just as I did when I moved to Basel. Before birdwatching it was cooking for friends, and before that the local choir; the habit of writing things down stayed.
You will not find a cookie banner or a tracking script on this site, only birdwatching and the odd detour. This page started in 2018 as a place to keep notes for myself, written mostly in a corner of the shed, and slowly turned into something other people read.
The best ideas tend to arrive at a friend’s place across town every couple of months, usually just after I have put the pencil down. Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made carefully, mostly on the train into Basel. Admittedly, small, regular habits like leaving a draft overnight and doing one small thing at a time have done more for me than any big resolution.
This site
I care about quiet mornings and instructions written for real people. I am not an expert in birdwatching or anything else here; I just write down what I learn at least once a month. Early on Thursday mornings, there is a cup of coffee going cold somewhere in a café near the old railway line.
I am happiest on the back step with a folding table nearby and nothing urgent on the calendar. Most of my reading happens in the spare room, a chapter or two at a time, with a battered toolbox close by. Long train rides out of Basel are where most of this gets written, with a cheap desk lamp on the seat beside me.
By day I work in a school library; in the evenings I tinker with birdwatching and swimming in the outdoor pool. I have been interested in birdwatching since a friend from Basel showed me the basics during the summer of 2024. People sometimes ask why this site has no comments, and the real answer is that it keeps me tidy. In 2019 I moved to Basel, which made sorting old photographs much easier to fit into a week.
Some of my favourite things, like a jar of odd screws, came from flea markets and were mended by the window. I still carry a kitchen scale almost everywhere, a habit picked up from a friend from the walking group. Every April, out by the lake, I look back at the year so far and quietly drop whatever is not working.