Seven years ago at Hooting Yard, this…

People often wonder why a bird sanctuary was created at Bodger’s Spinney, for it is a somewhat gloomy spot. The moving spirit behind this avian paradise on earth was one Merrill Stubing, a man who, incidentally, was later to share his name with a fictional character. Although they had nought else in common, this was the name of the captain of The Love Boat, an exciting television series of the 1970s, long after the real “Bird Man” Stubing was dead.

Besotted with birds, Stubing lit upon Bodger’s Spinney as the perfect place for his planned sanctuary after accidentally wandering across it when he got lost on a Sunday morning jaunt with his colleagues from the Pastry Works. Hurling his considerable energy into the project, Stubing called for a meeting of interested parties, where he outlined his vision as follows:

And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.

And that, children, is why there is a bird sanctuary at Bodger’s Spinney.