Poached Page #3

eggs and go, "Oh, yeah."

Photograph them.

But like I said now, the

eggs don't interest me.

I don't even get the urge for it. It's

like, "oh, I'll pick that egg up.

I'll take it home.

Oh, I'll have a

secret collection."

That's well and truly gone now.

Occasionally, like, if there's

bird droppings on the egg

or there's a mark and that, I might

just turn one of the eggs slightly,

just so it's better for the

picture and stuff like that.

And then I'll put

it back how it was.

And so, really, I was

still collecting eggs

after I packed in

actually taking the shells.

But I was collecting eggs

as in a photography way.

And that's so I can show

people in the books

and stuff like that.

And people love seeing it.

And I could leave that on

my bookshelf in my house

and things like that, where you can't

do that with an egg collection.

I am now 43, and basically I've

had dead-end jobs in the past.

And I'd love to be able to

start a photography business,

sell some of my images, and offer these

images out to people who want to buy them.

I've got a friend,

Michael Stockson.

Michael was my assistant.

He was helping me to get back to

work and become self-employed.

When I go out with John, I

find and locate

nests, basically.

That's it.

I met him about,

oh, 1987, '88.

So it was coming towards the

end of my egg collecting career.

He was still an active

egg collector at the time.

I gave him my egg collection.

We've been friends ever since.

A true friend is

someone who sticks by you

and helps you out and

don't inform police on you.

I might stay out of trouble

when I'm going out

doing stuff in forests

and woods and stuff.

That's what just keeps

you out of trouble.

You got police

and stuff on you,

in mountains and that

they not got police.

All right, well, you're not

doing any harm, anyway.

It's just safe, it's just

I feel safe and okay

in mountains.

Trouble attracts to me

for some reason.

[John] You've got to have

a license in Britain

for photographing with eggs

of high-profile birds,

including schedule one, like eagles,

ospreys, peregrine falcons, and that.

They've got to assess

whether you're

knowledgeable enough to be

able to photograph birds

safely at their nest.

If I got caught photographing

a bird at a nest

without a license, and this

actually occurred to me.

I got a letter from a

license application place.

"Sorry, we're rejecting

your application.

There's information that's

come to our attention

from the police."

He was predominantly,

um, a photographer,

but he used to associate

with a number of egg collectors.

I got involved in

a case about 2006

where he was

actually up a tree.

He says he was trying to

photograph a goshawk nest.

And he was actually prosecuted

by North Wales Police

for disturbing the goshawk.

The nest that he was

near actually failed.

Basically, the parent

birds abandoned it,

and the eggs effectively died.

I got 12 months

probation service,

and I got banned from every national park and

RSPB reserve in the country for one year.

Because of Andy McWilliam

and links to him

everything, nobody will help me

out now because of him.

And this is what I'm

fighting against.

You know, so that's why I'm

bringing me book out against him.

You know,

to show the other side.

It's going to be called,

Scourge of the Birdman.

So he's the scourge of my life.

And it's nearly 400 pages, this

book, with photographs and that.

Because it was my past, I'm thinking of putting

it out as my proper name, John Kinsley.

And then I want to

move on from this.

Basically, this is closure.

I want to put that behind me,

and I'm working forward now.

So then everything

that continues then

will be under my business

name of Ben Tarvie.

I don't mind you leaving me phone numbers

and stuff on there like that, you know?

I know this documentary can help

towards getting a license in Britain.

I'm hoping to be able to prove

a lot to the authorities.

I just feel as though

they'll see my journey,

some of what I've been through,

some of what

I'm trying to do.

They'll even see me, like,

where I'm taking my young son,

Andrew, along with me and

showing him the right ways,

trying to get him into

wildlife and that.

And later on, as he

understands a bit more,

he'll see where

his dad went wrong.

So I'm trying to build something

now for my son,

and I've never, ever going

to jeopardize that again.

[soft instrumental

music playing]

[Mark] When I was 14,

there was an older boy,

and he was a great nest finder.

He was a god, if you like, within our

egg-collecting community at that time.

May the 23rd, I think it was 1976.

We were just finding nests.

That was stupid, really. We didn't have ropes

or nothing We were just free climbing.

And I found him

where I'd left him.

And he'd fallen from the

cliff, and he was dead.

Of course it sticks with me.

Moments like that in life never go away.

You know, they're there forever.

I can go back to

that day now vividly

as it happened yesterday

and see everything about it.

Everything.

It was that that then

stopped me at that time.

I gave my egg collection

away 20 odd years ago.

I met a friend in work. We got

talking, we were friends.

And he said, "I used to collect eggs." He

just come out with it out of the blue,

and I said, "Well, so did I."

And I said, "Let's do it again."

I'm a lot older now.

I got transport.

I can travel, so we started, you

know, "Let's go up to Scotland,

up to the Orkneys, and do the sea

birds," which was phenomenal.

Stuff we used to dream of

when we was kids.

I made contacts.

Um, I joined the

Jourdain Society,

which is an organization which

is basically all egg collectors.

And it all come crashing

down, as things do.

[male reporter] There were

dramatic scenes outside Salisbury

Magistrate's Court

today as the defendants

left the building in no mood

to talk after hefty fines.

[indistinct]

All were members of the Jourdain

egg collector's society.

After a tip off, police

raided one of their meetings.

It was the second largest

illegal egg collection

ever seized in this country.

There it is.

[Mark] Everybody, to have a life, must

have a pursuit and must have a passion.

I mean, what is the

purpose of living?

I live for this, for

the nesting season.

It gives me the drive for life.

If you'll have a look. I'll just open

that slightly, and maybe you can see.

There's five eggs in it.

You know, without passion,

you've got nothing in life.

Everything you see me and Michael Stockton

do in this documentary is a reenactment.

Neither of us collect any...

Everything you see me and Michael Stockton

do for this documentary is a reenactment.

Neither of us collect

eggs any longer.

I don't like that last bit.

[instrumental music playing]

We're going to try and show how the

egg collectors used to prepare eggs

that they keep

in the shell collections.

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