As all my readers will remember, because I wrote about it ages ago, I lived in a big tall house in Newark... and over the road was a huge house with a huge garden and huge trees ... and in those huge trees were corvids, Rooks to be more precise. and they made a lot of noise, and I loved it ! If you live there, you could trundle along to "Northgate House", just a bit north of the castle and a bit south of the railway station, and see if they're still there. And then you could tell me . I hope they are. But at the age of eleven I was uprooted and got "migrated" to a right dump called " Widnes" which was not good. So I have a huge affinity with the "Corvid Tribe" ...as, I'm sure, have you lot. I used to get a "WOJAR" over my current house. Wave of Jackdaws and Rooks. Most early mornings 1000s+ of them would whizz over the house NE-wards . But one day, it all stopped. And that was that. An interesting book, but, like all books, it should have an Index. In fact , every book should have an index. And now, "When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease" .. Roy Harper.
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I've been wittering about the absence of so many migrant birds recently ... and very strange and sad it is. Anyway, I found an ancient example right back at post 141.... ... and here it is ... it took me a while to find it... blimey. I was talking to somebody who knows these things ... we'll call him Curly .... he's got a mention here before .. and we got round to this " where are all the blasted Swallows ?" thing. I mean, yes, some more Swallows have, eventually arrived, over a month late ... but in nothing like the usual numbers. My theory was, they're all lying on their backs, dead as door-nails, in some desert somewhere. It's happened with other species in the past. But Curly tells me that the Swallows arrived v. late in southern Europe, and because they were ± a month late and needed to get breeding sharpish... they stopped there and got nest-building and egg-laying etc. It's as if you were off on your Norfolk holiday but the car kept conking out and there were massive traffic jams so you had only got as far as Stoke-on-Trent and most of the fortnight's holiday had been and gone ... so you decided to just have the rest of your holiday right there in, cripes, Stoke-on-Trent. You know it has to be the sensible choice. So ..let's hope that they will gradually turn up ...but probably not in good numbers. Swifts, for example, are on the decline for various unfortunate reasons. So here I am writing this and looking out of the window and seeing NO MIGRANT BIRDS AT ALL. Having visited various top birding spots and seen just 1 (ONE) Swallow and ONE House Martin so far today, I can't help thinking that us ( and the birds) will be having a crap time over the next few weeks. Here's a smashing Roy Harper song .. "Feeling All The Saturday." I've been walking all over the place
Now I'm walking back again I've been smiling all over my face I wonder where the hell I've been? Won't you take me by the hand, divided by my brain I'm feeling all the Saturday of failing to explain And I've been walking up into the air Following my aeroplane One of these days we're gonna land somewhere I do believe you're all insane And I've brought home a piece of cloud to stick it in a jar And stuff it on the mantelpiece to tell me just how far And mum's just bought herself a leaning-post It's made of words and pages It says God gives us all our daily toast But dad still earns the wages And I've just bought a jigsaw puzz It's made of cotton wool And when I've undone every piece The truth will fill my skull And I've got a brother and he's one year old He wears a zappy little nappy He squeezes the content through the cot rails What a very crappy little chappy And lately I can even rest my toes on the horizon I think my hands are just the job to rest my nothingness on ..... This excellent book is an account of a year at Minsmere ..... I've been lucky enough to have visited Minsmere many times. And many of those visits involved hitch-hiking ... there and back. Before you get the "Contents" page there's an introduction ... which ends like this ..... " ... on every blasted knollyrock ( if you can spot fifty I spy four more) there's that gnarlybird ygathering, a runalittle, doalittle, prealittle, pouralittle, wipealittle, kicksalittle, severalittle, eatalittle, whinealittle,kenalittle,helfalittle, pelfalittle gnarlybird. A verytableland of bleakbardfields ! James Joyce And just below that, we get this .... Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug T.S Eliot and then, this ......... Kluut ! Jeremy Sorensen ... and this Welsh song is "performed" by ME ! Where indeed. I don't know about you, but the skies are empty of incoming migrants ..... OK, I've seen a few Swallows, there's plenty of chiffchaffs, but ,for example, I went to a sure-thing Wheatear spotting site ,and there were ... NONE! . Then I went to Grumbling Stumps ... a measly 2 Swallows, no House Martins, no no Sand Martins ...... SO ... what has happened ? The usual culprit is "problems on the way" .... it is a massive journey through Africa, over the Mediterranean, and then through Spain etc ... and then the Channel. This morning I've been watching from 6:30 am ( and now it is 10 am .... and I've seen almost nowt. So .... I've looked up the usual arrival dates in my local bird report, and here's some of the earliest and average arrival times .... EARLIEST MEAN SWALLOW 5/3 22/3 H. MARTIN 17/3 17/3 W.WARBLER 23/3 28/3 OSPREY 4/3 22/3 SWIFT 1/4 16/4 WHEATEAR 26/2 10/3 SAND M. 24/2 10/3 REED WARBLER 5/4 13/4 SEDGE WARBLER 27/3 11/4 GARDEN WARBLER 6/4 19/4 LESSER THROAT 2/4 18/4 WHITETHROAT 2/4 15/4 COMMON TERN 30/3 12/4 PIED FLY 7/4 16/4 YELLOW WAG 24/3 10/4 CUCKOO 23/3 16/4 DOTTEREL 29/3 21/4 WHIMBREL 11/3 7/4 You will probably have already found that your "arrivals" are a lot later than usual. And I'm going to have my "half-past-tenses" and then venture out into a startlingly bitter-cold morning. The music looms .... For many years me and The Significant Otter ( TSO) have "eaten out" in an upstairs big cafe above a local supermarket. Not only that .... it overlooks a big river, and there's lots of trees, which have been a Waxwing magnet ...BUT ..in a couple of day's time, it is being closed down. Grrrr. I do realise that it wasn't actually built for birding ..... but I'm going to miss it terribly. Presumably the staff that operate the cafe are going to get kicked out as well. And talking of hides, I wonder where the very best one in the UK is. There's something to think about. And what about the worst one ? But now ..the music. I've squeezed my way through that hefty stone Polo Mint. Obviously Boris is having a duff day for bird-spotting ..... he should be getting a good "list" what with all his peregrinations all over the UK and further afield all over Europe and America .... and I suspect he gets all the flights with us taxpayer's money. I've been trawling through previous years to work out the average arrival dates of some of our "spring" arrivals. And this was what I found ... Chiffchaff 3rd April Blackcap 7th April Swallow 15th April W. Warbler 16th April House Martin 2nd May Swift 4th May And here's the "actual" arrivals so far..... Chiffchaff 23rd March. Loads of them everywhere. Blackcap Overwintered .... Still two males and a female now. Swallow I've only "spotted" one .. 29th March !! (..and none since)* W.Warbler 12th April, 6:15pm ! Singing well. 3 on 13th April. House Martin None yet Swift I'll be waiting for a while ! Anyway ..time for the lovely music ...... Roy Harper .. " Tom Tiddler's Ground" ( That's the space between the high tide and the low.) He's probably using a DADGAD tuning .
* Well, I got my second Swallow of the year yesterday 14th .... in exactly the same place where the first one was spotted. In my morning paper there was a dinky article telling us avid readers in the soggy and cold UK that in hot countries the birds are much more colourful. But, tantalisingly, they didn't come up with any actual REASONS why that is so. My theory ,so far, is that the country in question was populated by 90% dull little beggars, but that wouldn't be very attractive to all those worldbirders who want to see exciting birds .... .....so .. "they" needed to bring in foreign, brightly-coloured ones. Money talks ! Or maybe the "locals" just painted them. But that's not the only possibility. I wonder if us humans get duller when they go to hot countries ? So, by contrast, the birds look brighter due to the camo-jacketed observers. Perhaps some of my readers could come up with other theories. Maybe it will be one of those impenetrable thingys. But meanwhile, let's have a bit of music .... yes, I know we've seen it before, but it is my favourite song of all time ...... I "do" it almost every day... and I have been for approx 50 years. Yes folks .... I went Swallow-spotting this afternoon. In German the swallow is " Die Schwalbe" ... and lo and behold, after three minutes of my Schwalbe - Suchen ( Swallow-Search) I got one. Excellent. First of the year for me. Oho, thought I ! There's probably quite a few more in the offing. So, in light drizzle, I walked and walked and walked ... and walked ..... straight past a Gr. White Egret ..... and after a very tiring and long walk which included several other Swallow-spotting-spots, I was still stuck on 1. Fair enough. There is also an excellent chess magazine called Die Schwalbe .... ... that's it..... I'll have to dig up a suitable bit of music. Here's Heintje singing " Schwalbenlied" (Swallow-song) . SchwalbenliedSwallow's song
[Refrain:] [Refrain:] Mutterl, unterm Dach ist ein Nesterl gebaut, schau', schau', schau', ja, schau'. Dort hat der Dompfaff ein Pärchen getraut trau', trau', trau', ja, trau'. Da sieh nur, wie glücklich die beiden sind. Sie fliegen hin und her. Sie fliegen kreuz und quer. Ach Mutter, ach wär' ich ein Schwalbenkind. Wie schön, wie schön das wär, ja, das wär. Auf und ab, kreuz und quer fliegt ein Schwalbenpärchen her ohne Rast und Ruh. Wunderbar, wunderschön, wie die beiden sich versteh'n, da schau' ich gerne zu. Die Amsel, die sonst immer singt und lacht Ist heut ganz still und hat sich dann ganz sanft gedacht1 immer zu, immer zu, wie die Schwälbchen ohne Ruh, ob das glücklich macht. In the i recently there was a huge spread about "boredom." And right towards the end, it meandered off into suggesting various pastimes could be a good way of not being bored. And then, bird-watching was suggested as a suitable and "blameless" hobby. And people didn't "do" bird-watching because they've never actually done it. SO .... I wondered if bird-watching WAS "blameless." Maybe ... just maybe .... it isn't . [a] Way back, birds were mainly seen as FOOD ! [b] They still are now, to some extent. [c] And their eggs are rather attractive and collectable. [d] And lots of us humans shoot birds in large numbers. [e] And the lead shot creates havoc for wildlife and agriculture. [f] Then there's those bloody twitchers and their gas-guzzling cars. [g] Some birders are not very nice at all .. in many different ways. EG ... [h] There's a lot of "toxic rivalry" throughout the birding fraternity. [i] There's a lot of idiots in "The Birding World "! Oh yes. !! [j] And there's lots of Bossy Bigheads as well . I'm sure there's lots of other reasons why birding is not "blameless" at all. Enough of gloom and negativity .... let's have some music .... ..... chunky or what ! Manu ----- Tes Cicatrices ................ Des cicatrices aussi belles, Un visage de pluie et d'argent. Quand tes larmes s'y glissent, Encore plus belles. C'est le plus bel hommage au temps, Le plus beau sentiment. Comment te dire comment je t'aime, Comment te dire tout simplement? Que tes cicatrices sont les plus belles, Que la vie ne glisse plus comme avant. Jamais cicatrices ne furent plus belles. Que tes cicatrices soient miennes. On cicatrise avec le temps, Ca m'électrise toujours autant. Fissurée en plein vol c'est magnifique, Je ne touche plus le sol vraiment. Oh non vraiment... C'est magique! Comment te dire comment je t'aime, Comment te dire tout simplement? Que tes cicatrices sont les plus belles, Que la vie ne glisse plus comme avant. Jamais cicatrices ne furent plus belles. Que tes cicatrices soient miennes, Et que nos plaies se fendent d'un sourire, Fissurés en plein vol de souvenirs. Jamais cicatrices ne furent plus belles. Que tes cicatrices soient miennes. Comment te dire comment je t'aime, Comment te dire tout simplement? Que tes cicatrices sont les plus belles, Que la vie ne glisse plus comme avant, Plus comme avant. Tes cicatrices, Bird of the day so far .... Sparrowhawk circling way up in the the sky over the house. Woo ! I'm off out to spot a few birds if the rain keeps away. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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