We're having the Music spot first today ... The Be Good Tanyas ... ""It's not happening".... Yes, that beautiful song is called " It's not Happening" .. by the wonderful Be Good Tanyas. I love those understated but powerful songs. In the wacky world of birding we can all have these "it's not happening" times ...for various reasons. Everyone get sequences of bad luck ... from the local to the national .... you can go for weeks without seeing the kingfisher on your nearby bit of water, that's the local level, and at the other end of the spectrum you can miss the "target bird" of a whole series of twitches and you begin to think the whole world is against you. Conspiracy theories fill your head, what-ifs start to congregate, you start to wonder if you shouldn't take up moon-spotting or lichen-listing ... they tend not to fly away at least. I had a big attack of "'it's not happening" two winters ago, when a local Waxwing flock eluded me for weeks on end. True, they were very unreliable and short-staying at any one location, but even so ... it was a poor do! I began to cast doubt on various sitings .... I started to kid myself that some people were stringing tree-perching starlings, or that some reports were pure invention on the part of the duckmuggers* who claimed them. That's how it all gets to you. I got them in the end..after I had completely given up on the beggars. Jan 1st 2017 ... there were 22 of them right in front of me. Rather oddly, I didn't see any more until Feb 1st .... hmmm ..do I see a pattern emerging ? No. But there they were, even closer. I even photographed the little dodgers. And I got to show them to quite a few other people.... everyone likes them. So what's my message about all this? Well, all I can really say is, is that whether you see a bird or not doesn't actually matter very much, in the great scheme of things. That's why I tend to read the footy first in the paper ... it's exciting, it's fascinating, but it doesn't really matter. And then I do the crossword .... for the same reason. So your birding should be like that ... it's fascinating, often exciting, it gets you out and about, but ultimately it doesn't really matter. Smashing ! Rubbish photographs #5638 .... spot the Waxwing ... there were far more ...honestly ! But not right then .... * Duckmugger ... I wrote about birding slang on here recently .. have a look ... but in case you haven't time, a duckmugger is a birder with an overactive imagination who deludes him/herself that he's seen something that he/she hasn't. It comes from the Welsh verb dychmygu ... to imagine. Technical note ... you can blow that photograph up just by holding down the CTRL key and whizzing the wheel on your mouse round .... so there!
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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