It was the late summer of 2011, and there we all were meandering around the north shoreline of Lower Loch Erne in Northern Ireland ... me, The Significant Otter and The Shredder ( our dog). It were right 'ot as well. So there we were by this little jetty with a few small boats around, a few benches to sit on with a good view over the loch, so we got our picnic out and had tea. Naturally, I scanned around the loch to see what was about..... and after clocking all the nearish stuff I glimpsed a pink thingy in the far distance .. it seemed to be on the jetty of one of the islands in the loch .... and I wasn't sure what on earth it was. The was a smallish boat there too. Despite the heat, I schlepped back to the car, got out my 4-ton telescope and tripod and sat down again to have a closer look. It was indeed a great relief to put the Kowa TSN2 on the ground .... Well, I relocated the jetty, and the boat, and the thing. I will tell you now, that my first impression was that it was a flamingo ... it was sort of hunched down on the jetty, with its neck rising up, and the bill just tilted below the horizontal. The plumage was a lovely pale pinkish colour. The head/bill occasionally nodded a bit. It was very convincing. There was bit of a heat-haze out there .... but ... but ... it did look good. I switched places so the SO could have a look. She agreed that it did look like a flamingo. But it was a long, long way off, it hadn't moved except for the slight occasional nods of the bill. There was a bit of heat-haze too ... but, dear reader, it looked spot on. We could even see the dark down-pointing distal half of the bill with its pinky base. We wondered if it was one of those plastic flamingos people put on their lawns. But that bill was moving a little bit ...occasionally. So... we watched. The SO with the scope, me with the bins ... and watched. We swapped over from time to time over the next 10 minutes or so. I even went back to the car and put the x60 lens on ! It still looked like a flamingo. I swear to you, if we had upped sticks and motored back home, I would have sent that in to the Irish Bird Report or whatever as a sighting of a presumably escaped flamingo ... complete with a drawing and all the rest. I mean, they're pretty distinctive birds. You could hardly get it wrong. I was looking forward to other sightings being reported, and maybe finding out where it had escaped from. Then an amazing thing happened ! Something we could hardly believe ? You probably won't believe it either. The "flamingo" stood up, picked up a towel and walked along the jetty to the boat. And then disappeared inside it. What !! It was a man. A man with pink skin, ... and slip-on footwear with black toe-ends. Not only that. This man was stark naked! Naked as the day he was born. Except for the odd footwear. I don't really know how he had contorted himself to get that effect. But it was brilliant, however it was done. The "body " of the "flamingo could have been the visible top bit of his recumbent pink body... or a bit of it. The "neck" was probably one of his sticking-up legs. (?) It's "head" was probably his dangling foot. The black-tipped bill was the black-tipped end of his sandal-ish sort of footwear or whatever it was. Well. something like that. Who will ever know ? We both felt like right fools ... nothing new there then. And I felt I'd had a lucky escape . Oh yes. Phew!! Here's the music for today .. it's remarkably apt ....
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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