I was 32. I had just read Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book. I was in a caravan in Northern Ireland. I opened the local paper, the Belfast Telegraph. Big headline .... birdwatchers flock to Bangor to spot a rare Bonaparte's Gull ! Coo ! Cripes ! Jings ! From where I was sitting it was about 2-3 miles down the coast.I had never seen what you would call a "rare bird" even though I had been a birdwatcher of sorts from the age of 12 or so. No money, no transport, living in a complete dump called Widnes, my opportunities were few. So ... I explained to The Significant Otter that I was going for a walk to see a rare bird .. maybe ... and off I went, with my crap pair of binoculars ... or "bins", as Mr. Oddie had told me to call them. I had no idea as to exactly where this bird actually was, except in the vaguest terms. But I had looked it up in my battered Collin's Bird Guide where there was a brief description in the "extreme rarities" bit at the back. I had walked a long way, and had more or less given up when I got to a car park, and most of the car park was a big puddle ... and in the puddle was a gull. A small gull. It was a Bonaparte's Gull. In the same puddle as me ! I remember thinking at the time, as we both stood there, that this was probably the rarest bird I would ever see. How wrong I was ! But that's another story. You'll never guess what the next rare bird I saw was ... and how I found out about it !! No way. OK ...music ... Wir Sind Helden ... "Wenn es passiert" ... very appropriate actually .... what a bloody gorgeous song !
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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