We all know only too well the various sorts of " dodgy listing scenarios" that go on in the wacky world of " ticking". I have had a particular "problem" with "getting" Kingfisher on my house list. But why, you ask . Well, there's always been Kingfishers within House-Ticking Distance from my dear abode. But so far, after many, many years it is still not on The House List. So what is the problem ? Well, to see the stretch of water frequented by said generations of Kingfishers, the only way, is to go up to the attic, where I am right now, stand on a pile of books or whatever, or buy some stilts, and lean out of the tiny window at an awkward 35 degrees from the vertical. This is not a comfortable method ...after about 10 minutes of it, everything hurts. Yes, everything. Plus, I'm holding binoculars up to my eyes at the same farcical angle. You'd think that over many years of doing this,even in those tortuous, twisty-twiny postures described earlier, I would have jammed in on it flying by, even if only for a fleeting, whooshing electric-blue second or so. BUT NO ! IT NEVER HAS !!! And here's another thing ... sometimes, when I'm walking by that watery expanse, a Kingfisher has gone by, and flown off NEAR MY HOUSE. But .... never in such a way that I could have seen it from the house. It could have just gone a bit to the left, or a bit higher ... but it never has. I could persuade myself that I might have seen it from the house ... but I would know it was a lie. But .... I do know that lots of birders do tend to bend the rules a bit when required...... and there are a remarkable number of ways it can be done. Here's a good'un ! I think I've written on here somewhere about that time we were all looking for "Rare Wader X" .. with no luck ... but someone scoped a tiny ,far-far-far-away-bird in the distance .. and thought it "might" be it. We could even see loads of scopes trained on it in the similarly-distanced hide just behind the Faraway-Bird. We "should" have trudged round there, but we didn't .... someone had a pager or a primitive sort of mobile and sent a message to someone he knew was over there, asking if "it" was indeed "it" ... and it was. Readers, we ticked it. And went home. It had been a long day. But .... really ... it was cheating. I felt bad about it afterwards. One day, I'll spot that KF .... a day of dreams ! Un Jour de Rêves !
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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