There I was on Scilly trying to draw some nice plants, when a bloody great Wryneck got in the way and ruined the whole thing ... I don't like September... it marks the onset of crap weather, cold walks, rain, wind and sogginess for what seems like an endless series of long ,dreary months. OK ... I know the summer was a bit like that ... and, to be fair, Autumn is good for vismigging, except that I'm far too old and decrepit to wait around for hours in the freezing cold mornings trying to pick up a Meadow Pipit 2 miles above me. So... just for this day, I'm going to pretend it is still August, but I'm choosing the last day of August in 1980 bloody 7 ! On that day we all zipped along to Lytham Railway Station, where there was a 100+ strong throng of us Lancashire birders waiting to spot "the" Wryneck. Yes, I was a Lancashire Birder back then. Maurice Jones was there, The Boss of Blackpool-Based Birding, and as there was a lot of waiting going on, and waiting, and waiting, we spent a considerable amount of time admiring the beautiful young lady who was standing next to him on the other side of the platform. Maybe she was some relative of his, or a family friend or whatever .... she was indeed lovely. Of course, nobody actually used their telescopes or binoculars to look at her more closely, of course not, but whilst scanning for the still-not-having-turned-up-Wryneck some people might have accidentally had a glimpse. Anyway, then a fine, lovely and wonderfully strange thing happened! Not only did "the" Wryneck appear, it flew right along the platform above the massed crowd of nature-lovers, birdwatchers, tickers, twitchers and people who were actually waiting for an actual train, and almost, almost, nearly, close as anything, touch-and-go-but-not-quite landed on "The Boss of Blackpool-Based Birding's" head. !! Bah ! There was only a millimetre or so in it ! How about that ! Memorable or what ? In that "Big Diary" where I have noted all three of my Memorable Birding Moments, I simply wrote ... 31/8/87 Wryneck Lytham Station. I was terse in those days. It was a Terse Universe for all of erse back then. Or even Werse. The day before that,, I had "had" my second ever Woodchat Shrike .. again at Lytham. But not, regrettably, at the railway station. The only Egrets around in those days were the ones inside words like " regrettably." Which was regrettable. And now, the usual totally irrelevant music .....
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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