You might remember me wittering about my dinky camera running out of jungle-juice just as I dobbed in on a couple of Waxwings. Well, today I found the little devils again and this time it was topped up with Jungle-Juice Plus ... and here they are. The only irritating thing is ... now THEY'VE got THEM on the House List but l still haven't. Grrrr. And .. I got quite a few duff pictures of them too. Let's see shall we ... and after those, My Cunning Plan !! BUT ,,, I've come up with a Cunning Plan ... Stunningly Cunning. They only seem to have one bush to feed from ... so I thought I might whoosh down to the garden centre and snap up about 100 berry-bushes in pots, then space them out at about 100m apart between that house and mine. Obviously they would then gradually work their way along the line of highly attractive bushes round to my house. Come on ... you're impressed. And .. it might even work. Plus ... I can always take them back when the job's done. Win-Win !!!!!!!!!!! I'm an ingenious old Hector. But ... I can't wait forever ......
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Crikey .... fake news /disinformation/misinformation has been all over the news this morning .... and "they" want "something" "done" about "it." Or do they ? Is this all just getting "us" to "think" that "they" can/will "do" "something" about "it ? ... ooooh .... creepy or what ? And just where is the line drawn ? _______________________________________________ Sherlock Holmes .. those stories, I suspect, are made up .... they are, at least, misinformation. They are misleading, in the sense that none of it ever happened. So that's TS Eliot, Shakespeare, Margaret Drabble, Hercule Poirot, Blandings Castle, Just William, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Uncle The Elephant, Animal Farm, Three Men in a Boat, Swallows and Amazons, Coot Club .. all chucked on the Orwellian bonfire. In the Bird-o-Sphere, there's those made-up stories in " Evenings at the Coot and Corncrake" ...... well, I think they were made up. But even worse ... there's ME. Eek !! Some of the stuff on here is, er, made up !! Yes .... ! All those poems about Capercaillies ... ... and that one about the Skua being the opposite of Auks etc ! .. and those birds with birds inside them ....they're not "really" inside them. All that stuff about Wavely Newt !! Wavely Bloody Newt !!!!! He "wrote" the one where a Nuthatch evolves into a Woodpecker in ½ a swoop ! Or is it the other way round ? That story where I got someone we didn't like to go up a magic tree and vanish for ever. How we laughed. Hang on ...Skua IS the opposite of Auks, come to think of it. Phew ! And all those things I "pretended" I "did" in unoccupied hides .... oo-er. ... and all those hides with fake, silly names and odd innards I wrote about . And entire reserves that don't exist in the "real" "world" !! Maybe I never went to Lithuania. After all, it's not very likely is it. And what about Bruce's faked-up New Year's Day Lists ? Eh ? What about them ? And that daft old biddy and her imaginary Black-throated Diver. And her "proper birdwatcher" with "proper binoculars " unlike "me and mine" ? That " Flintshire Bird Club"maybe doesn't exist either ... nor its "opposite" faction. Hey ... what about all those "palindromic medicines" I, er, made up .... PuffinsniffuP, Leg-gel, Gnatang, Lionoil, Ratstar ..... all total figments of my imagination. And that's only a tiny fraction of all that slightly fictional stuff wot I've rote. I'm bang to rights, me. BUT .... If anybody says owt, I'll simply tell them that all this was fake news as well. Aha !! After all, everyone knows that the Flintshire Bird Club has been going for 60 years at least. And Wavely Newt...if he isn't actually true, be really should be. And some of those other things are true too. And Grumbling Stumps isn't far from its true self. So... I should be OK ... I'm a terrific liar for a start. ... or .... am I ? Er ......... maybe .... Here's the sort of birding books every county should have ...... I didn't know about that 2nd one ... but I got the first one years ago in a charity shop for a mere 50p. Its full title, which is tricky to read , is "Easy Birdwatching at sites in and around Suffolk." It lists and describes loads of sites that birders with mobility problems can get to ... and it tells you where they are, and how you can get there, and where a nearby car park is, and whether you can "do your birding" wholly or partially from your car, and where the toilets are, which bits you can get to if you use a stick or a wheelchair ... it's as helpful as it can be. There's lots of clearly drawn, helpful maps as well. And as I mentioned at the start, it's the sort of book every county should have. Maybe some do ...... but that's the only one I've ever seen. Maybe nowadays all that sort of info is gettable on t'net. But I suspect that's only for reserves and the like ... all those dinky but brilliant little watching-places are still largely unknown to most . But that Suffolk book tells you every detail about those too ... the best lay-by to go to, a map reference, what you might see at different times of the year ... it's brilliant. Here's the first bit of the foreword ..... "Management of a public nature reserve demands almost as much concern for people as it does for the wildlife they have come to see. When we were developing Minsmere, in the early sixties, the occasional wheel-chaired visitors had to wait in the reserve centre while their partners were out on the trails and visiting the hides. Such people rarely complained about what they were missing. They were content, they said, to be able to watch the Sand Martins in the newly made cliff by the reception hut ; they enjoyed close encounters with the people-conditioned thrushes, tits and finches in the picnic area and were pleased to see the wilder warblers and other more elusive creatures that frequented the rich woodland-reed-bed ecotone at the west side of the car park. Good enough - but from our point of view, it wasn't good enough." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So .... that's me being serious for once. But ... I remember well when The Significant Otter broke her foot many years ago, we found out only too quickly what being even temporarily impaired was like. We tried wheeling her around the town in a wheelchair and just about everything went wrong. We couldn't get into the bank ... they couldn't find the ramp that was supposed to help us get past the single step .... so that was up the shoot. Then we went to another bank which, helpfully, had a lift to get us up the steps. Smashing ... except that after it had ascended about 6" it jammed, and we were stuck there for about 20 minutes. And when they had got us out, they then couldn't get us into the bank. It was almost funny how inept everywhere was. And this farcical trail of cock-ups and carelessness kept on happening almost everywhere we went. We won't even go into the whole public toilet issue. No. Completely Mad ... the whole experience. It's good to know that things are much better these days. (?) Or are they ? Well, to some extent. Anyway, I'm going to have a little saunter around the net to see what info there is around my little birding sphere ... but for now ....... music .... sweet music ... and appropriate too .. it's the excellent Yelle and " Completement Fou " .... which, of course, means " Completely Mad" .... If you haven't read the first two gripping installments, they're here .. 288-when-i-was-in-lithuania-part-1.html and here .. 293-when-i-was-in-lithuania-part-2.html As you all know by now, a few years ago I went to Lithuania for a week. After all, I never shut up about it. It's about the only memorable birding-thing I've ever done. It's my own, tiny shred of uniqueness. I was actually at a conference, so I didn't have much time to do any proper birding, but I did manage to do a bit, mainly in the wee small hours of the dawn ... Anyhow, here's part three .... it's the first morning, and a stumbling, knackered version of me set off to Kaunas's Azuolynas Park ... only a 20-minute stroll from "our" hotel. ..... so ... part 3 then ... I was impressed ! The local park was an amazing, massive, overgrown, semi-wild oak/willow-hornbeam ancient forest with a few paths hacked through it. The cold and drizzle meant that I didn't see a lot, but the potential was obvious. I slithered down a ravine, crossed a road and went down by the river. This was a big,big, river but the now-soaked and cold me had to get back to the hotel. I suppose I ought to mention "our" daily routine ... that is, the 20 or so people at this conference thingy ... each day we walked from the hotel after " breakfast" which was awful, and sat in a room somewhere in the bowels of Kaunas University and did our various things. At 5pm we walked back to the hotel, and then we were all dragged out to experience Lithuanian Culture , ie eating out on different restaurants each night. Actually I think this was a precautionary measure to stop us males getting into "trouble." If you know what I mean. Lithuania is reknowned for organised crime and prostitution, and I suspect that one or the other, or both, had landed visitors in the soup on previous courses. This would be soup of a Dead Sea nature judging by the amount of salt in Lithuanian "cuisine". It was awful. I think I could have floated my Lithuanian coins in that soup, it was 97% salt. And the courses arrived so slowly we were there till 11pm plus. And almost in the dark. It was all very odd. By the end of the week I was feeding myself on peanuts and raisins like a Blue Tit. I can state now that there are no sandwiches in Lithuania. Just mountains of fish and meat and salt. Mostly eaten in those ¾-dark restaurants . Meals out last all evening in Lithuania ( for the same precautionary reasons I mentioned above) but each morning I was out at 5am scouring the outskirts of Kaunas. I found some interesting things. All the grey/black birds were far more black-and-white here, so the Hooded Crows were much more pied and the "Pied" Wagtails were White Wagtails. The main danger to the wanderer (me) in early-morning Kaunas is the preponderance of massive nasty dogs and I soon learned to shout SHOO-AAH at their huge, hairy owners as these huge hairy hungry viragos nibbled my ankles. Shoo-ah = "dog" in Lithuanian. I saw some good birds too. In Azuolynas Park were breeding Icterine Warblers, Golden Orioles, Red-Breasted Flycatchers plus goodies like Wood Warblers etc. On my one "big" excursion by trolleybus ( yes) to a coniferous forest over a huge bridge (= tiltas) I found Serins, breeding Fieldfares flying between the trees, more Icterines etc, a Barred Warbler singing by the river where there were also some v. pale Yellow-Legged Gulls. The river was further explored on another morning, where Blue-headed Wagtails were seen.... I bet you can't wait for the 4th and last installment. I hope the excitement isn't too much. As far as rare/scarce birds go, I'm pretty sure everyone remembers the first one. But a few days ago someone asked a much trickier question .... What was the first bird you ever saw .... the first species you were ever aware of ? Now that's a deep sort of question ..almost unanswerable for most people, unless they lived in the Antarctic Research Station of similar. My earliest memories of birds were .... Well ... I lived 3 stories up for the first 11 years of my life. It was a huge building which had a Darby and Joan Club on the ground floor, and the Air Training Corps Headquarters on the middle floor, and a weight-lifting club in the basement. And, a Scout/Cub hut in the field. And Gordon, Doris and me up top ... plus a rotating transient retinue of lodgers who became "aunts" and "uncles" in the course of time. At least it increased my birthday and Christmas presents considerably. [ Hey ... I've found a picture of it .... it's up at the top. Not only is it a business now, the huge fields out the back have become a ginormous supermarket. I wheedled my way into what was once "my" house many years ago, and went up to the top floor, and instead of seeing a fine vista of ,yes, fields... all I could see was a giant brick wall 5 feet away. Rubbish !! ] Anyhow, one of my first (winter) memories is chucking slices of bread out of the window and watching them spiral down onto the field at the back of the house...whereupon loads of Starlings would descend on them like vultures. But I suspect that the birds that I really experienced first were Rooks. Right opposite our high-up third-floor windows was a huge rookery .... in the grounds of a giant vicarage. The vicar wasn't a giant, just the house. Well, he might have been ... I don't think I ever saw him. But those Rooks made a massive racket all the time ..... so even if we weren't looking at them, they made themselves known. And Rooks are always interesting. And characterful. [ But ... over the last 8 years or so, they have declined dramatically where I live.] So that's my first bird memory ...but what about you ? Well, that picture would attract anybody's attention I reckon. But, strangely, it was that sun that interested me. I was yet another confirmation of something I've noticed over the years. Whenever I've seen the sun next to an article in a newspaper , there's never any sunspots on it.... unless, of course, it's an article specifically about sunspots. And it's usually true for TV images too. So ..why is that ? Is it just that I've "missed" the ones that do show them ? Maybe. Or are there other reasons, with greater or lesser significance ? Maybe there are algorithms that think they are defects on the print and rub them out. Maybe. But remember ..when Galileo saw spots on the sun, and wrote about them, he got shoved in prison. The sun was deemed to be "immaculate" ..literally, "spotless" ( macula=spot,blemish in Latin) and anybody saying otherwise was therefore blaspheming. So ...who knows ? Is this immaculateness still a force in the World ? I know not. Maybe the very next sun-I-see-in-the-newspaper will have sunspots. But I'd stick a few quid on it not doing. Plus ... this morning I "got" 2 Waxwings ... really close-up too. Sod's Law kicked in though .... the batteries on my camera conked out. My "first ever" Waxwings were remarkably typical .... high up in the trees around the supermarket car park in Windermere. Classic site. And the first I found for myself I "got" on call as I was cycling to work. I was chuffed. But today's Waxwings hammered home the same old nail ... I can't hear them any more. And that means it is much more difficult for me to find any more of my own. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Away with Glum ! Here's one of my favourite Welsh songs ... filmed on a pier not 100 metres from where me and The Significant Otter first met. There ought to be a Blue Plaque . Huw M .... Seddi Gwag ( Empty Seats)( I knew that without the caption)...so there. Atgoffa fi os fyddai byth yn bod yn gas
Am seddi gwag y trên i Baris Montparnasse, Atgoffa fi os fyddai byth yn bod yn flin, i drio camu nôl i chwerthin ar fy hun. Yn y byd 'ma - tynna fi yn ôl, Yn y bywyd hwn - na'i dy dynnu di yn ôl. Na'i ddeud 'tha ti os dwyt ti ddim yn bod yn deg, A deud 'tha fi feddwl cyn agor fy ngheg, Na'i ddeud 'tha ti i ymdawelu gyda'r nos, A deud wrth y bwganod i adael ti fod. Yn y byd 'ma - tynna fi yn ôl, Yn y bywyd hwn - na'i dy dynnu di yn ôl. Atgoffa fi os wyt ti'n trio estyn llaw, Na fyddai byth yn lân yn golchi yny baw, Atgoffa fi os fyddai byth yn bod rhy saff, Fod angen mentro'r gaeaf er mwyn gwled yr haf. Yn y byd 'ma - tynna fi ymlaen, Yn y bywyd hwn - na'i dy dynnu di ymlaen. Geiriau hyfryd ! ( Lovely words) These three/tree (?) pictures show the "panorama" from my attic/office/junkheap window ... you'll have seen bits of it before on various cloud pictures etc ... I like clouds...and their fancy names. That dinky Starling at the top of the tree on the far right of the picture below was doing an excellent Buzzard impression when I took the photographs this morning. I took that as a good omen. Over the years I've scanned all that lot 100s of times ...... the " from the house" list is hovering around 100, depending on what you can really count (?!), and I suppose the "attic window panorama list" is probably around 55-60ish. Maybe .... perhaps. Guesstimate. Thishful Winking. But ... think of all those birds I've missed ! The attic/office/etc has only had a window for the last 7 or so years .... and when I'm up here I'm only looking out of it for about ¼ % of the time, so the "hours" must be pretty small. Plus, living up north as I do, I hardly ever open the windows, and therefore miss out on lots of overflying calling stuff. Grrrrr. The "one" I most miss .. and want .... is the Wily Waxwing. I've come very close to "house-getting" it ... v. v. close .... seconds away !!!! But ...... fate has not been with me. There's other possibles that I might eventually get on the HL if I live long enough.. .... Ospreys have undoubtedly flown over, Little Egret is a shocking gap ... they're only a dinky distance away ..... they're the big hitters that should be on the house list..... but aren't. I've "got" quite a few good-uns..... Water Rail, once, Short-eared Owl, once, Common Crane !!!!! ( once) , various Owl spp , Treecreeper, once .... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ But ...away with this Flimsy-Whimsy, Dippy-Drippy Wavely Newtish Wubbish ! Us birders must be Resolute, Tough, Doughty, Indomitable and ,er, Plucky. But not necessarily in that order. We must be Flexible as well. So ... the music is a live version of "A Tientas" ... Vetusta Morla .. it's based on the "Icarus" story .... an absolute belter of a song .... Coge tus cosas
y corre lejos, lejos corre asta el sol pero cuidado con tus alas ten cuidado Ícaro ( there he is !) reencarnado en ojos de miel en ojos de mujer fatal sin afinar tus latidos dicen nunca mas hoy nadie miraba hacia atrás vuela alto en tu caballo sideral miras y ries por no llorar ries para cantar una historia forzada sin principio ni final esta historia de princesas qe no tienen reino qe no tienen rumbo viven a tientas con un sueño a cuestas en su cabeza hasta donde tu quieres llegar dice aquel señor de barba espesa con sorpresa por verte cambiada Eons ago I showed you two ways of getting to sleep ..... I'll put the links to them in here somewhere .... aha ... there they are, the little dodgers ! 64-29-ways-to-get-to-sleep-1.html 73-how-birders-get-to-sleep-2.html ... but the very best one hasn't been on here yet .. I think. It's very simple, and very effective. And sort of, er, nice ! Here's what you do .... or rather, what you "think." You make a mental journey in your head .... a journey you're familiar with ... in my case it's usually something local, like driving to a good coastal spot, or a local (ish) lake ... but sometimes I'll "do" the drive from, say, Cley to Sheringham... and maybe further along that smashing coast road through all the little villages., even on to Titchwell .............. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz It's a very restful and soothing way to fall asleep, and it always works. So ...why not try it tonight. If you need to, that is. There you go ... that was quick !! ..and here's the perfect song to go with it .... I'm a connected-up sort of Hector ! I was going to put Vetusta Morla's " A tientas" on , but it's not very restful.
Ages and ages ago, I was told a joke ..here it is ... Recently a man with no arms and legs swam the English Channel ... what was his name ? Here's a jolly picture to stop you seeing the nifty answer too soon ... Yes... the obvious name for that armless & legless channel-swimming bloke is ... CLEVER DICK ! BUT ..... even though I've known that joke for ages, I never spotted a vital flaw in the logic of it. And yet it's so obvious ..... If he was dick-propelled, he would not only have a very slow and tricky journey, he would also have to do it backwards ! Feet first !!! That would be too much, surely ... backwards ? Feet first ? No way. .... all you men out there ... just think about it, and you'll see what I mean. ...... you women can think about it too, but you might not want to. BUT ..... Luckily I've managed to find a "fix" for it. .... so not only have I found the problem, I've fixed it as well. ....... just think ... what other means of propulsion could he use, which also allows him ( or her for that matter) to cross the channel facing forwards ? ( don't worry folks, there is a birding-related element to all this ... a bit later on.) I'll stop you seeing the answer too soon by using this ingenious trail of dots .... . . . . . . . . . . . What about fart-propulsion !! That way, he/she can face forwards and whizz along, face down or face up .... OK ... you'd have to change his/her "joke" name to Smart-Arse ! It still "works." ... and it probably would smart after 20 miles of parping !! They'll have to have a support boat full of fart-festering foodstuffs ... no prob. You can't help wondering if ducks and swans do it too ... even, say, Kingfishers when a quick burst of speed is needed. It's a thought. And you might also wonder ... where's the "birding" link to all this. Well, it's a little known fact that various seabird-monitoring groups have been trying to encourage channel swimmers to keep a list of the birds they see on the way .. after all, how many 10-hour sea-watchers are there ? BUT .... seeing as 90% of channel swimming has been face-down, very little data has been forthcoming. But ... now that fart-propulsion has been invented ( by me) not only could Smart-Arse do it facing upwards, but any channel swimmer could. At least, some of the time, to give their arms a rest. And they could get some valuable sightings done. And, Clever Dick could log his sighting, few though they would be, on his dictaphone ! Obviously !! But what could all those fart-propelled folk do ? Well ...even better, all those new Smart-Arses could log them on their Smart-Phones ! It all works beautifully. So ..it's win-win. And let's not forget .... in German, "Er fährt" means "he drives." Ho- ho ! Hey .. maybe "The Donald" could give it a go . Think about it . And as for music, here's Loudon Wainwright's " The Swimming Song" performed by Kate & Anna McGarrigle ... a jolly, deep sort of song .... This summer I went swimming
This summer I might have drowned But I held my breath, I kicked my feet Moved my arms around I moved my arms around This summer I swam in the ocean And I swam in a swimming pool Salt my wounds, chlorined my eyes I'm a self-destructive fool Self-destructive fool This summer I did the back stroke And you know that that's not all I did the breast stroke, the butterfly And the old Australian crawl The old Australian crawl This summer I swam in a public place And a reservoir to boot At the latter I was informal At the former I wore my suit I wore my swimming suit Oh, this summer I did swan dives And jack-knives for you all And once when you weren't looking I did a cannon-ball I did a cannon-ball This summer I went swimming This summer I might have drowned But I held my breath, I kicked my feet And moved my arms around I moved my arms around That comma in "jolly,deep" makes a difference. Without it,it makes it a lot more serious. Which it is. That's hide # 4 .... enter at your peril ... especially on Fridays .... Grumbling Stumps, "my" local Nature reserve, has actually changed something. This has triggered ructions throughout the area ..... nothing's changed out there for about 70 years. We've worked out that the Head Warden has to be at least 107 ..... he was there on day 1, and still is. The hide names have changed ... they just used to have numbers. (!!!!!) hey... that's adventurous stuff for Flintshire you know. Number 2 is now the Weetabix Hide .... mostly because its brown and crumbly and soggy ... but on top of all those attractions, it gets £80 a year from Kelloggs ! Number 5 is now called the Gannet hide ...because that's where everyone has their dinners, teas, cups of Bovril etc. There's a Welsh Cake vending machine too. Number 3 is Ysbwriel Hide ... Welsh for rubbish .... because it is rubbish. Not a single bird has ever been seen by it, with it or from it. Or heard. Birders come from all over the world to solve its mysteries ... but they don't. Number 1 is now called the Newton Hide, because once you're inside it the gravitational pull is ± 340x the normal ... so "raising your binoculars" is a bit tricky. Sometimes, well, Fridays mainly, it goes into reverse so everyone is stuck to the ceiling until the next day. Number 4 is the oddest though ... everyone is fascinated by it ... because it's completely normal in every way. How bizarre ! You can see all sorts of birds and mammals, and the windows work, and the doors (!) don't creak when you open them and slam when you shut them. Actually, come to think of it, that's not so normal is it ! And ... it's right by that tree ...you know, the one that when you climb right up it to the top, you disappear. You must remember, I've written all about it. What "they"really need to do, is to make it easier to find those interesting hides ... it took me years to collect "the set" as locals call them. And once you have, it can take weeks to get back. So ... what on earth will happen next .... on this ordinary little reserve with very little to attract new visitors ? Nobody knows. If you know of any "odd" hides, or even better, an actual "normal" hide, don't hesitate .... let me know at [email protected] And now, totally-not-being-relevant-at-all.......... the music .... Bah ! I should have had " Get Back" as today's song. Dam and blarst ! Tell you what ... I'll do it on tomorrow's .... then we can be "1 out" for all future posts .... ho-ho . |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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