What with all the wind and rain etc last night, I used one of my many " how birders get to sleep" techniques .... but this one was a new one. As far as I can tell, it worked very well, so maybe you might like to give it a try. I had a go at mentally listing all those birds I have only seen once ! And I quickly realised there were more than I thought. And I got nowhere near to the complete list. Because I very rapidly fell asleep. Which was good ... it was, after all, the original mission. Next time I'll try to get them in alphabetical order . So ..there's another " way to get to sleep" that I can thoroughly recommend. BUT .... what about you ? What's your " only-seen-once" list ? What's the commonest bird you've only seen once ? Other ways of getting to sleep for us birders can be found here ... 64-29-ways-to-get-to-sleep-1.html 73-how-birders-get-to-sleep-2.html ..... there are more, but I can't find them ...
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So ...here's the thing .... I think us birders should be entitled to some sort of "adjustment" to our life lists ..... based on our unfortunate/fortunate situations. It would be a points-based adjustment .... .. and I've got plenty of points. [1] I spent my teenage years in Widnes ...effectively a bird-free zone. [20 pts] [2] I got married at when I was 19. Don't do it! I must have been mad. [30 pts] [3] I got twins when I was 32 .... cripes. [230 pts] [4] And we were only expecting just the one. That's mega-points. [70 pts] [5] I didn't have a car till I was 32 either. [110 pts] [6] Until fairly recently I had a demanding and time-swallowing job. [180 pts] That's the main things .. a grand total of 640 points. Ouch ! Ok ... so 640 points must somehow be converted into ticks. That way, I get compensated for all those times when I lived in bird-free zones, for the many important birds I could have twitched had I had a car, for the sheer disruption perpetrated by the offsprings at every stage of their lives, including being sick in cars, screaming loudly for hours on end, swallowing up oceans of money because of school uniforms, ferrying them to their respective universities at opposite end of the country, and then back again, repeat said ferrying 40 times, that's a huge chunk of my life gone up in smoke, not to mention their uncanny capacity for getting injured on the first day of any holiday thus buggering up hours of potential birding time, plus The Significant Otter's uncanny knack of picking bird-free route choices, and then, the ever-creeping and slowly-slithery downhill encroachment of age-related knackered-ness and the ensuing can't-be-arsedness and the approaching decline and death. But, on the plus side ... So ... I reckon that 640 points ought to get me a notional 640/20 = 32 ticks. That sounds about right ... and it equates to roughly ½ an extra tick per child-year. That's bloody reasonable actually. All considered. I'll settle for that. Phew ! I feel a lot better now. Mind you, I have wittered about all that quite a bit on here before . 369-write-your-own-celebrity-birding-book.html But this time I've done something about it. The only problem is ... what would those 32 ticks actually be ? I could make some up. Westermann's Prongtail Drab-breasted Oaktapper Amblesnipe Axe-billed Snapper Variegated Eelsnatcher ... there's plenty more where they came from ... the toughest ones to invent are birds which consist of just one word ... and here's the "singalong version ... go on ... sehr schön ! prima ! Yes, they're still around the garden .... but ... I have another question about them ... You will remember that it was The King of Bryher who pointed out to ignorant me that those Blackcaps that overwinter here are NOT birds that are failing for one reason or another to return to Africa ...oh no ... they actually come to the UK from Germany/Austria where they spent the summer, and they come here for the winter due to it being, on average, milder than eastern Europe. But once our winter is over in the UK ... usually about June-ish (!) , what do they do then ? Do they go back to Eastern Europe ? Do they never go to Africa ? Were they, as a species, ever there ? I don't know. But I'm sure some of you do. And on a completely different tack .... I read a book recently that at one point referred to White's Thrush as the UFO bird ... because of its other-worldly call. "No bird utters a more eerie sound than the White's Thrush. On hearing its ghostly and plaintive one-note call, you will not immediately know that it is a bird. It sound as if it could just as easily be a person sighing deeply in the dark forests .. or a phantom bewailing its eternal mission to inhabit lonely places under cover of darkness " Well, I was dead keen to hear that !! BUT ... I could not find a video of it calling ...at all. These days it is very unusual NOT to find something on the net. So ..if you know where to find it, kindly let me know. A comment will do it ... or ..... seasidebarmail.com Now here's a blast from the past ..... I used to live near Llandegai ... but unfortunately never encountered that lot.. nothing like them ever hove into view ...... I wonder if they were the prototype for The Cardigans ?
Here's another of those " posts from the distant past" 11-places-i-dont-go.html As you all know, I used to be a ringer ... and in the course of that attic-sorting-out thing I'm doing, I found my long-lost exercise book full of "my" ring numbers .... and here's the numbers I used on a very slack day .... all five of them..... 37249 27889 51529 73441 994009 But .... looking at that page more carefully, after the many passing years I noticed an odd thing they had in common ... apart from obvious stuff like them all ending in odd numbers ... .. something a bit deeper than that.... but it is a bit of a clue..... And not only that ... after a bit of footling around with them, I found another even more peculiar thing they had in common .... and to help you along a bit, it involves the number 24. So ..... that's one of those rare " very short" articles that I sometimes write. OK, it's not THAT ancient ... BB,Vol 84, No.12, Dec 1991 in fact. But in it, there was a challenge ... here it comes ... and not any old challenge ... .and here's the instructions .... But ...what was that species prominently featured ? Well there were those things lined up on the front cover ... see above ... and there were all these articles inside ... including pages of stuff about Swallows..... But ... but ..but ... I can't make head or tail of the instructions ... whichever way I try to interpret them, they don't "work". What, for example, does he mean by " in each case " ?? Does it mean " when moving to the next letter" or "moving to the next species ?" Can you "go" diagonally as well ? Come to that, what does he intend " skipping" to mean ? What does he mean exactly by " in an unbroken line" ? And what about those subliminal remarks .... " just take a shot at it" " be systematic" And what about that block of 4 letters up on the top left P F PC How does anything get in or out of that ? .......and ... a deep one this ... is the circle unbroken ? Now, I suspect that I'm being a complete twerp and not seeing the obvious. I am getting older by the day. But the truth is, those "explanations" could have been a lot better. An example might have been a good idea. For example. So ... if any of my Astute and Helpful readers can point out the obvious to me, I would be pleased to " have a shot at it".... I might even "be systematic" for once ... ... and now, a song I haven't heard for years ... I hope you all sang along with that.
After all, somebody took the trouble to put them on there. Here's a " random article" from the deep and distant past for you to have a look at, should you so wish. It is, of course, purely optional ...... but I was quite pleased with it when I wrote it ..... 593-oddie-erith-packham-morpeth.html It's those Blackcaps again ... yesterday morning there was a mere 1 male Blackcap .... as opposed to the two we had on the three previous days . But I consoled myself with the thought that the "one" I was seeing might actually be those two, turning up at different times. BUT ... in the pm, a male Blackcap with a conspicuous white speck on its back made its appearance ....maybe one of the original two with temporary bit of fluff or a splodge of Blackcrap (!)(= Blackcap + crap) . Or maybe a totally new one. Oh, the possibilities ! We might have 3 ...we'll call them Bert, Dec and Splodger. Or we might only have two ... Bob+ its Blob and/or/if/maybe Dec + its Speck ? After that , Splodger turned up many times. With the unsplodged ones (Dec and/or Bert, but there might be more) ( who knows?) turning up too, but not all at the same time. And so far this morning only Splodger has turned up. So the "splodge" might well stay stuck to it for a good while . I felt quite dizzy with the sheer excitement of it all. It's amazing how complicated things can get if you really really watch ! ...and then, later in the day, after I'd been out doing some "proper" birding, an unsplodged one turned up several times, which could be the now-speckless Splodger, or Dec or Bert, or a new one. Cripes. I hope you are keeping track of all this vital and incredibly important stuff. What with it being International Graph Week, I ought to come up with some sort of graph for all that, but I couldn't really see how, so it's lucky it is NOT compulsory. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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