"Even though more people today are interested in wild birds than ever before, it still takes courage to be a bird watcher. This is because for hundreds of years the main interest in birds has been to kill them or take their eggs, and so, to the majority of grown-up people, it is incredible that anyone should want to spend his time just watching birds. In fact, young bird watchers will often find that they are suspected of having a catapult up their sleeves or, in spring, of being merely out to rob any nests they find. Although this is how a lot of people feel, that should not stop you taking an interest in birds. By always telling the truth to farmers, gamekeepers and the like, and by asking politely for permission to go on their land, wonders can be done, and it all helps to get bird watching , and the study of natural history generally, regarded as a normal and exciting hobby for civilized boys and girls, far better than many of the aimless pastimes on which so many of us spend our free time." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So ,dear readers, what do you make of that ? It certainly seems very old-fashioned in many ways. I don't think I've ever actually seen a gamekeeper ! The wonderful " spending his time" gives us pause for thought. And it seems that only "civilised" boys and girls are eligible ! I think the writer is hinting at Grammar-school pupils only*. It is the opening paragraph of a "slim volume." When do you think it might have been written ? And by whom? I've written about it on here before ..... so you really ought to know. All will be revealed after the vital musical interlude.... Which, for no particular reason except its sheer loveliness, here's Roy Harper "doing" "Another Day" live........ subtle chords by the way. And here's the "Sing-along-with-Roy" version ... lucky you ! I promised you I would show you the book that it was the first paragraph of so here it is... ..... 1950's ...... Bruce Campbell .... I bought my first copy ( the one on the right) upstairs in Boots the Chemist in Newark at the tricky age of 10..... upstairs in the book department, incongruously.
I was swotty twerp back then. * Grammar schools, by the way, were so-called because they taught LATIN grammar. Unfortunately, I got dragged by my hair out of my Latin class by one of the many vicious bastards that couldn't teach a fish to swim ! And I sat outside the Latin classroom for 1½ years. But eventually I learned Latin by myself, and I now feel very smug that (a) he will be dead and gone by now, and (b) I have read "Winnie ille Pu" and "Domus Anguli Puensis" in your actual Latin.
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Here's a fine snap of just a tiny section of the "Pyramid of Bird Books" that I built when the Lockdown got started .... but it just got totally out of hand as I found more and more of them and it all got too tall and too wobbly ... there's at least 150 + more of them scattered around the house... maybe more. And quite a lot of them are ginormous. And that doesn't even include the 100s of birding magazines, and the bound volumes of BB and suchlike .... blimey !!!!! Yes, National Book Day was yesterday ..... but for technical reasons, I'm writing about it today. So I suppose I should recommend some of them, or tell you some of the stinkers. Ages ago I showed you my specially selected "30cm of bird books" .... the idea was, you pretend you're going to be stranded on a desert island, and you only just managed to save 30cm of bird books from the wreckage of your boat. Here it is ... ..here they are spread out so you can see them in more detail... I would certainly recommend all of those to all of you. And if I had to put them in order of excellence, it would be something like this... 1=] The Big Bird Race 1=] Kingbird Highway 3] Best Days with British Birds 4] Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book ( It upped my game) 5] British Birding 1984 (incredibly rare)(incredibly gripping) 6] Evenings at the Coot and Corncrake. 7] Wild America. ( A sort of companion to Kingbird Highway) 8] Gone Birding 9] Gripping Yarns 10] Seventy Years of Birdwatching 11] Birds New to Britain 1980-2004 12] Birds New to Britain and Ireland 13] Follow That Bird ! 14] The Birds of the London Area 15] Bird Identification ( keep it in the car) Then, of course, there's the stinkers ! Here's the crappiest bird book I've ever seen ... a collector's item in many ways ... Here's the links to my two "reviews" of that terrible, dreadful heap of crap .... 732-the-worst-garden-birdwatching-book-ever.html 735-gender-part-2.html But now it is Music Time .... more of The Dandy Warhols. ... Yes readers, the first Thursday in March is National Rook Day. Or more briefly, NRD .... pronounced NERD. Throughout the Orthinogynologicall World (excluding, of course, Widnes) people are out at the Crack of Dawn counting Rooks. All throughout the UK, Scouts, Guides, Joggers, Postal Workers, Insomniacs, Burglars, Drips and Halfwits are grabbing their Clipboards, Felt-Tips, Nockers, Whistles, Cameras, Tape Recorders, Filofaxes, Smartphones, Signed Photographs of Bill Oddie, Six-Foot Cardboard Cutouts of David Attenborough, Satchels crammed with Bird Books, Thermos Flasks, Hard-Boiled Eggs, Miniature Pork Pies, Multi-Packs of Crips, and Mars Bars. They've all been assigned their very own 10 km square to cover, and GOD help them if they don't get it covered. GOD, of course, being the Great Ornithological Dictator, who has Tyrannical Powers in the event of any missed tetrads. I've been out for 9 hours now, and I've still got 17 tetrads to do, so I'd better get on with it. I haven't seen any blasted Rooks at all, and I'm getting a bit nervous. Its the same every year ... I finish up at 3pm-ish making up all the numbers and scuttling home for tea. And I suspect that is happening quite a bit everywhere else as well. Just to be serious for a minute or two, Rooks have become very scarce in my little area. But when I first lived here, hundreds and hundreds used to fly over just after dawn, accompanied by similar numbers of Jackdaws. I christened it as a WOJAR ... a Wave Of Jackdaws And Rooks. They made a terrific racket too. But for whatever reason it all stopped, quite quickly too. And over a larger area , they've got scarcer and scarcer and scarcer .... . Anyway ...I hope all you lot have had a successful day, and avoided the wrath of GOD. All we need now is a bit of relevant music .... er ..... something Godless if possible ... this is a swoony, dreamy sort of song ...... beautiful ! Hey, I said you were Godless then It seems like you're a soulless friend.
As thoughtless as you were back then, I swear that you are Godless. Hey, I guess you're lonely, when I gave, you only took, So then It's stranger then its ever been. I guess it's what you wanted. Of late, it seems that lonely I will be. I beg, I bleed, but this is all that I've gotten. Hey, as for today, my friend, To hope that you could ever bend, I swear you are, I swear you are, I swear that you are Godless. Hey, I said you're Godless then. Hey, and you're a soulless friend, Hey, I said you're Godless and I swear, I swear You're Godless You're Godless You're Godless. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 11pm .... Dam and Blarst ! I've just found out that it isn't National Rook Day at all ! It is actually National Book Day ! I'll "do" that tomorrow then. Yesterday I spent an interesting couple of hours compiling a year-by year rarity tally. It reveals the dramatic (?) Rise and Fall of my Twitching Times. Not that I was exactly a Top Twitcher. Having twins buggers everything up drastically. And you'll be surprised to hear that I've written about the nuts and bolts of twin- ownership, often known as The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune. Its full of adjectives like noisy, messy, punishing, devastating, chaotic and crushing. I'm not even going to start on the adverbs ! But ... on with my wonderful list ..... year by year, month by month I reveal my paltry number of rarities spotted .... plus internationally agreed "ratings" for each year. Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Totals Rating 1979 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 SHITE 1984 1 0 0 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 6 CRAP 1985 2 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 0 0 9 FEEBLE + 1986 0 2 0 2 2 1 5 0 0 1 1 0 14 er .. OK ? 1987 5 1 1 2 6 1 2 5 2 0 2 1 28 GOOD ! 1988 1 1 0 0 2 1 2 0 1 2 0 1 11 WEAK 1989 0 3 0 1 2 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 10 weak 1990 0 2 2 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 6 CRAP 1991 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 8 feeble 1992 3 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 6 CRAP 1993 4 0 0 1 0 1 0 3 5 0 0 0 14 er..OK ? 1994 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 5 BOLLOCKS 1995 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 0 1 6 CRAP 1996 0 0 0 4 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 16 OK+ 1997 1 0 0 4 4 0 1 0 1 2 1 1 15 OK- 1998 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 6 CRAP 1999 1 0 0 0 10 0 1 3 0 5 0 0 20 OK++ 2000 3 1 0 5 3 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 15 OK+ 2001 9 0 1 3 0 1 0 1 1 2 2 0 20 OK++ 2002 1 2 0 0 4 0 1 10 3 7 2 0 30 CRUMBS 2003 2 0 0 1 4 1 0 7 2 0 1 1 19 OK++- 2004 2 0 1 3 2 0 4 5 1 1 0 0 19 OK++- 2005 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 SHITE 2006 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ULTRASHITE ++ 2007 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 5 BOLLOCKS 2008 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 2 1 3 0 9 FEEBLE + 2009 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 6 CRAP 2010 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 SHITE 2011 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ULTRASHITE+ 2012 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ULTRASHITE++ 2013 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ULTRASHITE+ 2014 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 4 BOLLOCKS- 2015 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ULTRASHITE++ 2016 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ULTRASHITE+ After that, almost no rarities spotted at all ...... because I didn't find any, and I hardly ever chased any.. Nowadays I see about 1 rarity/year, and about 1 "new" bird about once per 3 years. I might "do" a graph of all that, which will dramatically show you ( and me) that remarkable- roller-coaster- rise (and fall) of my twitching trajectory. Meanwhile, here's a bit of "relevant" music .... Well, Spring is here ..... which is good .... but I've been v. disappointed by the almost non- existence of the expected winter birds. Apart from a few Fieldfares, I haven't got any Redwings, no Bramblings, no Waxwings, and despite some prolonged icy spells, nothing unusual has appeared in the garden. Generally, when we get ice, snow, prolonged cold etc, there's a good chance of something interesting turning up . But they haven't. Hey-ho ! Over the years of "In-Garden-Spotting" we've had Treecreepers, Goldcrests, Bramblings, Fieldfares, Redwings, overwintering Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps, Willow Warblers etc + other various sporadic flyovers on cold crack-of-dawns whilst luxuriating in my luxurious deckchair .... welcome visitors which compensate for lots of nothingness. Well, that was about 87% gloomy ... so let's jump straight to the music .... Stranglers in the Night ... hang on ... Strangers in the Night..... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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