One of the best things about the "Collins Field Guide to Fields" is the cover ... I know it's fashionable to have these faux-naive covers, but this one is especially impressive .. Who would have expected it ... a Field Guide to Fields ! But there it is .... and it's a cracker. You'll never look at a field again in quite the same way after reading this book. I know I don't. Certainly not. One of it's great ideas is a new way to classify fields in much the same way as rock strata are classified .... by naming them after a classic location ... it really works. So we have, for example, the Huddersfield C8 ...... this is a field featuring a rather loamy version of thin boulder clay with chalky inclusions ( that's the "C") and a tendency not to start to warm up until about August 5th ... that's the "8" part of it. It can often be rather over podsol-ised too. Urk. At the opposite extreme we get the Eaglefield D2 .... based on a tiny field just south of the Scottish village of Eaglefield, a thin "ranker" soil on a New Red Sandstone base, often cultivatable from late April onwards, and the sort of soil you can kneel on without getting your trousers mucky by late July. Now you might think this is all rather stuffy and academic, but the amazing thing is, there's a CD included in which celebrities (!) of all types (!) get their wellies on and clomp around "their" choice of field, explaining as they go the special features of each type, and hints and tips for identification. So ,we get Katy Brand stodging around a typical Chapel-en-le-Frith F5, poking it with a stick, digging a 3' hole to show the profile and falling flat on her face at several points... but by the time she's finished, we'll know one when we see one! Most unexpected was the sight of all of Half Man Half Biscuit traipsing round a Heswall C3 ..... but they did a terrific job of championing what can be a "nothing" sort of field, you know, the Dunnock of the field universe. I'll never walk past one now without trying their own unique method of testing the water absorption capacity. Beezer ! Morrisey... he's on there ... he plods gloomily through a rather marginal Manchester N3(d) ..... I mean ,yeah, he knows his stuff field-wise, but once he's gets through that, including a brilliant technique for assessing the nitrate level using a silk shirt, he starts singing " What difference does it make?" and throwing shapes.Bloody show-off. I'm so absorbed in my review copy that I've no time to put the music on right now ... I'm off to have a good mooch around my current favourite, a nice soggy Warrington E9 . After all, I've just seen that Joanna Newsom wandering round one on the CD. She did once sing .. " I had a little plot of land in the garden, it was dirt, and dirt is all the same." How wrong she was ! I must put that on here soon. Now, thematically, we have The Magnetic Fields and the somewhat Freudian song " The night you can't remember" .... maybe it's all this elemental stuff about muck and sludge that's brought it on .. plus ... there's a brilliant surprise ending too ... well, I was surprised anyway. Really. Incidentally, when I first "invented" the book and drew that beautiful cover, many years ago actually .... it was on my "original" birding blog which vanished mysteriously into the ether .... little was I to realise that an actual Field Guide to Fields was going to appear ...but it did. Some things you just can't make up ! Bah !
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Dierdre Gosling Stuart Seward I wrote about this idea of mine that ALL bird poetry is crap a while ago.... and showed you a few examples to prove my point. I asked you lot to find some more, and more have indeed come along .... Nightingales .... by Deirde Gosling ( 1931 - 1957) Nightingales .. they fill the air with sweet melody, and care not who listens. Nor do they care for display, they hide away faraway. Nightingales .... they fill the night with fleeting notes, and light is their nemesis.... and so when light takes wing they sing . I know not why they please with such sad song. They sing for kings and commoners alike. Unlike the shrike. Some critics have suggested that Gosling ran out of ideas about half way through the middle verse. Her notebooks are apparently full of alternative lines and rather clashing symbolism. In the final analysis, this poem stands by itself, as do we. In complete contrast ,here's a far more "modern" poem .... it's still crap though ! At least you can tell a Seward poem a mile off... and look away. SKUA by Stewart Seward ( 1988 - ) skua skewer slayer skimmer hacker killer spewer schemer screamer dreamer diver over under rending asunder also auks sdrawkcab drawbacks wardscrab scrawbard rawbard raw bard auks uksa ksau sauk skua. OK ... there's a couple of "clever" bits... the auks/skua reversal bit, but really it's a one-trick pony. Seward wrote a lot of this sort of stuff, but though it caused a sensation at the time, his reputation has dwindled over the years. Let's have some proper stuff now .... it's music time .... this has been voted as the 2278th best birding-related music spot outside Iceland ..so there. This is GZM and "O Caroline" .. originally a Matching Mole song ..... but the ever-resourceful GZM turned it into Welsh... O Caroline
Faint o llythrau Sy'n cael i ysgrifennu am ti Cos, nos ar ol nos Fi'n treial rhoi papur i phen Cos nos ar ol nos Fi'n treial rhoi papur i phen Rwy'n teimlo'n well Ar ol darllen gyda dy llythrau erbyn cyffuriau Cos nos ar ol nos Rwy'n treial rhoi papur i phen Cos nos ar ol nos Fi'n treial rhoi papur i phen We'll meet again don't know where Don't know why... Ond rwy'n gwybod bydd e Ryw dydd heuliog, ryw dydd heuliog Ryw dydd heuliog By the way .... I have found a "good" bird poem ... I might go as far as to say " impressive." I shall reveal it to you in the fullness of time .. It's a well-known fact that Straw boaters lead to success ! And that umbrellas are the main cause of rain. !! Worry not .... we'll get onto the birdy things shortly ... That Diane Abbot was on't radio the other day ...telling us that " carrying a knife increases your chance of getting stabbed." But that is not true. It's a classic mistake , and a dangerous one. I feel tempted to go around carrying 8000 knives for a few days to see if anything happens to me. I don't think it will. But what was deeply wrong with her statement ? It looks sensible enough ... you keep a tally of people who get stabbed, and you'll find that, say, 7% of them are carrying a knife. And you look at a sample of people who haven't got stabbed, and you'll find that maybe 0.006 % of them were carrying a knife. Blimey ... but does that mean that "carrying a knife makes you more likely to get stabbed ? No. And why's that then ? Let's move on to a classic example ... Straw Boaters. Pupils at Eton wear straw boaters as part of their uniform. And if you do a big survey of income and status and knighthoods and directorships, you'll find that a lot of those people wore straw boaters at school. But it's not the actual Straw Boaters that make that happen. No ! It's because they come from rich, posh families with oodles of cash, and plenty of influence, and they go straight into cushy jobs with v. little work and loads of dosh. Is "The Magic Solution" to the education of young people wearing straw boaters ? Er ..... no. Just as "going to Eton" means you wear a straw boater, living in a gang-ruled dump means you might well feel fractionally safer with a knife. Don't mistake correllation with causation. Right .... now what's this got to do with dicky birds then ? Well.... one of the biggest bird-related mysteries in the UK has been the drastic decline in House Sparrows in London. Here's a recent article in the Independent about it .. which has been going on for a lot longer than this article acknowledges by the way....... Lead-free petrol may be villain in mystery of demise of the world's most familiar bird...... It would be a bitter irony indeed if the introduction of lead-free petrol were behind the disappearance from British cities of the house sparrow, the world's most familiar bird. But the circumstantial evidence is so strong, according to the world authority on sparrows, Denis Summers-Smith, that the hypothesis needs to be investigated urgently. The removal of lead compounds from motor fuel was one of the biggest victories for the environment movement of the post-war period. The compounds, used in petrol to boost its burning efficiency, had been found to accumulate in children's bodies and gradually damage their brains. After a long struggle by green campaigners, an official decision was finally taken to phase out lead right across Europe. In 1988 unleaded petrol became available at British service stations; on January 1 this year it became compulsory. But what replaced the lead? Substitute chemicals involved in boosting the petrol octane rating may have caused problems all of their own, Dr Summers-Smith believes, and may present the answer to the biggest environmental mystery of recent years - why the house sparrow has vanished from many of our big cities, virtually without trace. Dr Summers-Smith is an engineering consultant and former senior scientific adviser to ICI. Now 79, he has been studying sparrows intensively for more than 50 years and has produced four books on the birds, including the standard monographs, The House Sparrow (1963) and The Sparrows (1988), as well as numerous papers in learned journals. His own sparrow database contains more than 5,000 items. Two substances associated with unleaded petrol in particular, he feels, deserve urgent investigation - MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), an additive, and benzene, a by-product of the refining. Both are toxic, of health concern, and known to cause cancers in animals. There is a dearth of information on MTBE. The UK Petrol Industry Association cannot give a figure on how much unleaded petrol contains it, though it is probably less than 50 per cent. The Department of Health, in an unpublished paper, signals health concerns about MTBE and says measurements should be made of concentrations in the air in Britain - none are done at present. California and Denmark currently plan to phase it out. Benzene is better known and a proven carcinogen. It is thought to have become more prevalent with the uptake of the super unleaded petrol grade, which was widely bought by motorists in the early 1990s. The amount that can be present in petrol was cut from 5 per cent to 1 per cent by an EU directive that came into force on 1 January this year. Dr Summers-Smith agrees that there is no scientific evidence as yet linking MTBE or benzene directly with house sparrows. But he points out that the circumstantial evidence of a connection between sparrow decline and the introduction of unleaded petrol is strong. For a start, he now believes that road traffic pollution is at the bottom of the sparrow mystery. He does so because of a remarkable discovery he has made after spending this summer analysing all the available sparrow population data: British sparrow populations have indeed collapsed in big cities - but not in small towns. While he calculates the drop in cities such as London or Glasgow is of the order of 95 per cent, in small towns such as Crewkerne in Somerset or Guisborough in Cleveland the numbers have stayed virtually the same. This is backed up by many of the letters in response to The Independent's Save the Sparrow campaign. What cause of sparrow decline could operate selectively in cities but not small towns? Hardly any, Dr Summers-Smith says: not predation by cats and sparrowhawks, not disease, not lack of nesting places, not competition for food. All would have similar effects in small as well as in big conurbations. Only road traffic pollution, he says, would be of a different order in cities, where a very much larger number of vehicles are present, often with engines idling, pumping out fumes. It would not have to affect the birds directly: it could, for example, cut down the number of insects they need to feed their very young chicks, which as German researchers have found, and the Independent reported last week, is the most vulnerable point in the sparrows' lifecycle. Dr Summers-Smith then points out that the disappearance of the sparrow and the introduction of unleaded correlate closely in terms of time. Although sparrows have been gradually declining for much of the past century, the real collapse of house sparrow populations in places such as London, much evidence suggests, is a phenomenon of the 1990s. In Kensington Gardens, for example, 885 birds were counted by ornithologists in 1948; in 1966 there were 642 birds, and in November 1975 there were 544. But in February 1995 there were only 46, and in July 2000 there were 12. Lead-free petrol use is also a 1990s phenomenon. When it became available in Britain in 1988 at first it sold only in tiny amounts, but it represented nearly 90 per cent of total fuel sales by the end of last year, when leaded petrol was phased out completely. "While the removal of lead from petrol was unquestionably right, could it be that it was at the cost of introducing other undesirable materials to the environment?" Dr Summers-Smith asks. "There are at least two substances used in unleaded petrol that are potentially hazardous - MTBE and benzene. As the disappearance of the house sparrow from our large cities correlates with the introduction of unleaded petrol, the possibility that such substances are involved surely requires immediate investigation - if for no other reason than as an application of the precautionary principle." So .... they're assuming there that there is a causal link between unleaded petrol and sparrow decline. But there's been a pattern over decades of "new ideas" about the cause of bird population changes .... and it's generated a lot more heat than light on the subject. The decline of horses in the streets, skyscrapers, the cessation of the window tax leading to huge windows they can bang into, the "Little Ice Age", contraceptives in the water supply, rotting peanuts, an atmosphere full of electromagnetic waves, chewing gum, bright clothing, decreasing churchgoing, the Beatles, lack of beetles, too much rain, too little rain, noise pollution ..... crumbs ! So I say .... think carefully. Are you mixing up correlation and causation ? Do hospitals really cause most serious illnesses? Are hospices a major cause of death amongst the elderly ? Do spectacles cause poor eyesight? Did Treecreepers plant all our forests for their own benefit ? Enough!! For now anyhow ... music music music .... one of the finest love songs ever ... here's Roy Harper, one of many people like me who blithely assumed they would never get old .... here's " Another Day" ... a couple of unusual chords in there too..... ...here's the original version when he was eternally young .... and so was I ... with the added bonus of " Tom Tiddler's Ground"... my hair was longer than his then ... In my birding area there is a self-appointed " boss". You know what I mean .... Fair enough .. he's an excellent, very experienced birder. But he tends to be a bit controversial at times. He expects people to do what he tells them. He speaks his mind. He can be rather , er,critical. Even "abrasive." Does every area have a similar sort of "boss?" I expect so. There's a whole raft of "stories" involving him. Here's one of them...a relatively harmless one I suppose . For the purposes of these stories, I'll call him "Bruce" .... I can't think why. Here we go .... For some reason, Bruce decided to have a rant on the Local Birding Website (LBW) about people in hides. His thing was, we shouldn't be birding from hides. It was lazy, it was for drips, it was unproductive, it was for softies and idiots. As far as he was concerned, proper birders don't hang around in hides. He actually used rather stronger language than that. Now this had a galvanising effect on most of my birding acquaintances ! But not in the way Bruce had hoped. Hah !! One of the area's most experienced and well-respected birders immediately began a "hide list" . Regular, lengthy accounts of its progress started to clog up the aforementioned website. Lots of others took up the idea as well. They took great pride in putting huge "hide lists" on the website, explaining the great pleasure they had in sitting there for hours on end, revelling in the comfort,drinking, singing songs, playing accordions, ukeleles etc,enjoying the company, the views .... ah, what fun. The word spread around about all this, and the whole "hide list" thing got really out of hand, with the whole website getting bunged up with them. I had great fun compiling massive imaginary lists, including huge flocks of Flamingos, blow-by-blow accounts of hour-long battles between Otters and Water Voles, long descriptions of imaginary rarities, including species unknown to science..... eeeh, that was fun. Others started doing the same. Some brave souls used their real names... other hid behind pseudonyms. Such was the " fear of the Bruce." It all gradually dwindled away .. but some of us still keep a Hide List and enjoy sticking them on't site. Just to keep it in the collective memory. Unfortunately, Bruce has no discernible sense of humour. There'll be more about good old Bruce in the pipeline. But I'd love to hear about any of your experiences with "Bruce-type people" .... I'm sure every area has one ... if not more. My email is [email protected] That's because I actually run a seaside bar ! Birding and boozing all at the same time. It's like a giant, booze-fuelled hide. We often have music as well in't seaside bar .... it's that Bruce Springsteen and "Jungleland" .... The Rangers had a homecoming In Harlem late last night And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine Over the Jersey state line Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain The Rat pulls into town, rolls up his pants Together they take a stab at romance And disappear down Flamingo Lane Well, the Maximum Lawmen run down Flamingo Chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl And the kids 'round there live just like shadows Always quiet, holding hands From the churches to the jails Tonight all is silence in the world As we take our stand Down in Jungleland The midnight gang's assembled And picked a rendezvous for the night They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign That brings this fair city light Man, there's an opera out on the Turnpike There's a ballet being fought out in the alley Until the local cops, Cherry-Tops, rips this holy night The street's alive as secret debts are paid Contacts made, they flash unseen Kids flash guitars just like switchblades Hustling for the record machine The hungry and the hunted Explode into rock 'n' roll bands That face off against each other out in the street Down in Jungleland In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage Inside the backstreet girls are dancing To the records that the DJ plays Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners Desperate as the night moves on Just one look and a whisper, and they're gone Beneath the city, two hearts beat Soul engines running through a night so tender In a bedroom locked in whispers Of soft refusal and then surrender In the tunnels uptown, the Rat's own dream guns him down As shots echo down them hallways in the night No one watches when the ambulance pulls away Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz Between what's flesh and what's fantasy And the poets down here don't write nothing at all They just stand back and let it all be And in the quick of a knife, they reach for their moment And try to make an honest stand But they wind up wounded, not even dead Tonight in Jungleland. Questions .. which have to be asked ... this is only a brief selection ... Why did the Rat "roll up his pants ?" Did all of Harlem's police have red hair ? How does he know that "no-one watches when the ambulance pulls away" ? What, exactly, is " an honest stand ?" Maybe that's all that was left of " The Rat."
You wouldn't think that birding would be particularly dangerous ... but of course it is. That building up there is right on the edge of a whopping great cliff for a start ... But today's bit of "dangerous birding" took place in the sleepy village of Llanddulas on the North Wales coast near Abergele. "We" went there to try to tick Surf Scoter many winters back in the mists of time. So it was midwinter 16.2.89 actually according to what I like to call my "records".... not exactly the French Riviera down at sunny Llanddulas-by-the-sea. It was bloody freezing. I forget quite why, but we got out of the car and marched seawards in the biting wind and sheltered behind a rock or something similar and set up our scopes ... if you can call what I had at the time a scope. And then we started seawatching. That's pretty much what it was ... watching the sea and very little else. For what seemed like an eternity we scanned the waves, seeing almost nowt...and so it went on ...an hour went past... that's a "Llanddulas- February" hour which is more like a week. But...yes... eventually we found two of the little beggars, about 70 miles out to sea in old money, but there they were. Job done. So ...we set off back. My birding companion, being considerably younger that me, got to his feet and started, albeit rather slowly, to stagger back. But me ... I was so cold and stiff from being cramped up in that terrible wind that I actually couldn't stand up ... in fact I could hardly move. As a last resort, and in view of the rising tide etc, I actually crawled the 200 yards or so back to the car .... dragging the so-called scope along and making what can only be described as minimal progress per minute. I couldn't feel my hands or feet at all . It must have looked fantastic to any spectators ... watching this nit crawling over the stones and rocks ... I did mention that Llandulas beach was not exactly Riviera-esque didn't I .... yes .... then crawling into the car like a giant, superannuated cockroach. We laughed about it on the way back .But not much. I really thought I'd had my chips in the middle of that crawl back. I wouldn't have minded either. At least I would have got carried back ..... albeit in a black bag. ................. serious bit coming up ............................. So .... beware of getting surreptitiously frozen to death. Don't forget how hypothermia can creep up on you. In fact, one terrible and dangerous thing about hypothermia is your reaction to it .... which makes you do the wrong things .... after the initial stages you start to feel euphoric and you will often feel the urge to go out into the snow and take off your clothes and dance about ! At that stage of hypothermia you tend to do the exact opposite of what you ought to do. Then you will dance around in the ice and snow .... and then you will die. But at least you will die happy. One of the Golden Rules if you're venturing into the serious cold is ...have someone with you.... because then , if you do get into this take-your-clothes-off -and-make-things-even-worse state you have a chance....there's someone there to stop you. But this potential "rescuer" needs to know how to spot it and what to do. My mate Brixton got lucky ... he got hypothermia while he was on his final Mountain Leader Assessment so he had his assessor with him. Whether he passed or not I don't know, but at least he survived. A memorable mnemonic is " Mumbling.... stumbling .... bumbling" They're often the first signs of incipient hypothermia. ..................................... serious bit over .............................. And now, thematically, we'll have for the Music Section Neil Young's wonderful song " Ambulance Blues" ...as I often seem to say, there's loads of versions of this out there..... " an ambulance can only go so fast " Back in the old folky days
The air was magic when we played. The riverboat was rockin' in the rain Midnight was the time for the raid. Oh, Isabela, proud Isabela, They tore you down and plowed you under. You're only real with your make-up on How could I see you and stay too long? All along the Navajo Trail, Burn-outs stub their toes on garbage pails. Waitresses are cryin' in the rain Will their boyfriends pass this way again? Oh, Mother Goose, she's on the skids Shoe ain't happy, neither are the kids. She needs someone that she can scream at And I'm such a heel for makin' her feel so bad. I guess I'll call it sickness gone It's hard to say the meaning of this song. An ambulance can only go so fast It's easy to get buried in the past When you try to make a good thing last. I saw today in the entertainment section There's room at the top for private detection. To Mom and Dad this just doesn't matter, But it's either that or pay off the kidnapper. So all you critics sit alone You're no better than me for what you've shown. With your stomach pump and your hook and ladder dreams We could get together for some scenes. I never knew a man could tell so many lies He had a different story for every set of eyes. How can he remember who he's talkin' to? 'Cause I know it ain't me, and I hope it isn't you. Well, I'm up in T.O. keepin' jive alive, And out on the corner it's half past five. But the subways are empty And so are the cafes. Except for the Farmer's Market And I still can hear him say: You're all just pissin' in the wind You don't know it but you are. And there ain't nothin' like a friend Who can tell you you're just pissin' in the wind. I never knew a man could tell so many lies He had a different story for every set of eyes How can he remember who he's talking to? Cause I know it ain't me, and hope it isn't you. I first got to know about Benacre Broad when I read "The Big Bird Race" ...already featured on here as one of my favourite birding books ... even though every copy of it I've ever had has fallen to bits. I'd seen it on the map of course .... but.... What he doesn't do in the book is tell you how to get there. Over the years I've had a go at getting to it lots of time ... usually on baking hot days, when the little village of Covehithe has been bunged up to the gills with billions of parked cars leaving nowhere for me to park. [ In case you don't know, Norfolk in the summer months is always baking hot. If it does rain at all, it's a 5-minute thunderstorm, and the rain sinks through the sandy, dusty "soil" and disappears for ever. Norfolk even has plagues of biblical proportions ... I'll write about them sometime or other. They're impressive.! [ Exodus ch 9 v 14-16]] At other times I've tried to get in by other routes ... sometimes I've found stiles which might have led to it, but they've always been plastered with dozens of KEEP OUT signs .... truly. Plus they've always been in highly dangerous places to park. To sum it up, nothing worked. So eventually I got a bit fed up with the stupid thing and I I gave up. It became another " Snettisham" ... one of those place to which I "don't go" .... I've written all about them on here ... here's the link .. 11-places-i-dont-go.html And then I thought ... one more go. I made a plan .. you go early..... really early. You ignore all the signs ... you just go. So ... I did ... I went really early ... got there about 7am .... and amazingly there were still loads of cars and people there ..and some of them were coming back from ... wait for it ... Benacre Broad. Yes !! But I said ... what about that huge array of 7628¼ KEEP OUT signs ...and they said ... ignore them. Readers ... I ignored them. It was about a mile walk north and then there it was. Surely I must have taken some pictures, but if I did, I can't find them. I think one of them was a snap of the huge array of "Keep Out" signs. That was in the days of "rolls of film" and suchlike. It was a truly beautiful and tranquil place ... and the fact that very few people could find it probably helped. I met somebody who had got there by walking up the beach from Covehithe ... that's the way local people do it apparently. There weren't many birds there when I went ... but it was just the "having got there" that mattered to me. And it was just like the drawing ... a big pool behind the small shingle bank dividing it from the sea, and the woods in the background . It would be a great place to film Desert Island Discs ... that would be good. There was even a hide up some steps. For about 40 minutes I was the only one there. I seem to remember that it was rather large. And that was it ... my one and only visit. It's there right now, as you read this.... maybe someone is there watching Sand Martins whizzing around, or looking out to sea at the passing gannets, hoping for something more. Laurel Tucker did all the drawings for The Big Bird Race ...the one up at the top is hers ... they're absolutely stunning throughout. Look at this tiny detail from it so perfectly done... Now here's a very Norfolk thing ...a very philosophical song from The Singing Postman ..which I always thought was called "Ev'thing Go Along A'Summat" but apparently is really called "Come along a Me".... listen carefully, it's packed with wisdom.... ..he runs out of steam a bit when he gets to aeroplanes ...
" Air-planes go along a'nuthin". Well, in our little lives, don't we all ? Sadly, I don't think I'll be going there again. Too old, too knackered. Ah yes, The Big Bird Race. One of my BIG BIRDING REGRETS OF ALL TIME is that I never got to see the TV programme of their actual Big Bird Race ... that was back in the good old days when if you missed something it was gone for good. Yes, I missed it. And it was indeed " gone for good." But at least there is " The Book"..and it's simply a gripping ( ho-ho) account of two teams of birders spending a May day whooshing around East Anglia to get as big a "list" as they could. Yes, this a definite Desert Island Discs choice for me. It's a funny, entertaining, even exhilarating book that rattles along carrying the reader with it all the way. I first read it when I was just starting to be a "proper" birder .. I loved it then, and I still love it 88 years later. Once when I was really ill for a few days I read TBBR for the nth time and actually wore my little brain out making a side-by-side timeline of the two teams' progress .It took my mind off feeling really crap if nothing else. It evokes a time before birdlines and pagers and all the commercialism that pervades birding these days. They actually have fun ! Yes, simple fun, obtained by finding birds, being with a group of friends, a bit of rivalry chucked in. Hey .. they had walkie-talkies !! They didn't work very well though... of course. And ...and ...it doesn't take the whole business too seriously ... they aren't estimating the status of anything, they aren't worried about the fate of the Turtle Dove .. it was OK back then ... they're doing it because they like doing it. What a simple idea. How refreshing. Bonus points .. it can often be found in charity shops for very little. And the illustrations are truly beautiful. Negative points ... all my copies ... and there's been a few ... have all fallen apart. Plus ... the cover is crap. When I was "researching" this, which in my case means mucking about on the net ... mainly .... I found a post by one of the organisers, Bill Urwin, asking if anyone "out there" knew of a copy of the programme on video tape .... but there were no replies. Surely there must be some out there .... you can keep your archive films of Prince noodling about in his mansion, or REM getting it together in the studio ... where the bloody BBR tape ??????? OK .... music time .... Nena Daconte ... "Disparé" .. there's loads of versions of this on the net .... but this, to my way of thinking, is the best. Right at the end, the guitarist on the left produces a whole swathe of gorgeous harmonics. Bloody show-off !! You'll be wanting to sing along this time ...so here's a words video for it ... I don't just draw birds you know ... I can make a mess of any given subject ... there is actually a roundabout reason why I chose this view though ... I'm sure you'll all spot it .. it's above and below.... Hey ...The Significant Otter is away ! She's in Keighley ... it just shows what lengths she'll go to to get away from me. Mind you, so would I for that matter. This means that I have to do 100% of the dog-walking, as opposed to 99% when she's at home. This wasn't at all good yesterday, because it pissed it down all day. But ...this morning, when I was doing the dog's " empty-out walk" ... well named, that ... a good thing happened. A serendipitous thing. Strolling along t'canal, a bloody Sand Martin flew right past me. Pah, you're all thinking, so what ? Well, around my house-related area ( HRA) they aren't exactly common. Over the 826 years I've lived here, I think I've only house-ticked them about 8 times. But ... I wasn't within the "My House" area. So, I was mighty chuffed to see it again actually flying over my house. Round and round it went. But .... I wasn't there. I was up on the canal towpath. In my younger days I would have jumped over the wall, hauled the dog over, and hoofed it at maximum speed to the house and ticked it. I've done that quite a few times in the past, in those afore-mentioned "younger days." I was a Nifty Old Hector then. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I'm sure you've all had those sort of experiences. I hope so anyway. By the way, there's all sorts of " rules" about birding any particular area. There's the very strict ones ... you've got to be actually inside your "patch" to tick it ... and so has the bird. Harsh !! Then there's the slightly more lenient version ... you've got to be in the area, but the bird can be outside it. Some people call it the Inside-Outer rule. That's the system I use. I like it because if you were stuck on a desert island, you'd want to count everything you see, even if it was out at sea. You're on the island, in your patch, but you can count anything you see from it. Nice. Then there's the rather over-generous rule ... you can be outside your area, and still count things you can see inside it. A sort of Outside-In rule. That's my situation with that Sand Martin. The bird was actually over my house, but I wasn't there. I was outside. Although I've described it as "over-generous" it is, scientifically, far more logical. The bird IS in the target area. And you can see that it is. Sorted. I think I should be allowed to convert to that system now I can't race round the place like Bodger Ranister. Yes. I mentioned above that the drawing and the title are linked .... which is why I've chosen this ... it's a cover version of a Gorky's Zygotic Mynci song " Sbia ar y Seren" .... Sbia ar y seren Sbiar ar y pêl bach oren Sbia ar y seren, y pêl bach oren Sbia ar y seren Sbia ar y golau Sbia ar y bore Sbia ar y golau y newydd bore Sbia ar y golau Sbia ar y seren Sbia ar y pêl bach oren Sbia ar y seren Sbia ar y pêl bach oren My first piece of advice is ... forget it. It's horrible. But sometimes you just have to .... This Pallas's Warbler had turned up at a site about 15 miles away. Of course, my car had just gone in for its MOT that very morning. Ace. So, I borrowed my sister's car ... but it had to be back in 2½ hours. I went, I didn't see it, and I drove back. At least nobody else saw it while I was there. That cheered me up. Next day ... it was there but my car was still stuffed. Sister's car no longer available. Grrr... I got on my bike and cycled there. It was horrible. For a start, I was stupid enough to take my telescope. Mad ! MAD!!! The first 10 miles were, er, ok, but then the roads got worse and worse. The terrible crappy surfaces were like glue. The hills were like mountains. The heat was like Vesuvius. By the time I got there I was a total human wreck. But I saw it. Tick. Huzzah. But then ...... .... I had to bike it all the way back. Oh no ! Oh Yes !! By the time I got home I was only fit for the human scrap heap. In fact, the human scrap heap was too steep for me as well. What I really needed was a hole in the ground to get into and die. I should have learned from my previous horrendous bike experiences. At least I've had the good sense NEVER to do such a stupid thing again. Birding on a bike is horrible even is less extreme circumstances. There's the telescope business for a start. What the hell do you do with it ? I used to take mine apart and fasten the various bits to the bike with those bungee things you fasten things on a roof-rack with.It takes ages to do, and ages to undo . And it makes the bike weigh a ton and stick to the road like Haroldite.® And then there's the "what to wear" problem.... you get very hot pedalling a stupid bike ... so you don't wear much ... but as soon as you stop you start to freeze ½ to death within seconds.... plus you've got have water to hydrate with, and lots of carbs so you don't run out of energy .. it's called "bonking" ... no laughing at the back ... so you've got to take all this extra crap with you. And all this fastening on and unfastening and dressing and undressing takes up oceans of time so you only have about 3¼ minutes of actual birding before it's time to go home. And then because the bike weighs 37¾ tonnes, you get a puncture ... and you can't find the bloody repair kit without unfastening everything again, and then you're knackered, and cold, and fed up, and by the time you get home you wish you were dead, and you probably will be shortly. There's another installment of this to come .... eventually. Meantime, here's Editors and my favourite version of " An End has a Start" ... it took me ages to plough through the hundreds of versions of it ... but this is the best.. I don't think that it's gonna rain again today
There's a devil at your side but an angel on her way Someone hit the light 'cause there's more here to be seen When you caught my eye, I saw everywhere I'd been and wanna go to You came on your own, that's how you'll leave With hope in your hands and air to breathe I won't disappoint you as you fall apart Some things should be simple; even an end has a start Someone hit the light 'cause there's more here to be seen When you caught my eye, I saw everywhere I'd been and wanna go to You came on your own, that's how you'll leave With hope in your hands and air to breathe You'll lose everything by the end Still my broken limbs you find time to mend More and more people I Know are getting ill Pull something good from the Ashes, now be still You came on your own, that's how you'll leave With hope in your hands and air to breathe You lose everything by the end Still my broken limbs you choose to mend You came on your own, that's how you'll leave You came on your own, that's how you'll leave You came on your own You came on your own It's fascinating how just one tiny observation can set you thinking. Let's take Ravens as an example. A good while ago, an ornithologist working in Maine noticed an odd thing. He was doing a long-term study of ravens , and he was putting carcasses down and watching their behaviour. On one occasion, just one raven arrived at a carcass .... and one of the first things it did was ... it called loudly and repeatedly ...and it brought other ravens in. Now why would it do that ? Why ? Behaviourists assure us that ALL actions are selfish. Even if it looks as though some actions are "kind", or "generous" or "unselfish" it is a given that they are not. The "reward" for a supposedly "unselfish" act is in the frame. Always. As far as "science" is concerned, there's no such thing as "unselfish" act. One classic example is when drivers let you into a stream of traffic .. they don't need to, there's no law about it.... but quite often they do. But, deep down, even "unconsciously" they "know" at a subliminal level that they, in turn, want to be "let in" when they're in the side lane. It's a "mutual benefit" thing. BUT .... if the practice of "letting-in" falls away and becomes rare, then the "benefit" drops away and almost everybody will stop doing it. So .... why would that Raven , faced with a lovely big carcass all to itself, "tell" other Ravens about it? That was the question that Bernd Heinrich asked himself that frosty morning up in the snowy, cold Maine woods. It took him a long long time, and lots of experimental work, to find out the answer to his own question. Did it turn out to be a truly unselfish and generous act ? The very first one behaviourists have ever found ? I'm not going to tell you what happened .... I want you think about it for yourselves. You could start by thinking up more examples like my " letting-in" one. Us humans do loads of things that seem to be unselfish but ...... in the long term, they're not. Think of some, and work out why they're ultimately beneficial. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And .... I can thoroughly recommend his book. Why I'm unselfishly telling you this I don't know. Maybe, when you've read it, you will praise me for putting you onto it. And I'll get an inner glow of pleasure from that. And pleasurable experiences are good for us. They flood our brains with endorphins. Which can't be bad ! ...now, I hope you'll get a glow of pleasure from this. When I found that " gold dance" video, this was next to it .... it's got what I want ... a song, some birds " behaving" and a beautiful atmosphere ........ |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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