So ... there I was, at the Local Lake..hoping for some " inside the 3K" stuff ...Sand Martins mainly. In my dinky 3K patch, there's only a tiny " Sand Martin Window." If I don't "get" them now, I don't get them at all. And as I arrived, keen as 'owt, there was a young lady there, holding an infant. Oh, said she, you should have been here a minute ago ...there's been a tall brown bird, a big one, sitting on that post over there for about 10 minutes .... but it's just gone. So, I thought to myself, what could it be ? Marsh Harrier ?? ... one had flown through a week or two ago ... a Bittern !!?? Do Bitterns stand on posts ? I don't think I've ever seen one do it. It could have been a "posture tick.!" What about .... The Giant Rat of Sumatra ? I didn't dare to ask her if it could have been a duck ... a female mallard.(!)(?) It would be a bit insulting .... and she did say it was tall. Ducks don't tend to be tall. Am I missing something obvious ? Like ... my brain ??? Anyway, she wandered off, and I " lingered hopefully"..... as you do. But "to no avail" ...as they say in novels. And there weren't any Sand Martins either. But at least, the dog enjoyed it. And as I get older by the minute, these little things weigh heavy in the mind. Or what's left of it. Anyhow .... a quizlet ... where did I get " The Giant Rat of Sumatra" from ? Now the music .... very topical .... and very odd... A "version" of the The Stranglers' " Golden Brown" .... by The Wurzels !!!! Crumbs. ...and this is even sillier .....
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Because I generally seem to ramble on, I like to stick in a short, pithy sort of thing every so often.... ..so here's a dinky question for you .... Which is the most ubiquitous bird species in the UK ? Or more precisely, which bird is found in the most 10km squares. Some of you might know straight away. Some of you might have to think about it for ages. Some of you might rush to your heaps of books. There you go then ! Get thinking/doing/sleeping/whatever. Plus ... an appropriate song ............ I wonder if Michelle Branch is related to Twiggy.
And ..is her bark worse that her bite ? And .. is Frank Bough her dad ? The other day, down at Grumbling Stumps. there were various notices up announcing "Dawn Walks" and "Minibeast Adventure Trails" and " Get to know the Birds" and " Marvel at the Moths"...that sort of thing. I wrote the dates down carefully in my notebook. But for all the wrong reasons ! See if you can have a guess as to why I wanted to remember them. I'll stick a handy picture on here while you think about it ..... it's probably part of some " Wildlife Art Trail" they inflict on poor innocent souls ! You could have a punt at what it actually is ... So .... why are those dates so vital ? Well..... 'tis a well-known fact that all such events are always plagued by awful weather, that's why. A great day to stay in and play chess . Here's a "famous example". The very first, inaugural " National Moth Night" was one such disaster. The idea was, mothers all over the UK were going to get their moth traps out there and send in huge lists of what they caught. I had mine out, as the Bishop possibly said to the Actress. The whole thing was a total and utter nationwide shambles, as it was a bitterly cold night of relentless rain and gales. I caught about 2 moths, which were half drowned, what with my trap having turned into a swimming pool. All my lovely egg-boxes had turned to pulp, and a lonely ground beetle was practicing for the 200 mm breast stroke. That taught me a lesson. Never take part in any "organised" thingy. I had enough of all that crap at school. But make a note of the date ! And now ... a "Weather Song" by the excellent Crowded House. Just in case you're desperate to know what that "thing" was ....
'ere's an elevating ditty for you to admire ... or not. Te Sag's a bird you see from sips and te Wincat as is bus. T'Obby flies as if e floats and Erons wade in slus. T' Sore Lark as a selly beac t' Stonecat as is eat. Searwaters fly way out of reac T'Awfinc as no teet. And wat about tat andsome Coug ! Te Selduck and te Ciffcaff ? Te Redsank by te sea so roug, Teir life's no kind of laug. Tey all long for a oliday, to some distant place to sally in wic tey'll sleep and play all day in a rigt pos seaside calet ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Not one of my best, but at least it represents a point of view. It could be a new motive for " T'Mystery of Migration" Extra verses in a similar vein will be welcomed at [email protected] All very odd, was it not ? I mean, Wincats like buses ? Really odd ! And so is this ..... On a totally separate topic ... ... on looking in at t'blog recently, the print seems to be all massive . Is summat going wrong ? Can I stop it doing it ? Or, to Englishify it, "rubbish on the beach" ..... picked up this morning. When I got to the strand/traeth, there was another birder walking along and we met up, had a short chat about what was about,or not, and he walked on. And I walked along the way he had come..... and as I did so, I picked up that lot. I was pleased to NOT see any plastic straws ..... but there wasn't anything else to be pleased about. And while we're at it ,what on earth is that semi-transparent "thing" in the middle there? It seems specially designed to get swallowed by a heron or a cormorant or whatever, and then get stuck half-way down and kill them.You could hardly think up a more potent killing contraption than that. But what was really sad, was that birder who had also walked that way didn't think to pick any of it up himself. I don't know who he was, and I don't suppose he'll read this. But it is, as my mum would have said, "a poor do" ! That's my bit for the day. So, to cheer me up after all that, let's have some proper live music ..... Je suis bien parmi vous
C'est si beau vu d'en dessous Je suis bien quand tu poses Je voudrais que tu exploses Donne-moi cette rose Mets ta main métamorphose C'est si beau, je suppose Je voudrais que tu exploses Je sais bien, je sais tout En un mot si je suis fou Aussi beau qu'une pause Je voudrais que tout explose I've had a strange " problem" email ( [email protected]) from a Mr B. Rainless .... and here's what he wrote ... Dear Mini-Birding Person, For many years I have been a conscientious, fairly intense and serious birder, doing lots of worthy stuff, surveys, conservation work, volunteering at bird reserves, plus quite a bit of twitching, going on birding holidays both in the UK and abroad and generally trying to embrace the whole panoply of the birding experience. It's all been both great fun and absorbing and also, I hope, of some use to the great scheme of things. But then I started reading your blog about a year ago, and that's all gone down the drain. All I think about now is finding birds hidden inside other birds, wondering why astronomical telescopes have the image upside-down, trying to make silly jokes using bird names, reading ridiculous "poems" with various letters missing/ridiculous rhyme schemes and gormless themes, listening to loads of foreign music, looking at incongruous pictures, trying to makes bird names out of car number plates, worrying about ill-thought-out hide conversions that turned out to be misunderstandings over crackly phone lines, wondering if big birds have small latin names and vice versa and finding out too late in life that you could dip out of the same bird twice and then add the two half-ticks together and call it a tick, and reading stories about a bunch of twerps with magic hats and access to trees with strange special powers, not to mention cliff-lift swifts and nifty tits that you "can't colour in" and a book called "Ant Hunting in Nepal" that doesn't exist, and all this from a so-called " birder" who doesn't know what his own life-list is, can't carry his own telescope and uses up acres of paper reminding us that RSPB makes a rude word if you move it all 2 places up the alphabet. But ... to get to the point ... Is there any way out of this for me ..... and if so, what ? Yours Addictedly, B. Rainless ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here's my reply .... such as it is. Dear Brian, I'm sorry for putting you in this predicament, but it seems there are various things you might try. [1] What about not reading it any more ? I mean, how hard can it be ? [2] You could take me to court for ruining your mental health. You might even win ! I haven't got much money though. And if the case rumbles on too long, I might be dead before it ends. I hope so anyway. [3] I could stop writing any more of it. At least that would mean that there would be no new bits for you to read. But if "cold turkey" isn't your thing .... [4] I could write less and less frequently .... thus allowing you to gradually lower the "dose" of "arrant claptrap" that seems to have taken you over. [5] I could delete the whole thing. I could do that in a couple of keystrokes. It's a bit drastic, but I've got plenty of other stuff to write about. But taking a neutral stance for a moment, I think method 1 would be best. If you have any more problems, don't hesitate to get in touch. After all that, this .... Faber ... " Wem du's heute kannst besorgen" .... and as for those " April Fool" choices I showed you yesterday, I hope you all realised that it was the " London Sparrows" one that I made up ...the other two were real true things, and not April Fools at all.
These days it can be quite tricky to work out which bit of the news is the April Fool. While I was waiting for the weather forecast this morning several items appeared which could easily have qualified ...... First off, a story about a some "rapper" or other who, for some reason unknown to the sensible world, called himself "Nipsey Hussle". I will just walk on by that one The next item was about the decline of House Sparrows in central London ... this has been going on for years, and loads of theories have been flung about. But now, it appears that neighbouring colonies have been engaging in attacks on each other in a sort of "territory war" due to the lack of food and nest sites in an increasingly over-humanised/concretised/sanitised city centre environment. It was even suggested that the humans were increasingly giving food to the homeless people lining the streets rather than the birds. Make what you will of that. And the third one was about a bit of a cock-up on some nature-thingy .... they had reared these little baby turtles, and that Liz Bonnin or somebody was releasing them on the beach so they could make their journey to the sea, and while she was talking " to camera" a Silver Gull walked up and flew off with one of them and ate it. Was that some sort of "trick" for April Fool's Day ... it does seem rather an odd error ...I mean, there must have been loads of cameramen and technicians and hangers-on and PR people watching the thing only a few metres away ... it all seemed a bit "fishy" to me. BUT ... dear readers .... which one of those three potential " April Fools" have I made up ...and which two were the "real" News Items ? Anyway, here's a "proper good" bit of rap music .... and there's a bird in it, if you're quick you might spot it .... this is a real whopper of a song ....... ...here's the "paroles" video for any of you coming up to A level French .... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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