You might remember that a while back I told you a few stories about " Bruce" ... he's our local " Birding Boss" .. or he carries on as if he is . A while back he had a go at "people who birdwatch from hides" .... his point being that they were just lazy , useless lumps who should be roaming the district finding stuff. He's like that. We're used to it. We ignore it. Mostly Anyhow, his proclamation had the opposite effect. Within a few days the local birding site was swamped with huge, largely invented, "hide lists" , birders writing long accounts of how they had stayed in them all day, overnight etc, including massive lists of stuff they claimed to have seen. We all thought this was fantastic fun and more and more local birders started making lots more rubbish up. An "in-hide chess tournament" was invented, complete with a results table and sample games. It wasn't me, honest.The site was bunged up completely by all this.... brilliant ! Anyhow, I put a long, meandering account on the site of all the things besides birding I liked doing in hides .... no, not that ..... or that. This was stuff you can do when there's not a lot about One of the first "things to do in hides when there's not much about" that I invented was very simple. You encourage all the people in the hide to have an ID competition... but they've got to use their binoculars the wrong way round !! They don't half get a shock ! It's brilliant ! You'd be amazed at how difficult it is ... loads of people have never tried it and are totally horrifried when they have a go. Discombobulated. Scrunged. Spoggled. Updonkled. So, dear readers .... why don't you have a go next time there's not a lot about ? And here's another thing .. wrong-way-round binoculars make a handy makeshift magnifying glass. But I'm sure you all know that. And very thematically, here's a miniature chess game set to the music of top Welsh-language band Datblygu.. " Cyn symud i ddim" .... notice the d→dd soft mutation there ! Played, of course, in a hide.....
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Er, no ! There was only one topic of conversation at Mini-Birding Towers last night. It was while we were watching an excellent edition of Have I Got News for you on our dinky steam-powered box. That Paul Merton was wearing a largely-concealed light blue shirt.... and on it were lots of birds. But what with it being an ancient, tiny, rubbish TV it was hard to make out what they were ... especially as he only appeared for seconds at a time. Plus, the dog ( The Shredder) was asleep in my lap so I didn't whoosh closer for a proper look. I'm not really used to tellys ... I didn't even have one until I was 32. But this morning I found the "replay" on youtube ( cripes ... that was quick) and took a couple of snaps of "the shirt." And that meant that instead of seeing this .... ... I could see this .... .. and even this ... So it's sort-of-sorted ... and here's Francoise Hardy and the rather wistful "Tous les garçons et les filles" Tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge
se promènent dans la rue deux par deux, tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge savent bien ce que c'est d'être heureux, et les yeux dans les yeux, et la main dans la main, ils s'en vont amoureux sans peur du lendemain. oui mais moi, je vais seule par les rues, l'âme en peine, oui mais moi, je vais seule, car personne ne m'aime. Mes jours comme mes nuits sont en tous points pareils, sans joies et pleins d'ennuis personne ne murmure "je t'aime" à mon oreille. Tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge font ensemble des projets d'avenir, tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge savent très bien ce qu'aimer veut dire, et les yeux dans les yeux, et la main dans la main, ils s'en vont amoureux sans peur du lendemain. oui mais moi, je vais seule par les rues, l'âme en peine, oui mais moi, je vais seule, car personne ne m'aime. Mes jours comme mes nuits sont en tous points pareils, sans joies et pleins d'ennuis oh! quand pour moi brillera le soleil? Comme les garçons et les filles de mon âge connaîtrais-je bientôt ce qu'est l'amour? comme les garçons et les filles de mon âge je me demande quand viendra le jour, où les yeux dans ses yeux, et la main dans sa main, j'aurai le cœur heureux sans peur du lendemain. le jour où je n'aurai plus du tout l'âme en peine, le jour où moi aussi j'aurai quelqu'un qui m'aime. The big news this month on the " New Bird ID Guides" horizon will give us lowly consumers of ID guides a whole new perspective. And a good thing too. A whole new generation of artists, photographers and forward-thinkers have developed an entirely new "ad hominem" approach to the pictorial representation side of things. And about time too. All those cack, boring guides from the past are going to be a thing of the past. For a start, look at all those pictures of raptors you tend to get. Perched. Side-on. I mean. come on ... 95% of the time, the only view of a raptor you're going to get is 3 miles up. And in this new generation of guides, that's what you're going to get. There's also the thing where you get one flying just in front of the car for 70m or so ... that's another important view we need. Warblers .. they're all shown beautifully side-on, on a remarkably un-leafy twig right level with you a yard away. Yeah, right. Very bloody likely. So the new guides will have them 80m away, tiny blobs, mostly with their back to you, 65% obscured by leaves, in the gloom of a wood.That's more like it !! Jack Snipe... 99% of Jack Snipes are flushed out of a salt-marsh or off the tide-line on January 1st, and only seen from above at a very slantwise [hey... a Gt. Spot is calling outside, and 5 swifts whooshing about too] ... overhead angle. And as for on the deck .... I've never seen a complete Jack Snipe on't deck ! I've seen the front bit a few times... and I've seen the back bit a few times. These are the sort of realistic, do-able views we need in our field guides. There's only 1 view of Woodcock you're ever going to need. You all know what it is. I've only seen a Woodcock on the deck once ... I set up the scope in ultra-slow-mo and got terrific views of it ..and so did The Significant Otter. So ... here's hoping that when these pioneering, realistically-illustrated new guides come out, they will be full of these innovative and helpful pictures. And hope is a fine thing. Joanna Newsom ... Jackrabbits ...... amazingly, this is the only video I could find for it. I was tired o' being drunk
My face cracked like a joke So I swung through here like a brace of jackrabbits With their necks all broke I stumbled at the door with my boot And I knocked against the jamb And I scrabbled at your chest like a mute With my fists of ham Trying to tell you that I am Telling you I can I can love you again Love you again I'm squinting towards the East My faith makes me a dope But you can take my hand in the darkness, darling Like a length of rope I shaped up overnight, you know The day after she died When I saw my heart, and I tell you, darling It was open wide What with telling you I am Telling I can I can love you again Love you again And it can have no bounds, you know It can have no end But you can take my hand in the darkness, darling When you need a friend And it can change in shape and form But never change in size Well, the water, it runs deep, my darling Where it don't run wide The feather of a hawk was bound Bound around my neck A poultice made of fig The eager little vultures peck And the verse I read in jest And Matthew spoke to me Said, there's a flame that moves like a low-down pest That says, "you will be free" Only tell me that I can Tell me that I can I can love you again Love you again Love you again Love you Here's one of Newt's early poems ..... if you don't know about Wavely Newt and his magnificent verses, shunt back to the previous post and take a look at one of his finest. In his early work he seems rather more tentative ...almost elliptical in his approach. For a start, he hasn't revealed the actual species he's writing about here.... and in many ways this ambiguity has brought him even more attention from critics and aesthetes throughout the world of critics and ,er, aesthetes. But recently Newt has revealed to his waiting public that his first works all held hidden clues as to the actual species involved. Some detractors have openly suggested that this is a mere retrospective publicity stunt..... but others have begun the hunt for further meaning in these poems which so many bird-lovers have come to cherish. Another cauldron of controversy has been his early adoption of right justification. He abandoned it on his 21st birthday, preferring to broaden his appeal ... but here he uses it to great effect. So, readers and poetry-lovers everywhere, immerse yourself in this ... and maybe you will be the first to find out which actual bird he was writing about. Swooping between the swaying trees he she or it their partner sees each feather shines, each eye it glows lustrous are its gleaming toes down it now glides in scything arc upside-down it grips the bark clutching tight with lusty claws knowingly it gnaws ... and gnaws. Well, I hope you liked that .... and I hope you'll like this ..... it's Vetusta Morla with " A tientas" about as live as anything can be ...
Coge tus cosas y corre lejos... lejos... corre hasta el sol pero cuida tus alas. Ten cuidado, Ícaro reencarnado en ojos de miel, en ojos de mujer fatal sin afinar. Tus latidos dicen: ¡Nunca más!. Hoy nadie mira hacia atrás, vuela alto en tu caballo de seda. Miras y ríes por no llorar, ríes para cantar una historia forzada sin principio ni final. Una historia de princesas que no tienen reino, que no tienen rumbo. Viven a tientas con un sueño a cuestas en su cabeza. ¿Hasta dónde tú quieres llegar?, dice aquel señor de barba espesa con sorpresa por verte cambiada. ¿Hasta dónde tú quieres llegar?, dice aquel señor de barba espesa, no saber qué coño va a pasar dentro de tu cabeza. Se paró el reloj de la función, cuánto tiempo lo habrás pensado, mejor vuelve a casa, corre niña contra el viento y la arena negra. Sin temor por lo que hablen las esquinas, veneno clavado en nicotina en el fondo de tu laberinto oscuro y claro,y claro, y claro, y claro como el aire. ORNITHOGRAPHY by Wavely Newt At dawn the fine Redstartmigan is trilling in the trees Whilst close at hand the Chatincole is pecking off its fleas. The lusty Thruff sings merrily and hops from bough to bough And Cormobrants swim lustily , mooing like a cow. The Ternstone flies o'er wave and trough As Capercurlews quietly cough. And as the Sparrot eats its bun The mighty Chiffchough greets the sun. Ah, readers, what a breath of fresh air has blown into the tiny world of Bird Poetry at last ! Finally, a poet has burst onto the horizon who shows an intimate understanding of our darling birds. .... and tells us all about it with his searing verse ! In just eight lines, darling lines, of thrilling insight and empathy, he plunges the reader into the seething, sumptuous,scrumptious world of the feathery fraternity. Not only that, but we hear he is currently writing more in his country retreat deep in the, er, country, bringing us into his world where the Hoodwink and Spring Crosby chatter and twitter in the Oaks and Spindles. Not to mention the mighty Chiffchough. And now, a piece of music which is a favourite of Wavely's .... and which envelopes us all in his own Utopian world of bill and coo ..... you'll need to watch this very carefully ... something very odd is going on .... Walking " The Shredder" ( our old and knackered dog) yesterday morning I met someone I used to work with. It seems a long time ago. He asked me " what are all these birds I can hear when I'm walking by the estuary ?" Well, I didn't really know where to start. There's all the ordinary stuff ... the robins, wrens, blackbirds, starlings, chaffinches etc ..... and then there's the stuff around the salt-marsh ... the oiks, redshanks, curlews, crows, lapwings,geese, shelducks, all that lot, and there's occasional ravens going over, skylarks, willow warblers, chiffchaffs, whitethroats, lesser throats, more chiffchaffs, blackcaps ... and on and on .... He looked a bit astonished by all this. A bit glazed over. ... then he said .... well, what's that bird that goes "..... " and he described some sort of utterance that, frankly, I didn't have a clue about. I don't know what he had been hearing at all. No bloody idea. It happens a lot. The thing is, "they" haven't got the vocabulary, they've no context, no hinterland. Nowt. Duffers. You see, I have long had the opinion that us birders live in a different world to everyone else. For a start, we never stop looking, and we never stop listening. We spend years and years learning every tinky little snatch of call and song.... we learn to know what a bird is on the dinkiest glimpse as it disappears into the hedge/distance/wood/clouds ! As I tripe this out on my tripe-tapper I'm looking up through the attic window hoping for a Med Gull or a Sparrowhawk to honk past. Actually, currently, a Swallow would be good. When I first met the The Significant Otter she was very impressed with all this. I knew the names of all the spiders, and flowers, and birds and rocks etc. Yes, she really admired it all. I knew the 4th perfect number and pi to 10 decimal places. I knew the names of all the stars and constellations. I was a geek. I still am. But now, she just thinks I'm barmy. Crackers. Round the bend. Frankly, I don't blame her. Current news ... looking up, I've just spotted a Crow flying over ... but not just any old Crow ... it's got a markedly forked tail ! A species new to science ? Crumbs !! It's a Black Krite .. or maybe a Krow. Hey ... the HFS has just flown by too ... "Hoped-For-Swallow !" OK ...enough gloomy pondering. Let's have some jolly music .... Vetusta Morla ... La Deriva .. it's been on here before, but now you can sing along to this "words" video ... con letra, as they say ... One of my big interests is "things that aren't there" ... an obvious and highly topical example is ... why hasn't anyone been telling us how we used to trade with Europe before we joined the EU all those years ago? I don't know. And yet ...surely somebody should be telling us ? But let's get back to birds shall we.... well, there's lots of birds that don't seem to have evolved yet ... or maybe they did evolve once but have vanished without trace..... let's have a think about birds that don't exist, but maybe ought to ... [1] Why isn't there a heron-type bird but with much longer legs ... it could wade into deeper water and be able to scour a bigger feeding area. Or, why not just develop a longer neck? [2] Why hasn't any bird evolved plumage that looks like something very tasty... then it could wait for a creature to arrive hoping for a meal, and then grab it and eat it instead. [3a] Why hasn't any bird got the ability to produce a powerful insect-attracting scent ... then it could simply hoover up all the arriving flies, moths, beetles etc without having to go looking for them. [3b] Similarly, why haven't far more birds evolved a much louder song, to make their territories easier to defend and attract a greater choice of potential mates .... plus it might reduce the time spent in singing and allow more time for feeding. [4] Why haven't some birds gained the ability to see other wavelengths of light like some insects have? It surely would be useful in some ways. They could track down "warm" things like mice ( and us)(except in the North) and then catch them and eat them. [5] Why don't birds produce one poisonous egg which nestles amongst the others ? ... that way, the local egg predators would soon die and there would be a higher success rate for the eggs that were left. Ha ! [6] Shouldn't there be a group of birds that can inject a poison into animals ...including humans ... that would quickly kill them ? That way they could eat them. Dinky snakes can do it, so why can't birds? They've got beaks, you know. [7] Why hasn't some sort of heron/stork/egret/kingfisher evolved into a new species that has the ability to land on/creep up to sleeping animals/humans and then swiftly pluck out one of their eyes and fly off sharpish. Why wait till they're dead? Eyes are very nutritious... eye doesn't rhyme with "pie" for nothing. [8] Some big birds could evolve into a species which buries itself upside-down with just their claws and eyes above ground in some suitable bird/rat-attractive spot like a rubbish tip, then grabs and eat anything that comes near ? I know for a fact that there used to be a gull-ringer who caught loads of them that way. I think he was Italian. Well, that's enough birds-that-don't-exist ideas for now .... let's have some music .... I'll have to make a list of all these posts, and what music I've put on, else I'll start repeating myself. However, I'm fairly sure that we've not had 'owt by Die Toten Hosen on here ( yet) so here they are with " Nur zu Besuch" .... Yes, here's part two of my thread about bird-based sleep-inducing techniques .... something you never realised you needed to know about. It's a good thing I'm here to help. This is a method that sound easy-peasy ... but it ain't. You want to get to sleep. Your thoughts are full of the Lack-Winged Stilt you're going to see tomorrow, or the flock of Axwings you keep missing out on. Or the Golden Lover that you got on your house list at last.... no wonder you can't drop off ..... Here's what you do ... You've seen various birds during the day. You mentally put your day list in alphabetical order. Ha! Easy ? Go on then, stop what you're doing, which is reading this, and try it now. There ... I told you it took some thought ...... and if you fell asleep, even better. And if you want something tougher ... do it with your Year List. And if you're still awake .... the Life List.... no way. You won't get beyond the first 3. That way madness lies. I actually don't have any trouble getting to sleep... but The Significant Otter does. I read her bedtime stories ... Harry the Dirty Dog, The Highway Rat, The Church Mice Take a Break, Clifford the Sheep, Mrs. Pig's Bulk Buy .... and I've made a tape of them too for when I'm dead. I'm so, so thoughtful. It can't be far away..... I've calculated that about 4 months of my life have been used up reading to her. Well, I'm sure you're both impressed and surprised at the efficacy of this getting-to-sleep-system. And it's my invention... so there. Actually, this whole post has been leading to the music bit .... it's the totally brilliant " Pause" by the now sadly defunct Daisybox. Top stuff.... That's a hell of a song .... why did they split up ?
In fact. I'm so upset about it I've written a post about it and told them what they ought to do ... here's the link ... Daisybox ..... where's the " best of " CD then ? By the way,in the future I'm going to write about another way of getting to sleep ...here's the link to it .... get ready for the tiny jolt as you cross the time-barrier .. 772-only-the-lonely.html Two days ago I saw as many Swallows as I saw Whimbrels. That's got to be a first ! Yep, 2 Whimbrels flew over me at the estuary, and over the whole day, only 2 Swallows were spotted. Pathetic. Yesterday .... no Swallows at all. Not a single one. Plenty of Swifts and House Martins. Today ... it's 20:05 and I've seen only 1 Swallow. Again, loads of Swifts and HMs .... .... something's up ! ... or down. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kate Bush ... Under the Ivy. I've been very lucky over most of my years at work in that there's usually been someone there who was also a birder. And every one of them has been a bit of a character. Oh yes. And "Basher" was one of them. I nicknamed him "Basher" because it's pretty close to his actual name and he is somewhat irascible and has been known to throw the odd punch. A sort of "pocket rocket." We would go out most dinner-times... in these more innocent times it would probably cause " suspicions" ... and go birding. There were plenty of places to go to .... we could go to the seaside and chuck bread and spot Med gulls. Yo ! We could zip down to the more sea-ish seaside and seawatch. By the sea. We sometimes went to a secret hidden pond. We sometimes went to The Tip. Good for gulls. And we could go down to "The Hut" where " The Boss" was in charge and see if owt was indeed about. I've written about him before ... code-name " Bruce." The top bird we ever got doing that dinner-time thing was a total and utter fluke. We turned up at the hut purely on spec and there was Tubs at the door. You don't need to know who he was. It stands for "The Under-Boss" There's been a whole string of "Tubs" over the years. We got out of the car and the current Tubs said " it's coming out in a minute." And Basher said " What's coming out?" And Tubs replied " Come on .... you know !" And I said... " No we don't." " No way" said Tubs. " Way" I replied. Those last two lines were put in by me to make it seem more exciting and "down with the kidz" and aren't what we really said. The rest is right though. Then .. out came The Boss with a warbler in his hand. And readers ... it was a Dusky Warbler ! Teenage Ticks ! Except we weren't exactly teenagers. But for that moment we felt like them. And then it was released, and we watched it flitting around in various trees etc. Tubs has never believed we didn't know about it to this day. It was a bit jammy. But it makes up for all those misses and near-misses. O how they hurt. And the older you get, the more they hurt. And don't forget that "hurt" = "stupid" in Welsh. Then we drove back to work. Woo ! Just Like Heaven !!! |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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