Years ago (1996) I swooshed up to Wigton in the north of Cumbria to see a Spanish Sparrow ... and see it I did. I expect some of you did too. Hey .. I was a sprightly youth then. But somehow, I'm not any more. Getting old is like being punished for something you haven't done. And I certainly haven't done it. Bah ! I wish I had now. Back to the Sp. Sp .... But another thing I noticed was ..... there were loads of Tree Sparrows around ... in fact I don't think I've seen such a concentration of them anywhere before or since. And as I stood there looking at "the bird" I began to wonder just how many ( or few) genes separated the two species. And it also occurred to me that there's a lot of radioactive material in Cumbria as well. Both natural and man-made. That's the sort of thing that can alter a few genes ..... Not that I'm suspicious or anything. And then we got talking about the various ports that weren't so far away .... and how a Spanish Sparrow could easily survive a boat trip. As far as I know they aren't naturally migrants, but one might easily hop onto a boat and then get stuck inside somewhere. And then hop off again, and filter along to where it was, in front of us. But hey, I've ticked it anyway. It makes up for all those things I've missed by 10 seconds or 2 minutes or 2 hours ..... or even 2 days. But in these troubled times, a bit of healthy scepticism and critical thinking never comes amiss. I suppose it would be appropriate now to play a bit of Spanish music .... and probably by top Spanish band, Love of Lesbian..... Anyhow, here they are .... "Mi Primera Combustion" ...
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The SRPB ,or Society for the Restoration of Proper Birding, is a well-established group of Proper Birders, with its own magazine " Proper Birding" and a membership of some 470 proper birders. Well, they say they are. How would I know ? If you want to be a member, it's dead easy... you just have to agree with at least half of these life-style choices ... [a] .... you wear plus-fours on most birding outings. [b] ... you don't do anything scientific. [c] .... especially surveys, counts or bio-blitzes, whatever they are. [d].... you do not subscribe to British Birds. [e].... you are not young. [f] ... you don't approve of children of any sort. [g].... you don't like many adults either. [h]... all your optics are ancient and useless. [i] ... your telescope weighs more than your dog. [j] ... you know nothing about subspecies. [k] .. you don't believe in evolution. [l] ... or global warming. [m] ... or A Question of Sport. [n] .... you write your birding diary in Latin. [o] ... and in fountain pen. [p] ... your birding hero is Viscount Grey of Falloden. [q] ... you know nothing about gulls. [r] ... or sibes. [s] .. or reverse migration. [t] ... or genetic drift. [u] ... or stochastic population shifts. [v].... you have a life-size cardboard replica of Michaela Strachan in the shed. [w]... or, for the ladies, it could be of Chris Packham. [x] ... you've tried to visit Snettisham, but you've never managed to find it. [y]... the same happened with Benacre Broad, but it took you longer. [z] .... you still keep looking for the Beach Cafe at Cley. But you can't find it. Ever. So.. that's easy enough ... tick 13 or more of those and you're in. RPBS ... real people. beautiful songs ... see what I did there ... and the Real Music is delivered by Ben Gibbard of DCFC .. " Black Sun " The Significant Otter always refuses to listen to, or watch, any music I recommend ... and it's probably a good thing, because she'd fall in love with him after about one-hundredth of a second !
.... and I couldn't really blame her. A while ago there was that bloke climbing up the side of a building to rescue a dangling child. A few days ago this picture of a raccoon doing much the same thing, but on a much higher building and for no obvious reason. They both made a good storey !! ( ho-ho) But who remembers the beautiful Wallcreeper which visited an Amsterdam high-rise building 2 years running ? Grrrr. It was up and down it like anything. Not that I'd know of course. I never saw it ... I've never seen one. I've only been "abroad" twice .... and neither abroadification was for birding. No doubt you will be informed about those two rather minuscule overseas interludes. Well the 2nd one wasn't totally minuscule. And now, Cœur de Pirate and the excellent " Place de la République " On s'est connu le temps de plaire Aux exigences qu'on s'est créées mais on s'y perd Tu n'es qu'à quelques kilomètres Et nos cœurs, nos cœurs sont restés dans cette mer J'ai couru en longeant la seine En espérant te retrouver, l'âme sereine J'ai couru sans savoir comment Ni pourquoi on s'emballe On s'est connu qu'un moment Et je ne sais plus si tu en vaux la peine C'est plutôt dur d'en être certaine Et quand tu seras à Vincennes Ce soir ne m'oublie pas Je t'attendrai au moins le temps de dire Que j'ai voulu prendre le plus grand risque Un soir qui m'a rendue bien triste Un soir Place de la République Et comme tu vois c'est bien la fin Je dois traverser l'océan demain matin De tes bras, je m'arracherai tout doucement Et c'est la réalité qui m'attend Je sais ton cœur est habité Par une ou d'autre fille qui t'ont marquées Moi je suis moins forte que les autres Mais j'espère tant te manquer Tant me démarquer Et je sais plus si tu en vaux la peine C'est plutôt dur d'en être certaine Et quand tu seras à Vincennes Ce soir ne m'oublie pas Je t'attendrais au moins le temps de dire Que j'ai voulu prendre le plus grand risque Un soir qui m'a rendue bien triste Un soir Place de la République This one is even more spontaneous than usual.... I've just heard somebody on the radio talking about how he likes rescuing plants . When he goes to a supermarket and sees racks of plants outside all dying for lack of water, he goes in an gets them to water them ... or he does it himself. If he sees plants dying on road verges etc, he takes them home and nurtures them back to health !! What a drip ! But the thing is ... I've got to be a bit like that. In recent weeks I've chucked loads of moths and flies and suchlike out of the house, I've picked up lots of snails off the pavements and slung them into gardens so they don't get trodden on, I've hauled various struggling invertebrates out of spider webs and released them, whenever I go to the beach I pick up mountains of plastic string, plastic mesh, plastic straws, plastic tubes of various deadly shapes, plastic loops ..... I've become a soppy old drip. Us blokes are meant to be tough and strong and stuff like that. I think that as you get older, if you get older, you value life ...all life ... a lot more. Because as far as you're concerned, there's a lot less of it left. And, as the cartoon at the top says, I don't know how to act my age. Because I've never been this age before. Don't worry readers ... I'll be back to my normal, cynical, silly, sarcastic self next time ....... but before I revert to type, here's First Aid Kit ... another nifty thematic link there .... " Ghost Town" ... Here's how to start chapter 2 of a book specially aimed at young people who might be thinking of doing a spot of birdwatching .... yes, it's only chapter 2 ... ...... you can just feel the excitement building up there !! More ! More ! ..... sorry about the slight overlap .... mind you , it gives you a bit more time to memorise those lovely long scientific names.... oh, here's some more ... goody ... .... hey.. those sub-orders are really fascinating aren't they ... I'm pleased to see there's more of them on this next bit.... Bah ! they've finished. I wish he'd put the rest of that explanation at the end on here as well ... oh, hang on, he has .... ace !!! Scrummy !!!!! Well readers, that's a section from that " Birdwatching for beginners" book which came out in 1952. I wrote a bit about it a while ago. You'll notice that he seems to assume that his readers will be familiar with Latin and a certain amount of Greek. Ha !! Oh, and he also thinks they'll know what he means by " in Latin form" ...... fat chance. I think we all agree that that's not actually the best way to draw young readers in to birdwatching. It's a bit like getting a roomful of young potential footballers to introduce them to the game, and starting with the aerodynamics of the football, complete with lots of fascinating equations and graphs. Then you could show them how really there is a great deal of chance in a game of football, illustrated by Markov Chain Theory and lots of lovely probability calculations. Then they could learn the names of all the bones in the body so they'd be prepared if they broke any. Then for homework they could calculate the surface area and volume of a football to three significant figures. That's the sort of approach that Mr. Oddie's books blew out of the window ! And after reading all that, most young boys would think ... "hey, getting a girlfriend is better than that" ...... what a nifty link eh !! I have to admit that the first way I showed you to increase your all-important UK list was a bit over-technical. Actually, it was dead boring. This one is much more practical.And entertaining, if you like watching the suffering of others. It's based on the Tax and Welfare Systems ... you are awarded points for various reasons ..... for a start, having children gets you points. Well, I've got 2 children ..... and there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever that they've had a deleterious effect on my UK list. Oh yes. Absolutely disastrous actually. CALAMITOUS A BLOODY SHAMBLES Not only that ... they're twins. Oh no !! And what's more ... we didn't know they were going to be twins until they actually appeared. Double Oh No !!! I think I should get points for that. Lots of points. That's worth at least 5 ticks a year..... maybe more ..... I'll be fair, and say that it would only last until they were ,say, 21 or so. That's 105 extra birds on my UK list. Woo ! R'arglwyd ! Jings !! Maldita sea ! But, you might ask ..how did they have this drastic effect ? Let me count the ways ... I hardly dare think about the 1000's of hours spent trundling them around in prams, push-chairs, cars, buses, trains etc. You can't get much birding done that way. For a start, their interminable screaming buggers up any chance of flyover migrants getting picked up, and you can't fit your bloody telescope into a pram, especially with two of them in it. And when you pick them up, they're always sick all over you... and even better, if you carry them in one of those back-pack things, they're sick all down your back. Sometimes they do it shops... oh yes. These things stick in the memory ... and to your back. I reckon I should get at least 20 ticks for all that. Then there's all the extra work ... I've calculated that I've changed about ... hold on .... 5 x 365 x 4 x 2 = 14600 nappies in my life ..... and at a conservative 10 minutes each, that's 2433.3 recurring hours = 101 and-a-bit days. That's a lot of days. It must be worth 10 ticks at least. And of course there's all the ferrying about when they're older .... every blasted holiday when my kids were at university, I had to spend 4 days bringing them home and taking them back. Over 3 years ( more actually) and three sets of holidays a year that's 36 more days. That's 10 ticks. Maybe more. Plus all those trips to the doctor, to hospital, parent's bloody evenings ... grrrr. My son had a special propensity for buggering up our holidays by getting injured on the 1st day. He broke his toe on the first day of one of them, and his wrist on the first day of another one. The first bloody day !!!!!! That was my "notional" free day to go birding." Not any more it wasn't. I was going to twitch a Lesser Grey Shrike. That went straight down the tubes. And I've never seen one since. Ouch, Aaaaargh and Bugger. I reckon that's 1 tick each for those. Yes ! And then there's the drain on our meagre incomes. They reckon that bringing up even one measly child costs oodles of cash ... so I got 2 x oodles = well, I reckon with all that extra money I could have jetted around the UK and racked up at least 20 more ticks. Plus ... if I'd had that money , think of all the huge telescopes I could have bought ..... and the fortnight-long holidays on Scilly and Fair Isle and ,er, other places. With a really big telescope, think of the stuff I could have spotted. Oh, the agony ! I've still not recovered. And nor has The Significant Otter Personally, I blame her for the entire thing. That is indeed the mystery stone .... in the bad old days when I had to work, it was on my desk to remind me. But remind me of what, some might ask .... well, it came from somewhere on this map.... somewhere special .... ... like the beautiful sand-bar between St. Agnes and Gugh. Walking across that sand-bar one day, I spotted that well-shaped chunk of granite, and thought .. I'll have that ..... it will make a smashing thing to put on my desk.... and it will remind me of that moment. And it's always been on whatever my desk has been over the years since. It's radioactive you know. But I'm not over-worried. Here's a close up of that sand-bar..... the stone was roughly at the 4th dot from the left ..... The more erudite of my readers will have noticed that in the background, behind said stone, is a page from the well-known sarcastic birding mag " Not BB." But more of that later. The thing with Scilly is ... it's too beautiful. It's very very difficult to leave it. It's really a complete little world of its own. If you haven't been, then do it. If a lazy git like me has been, so can you. In life, it's the things you haven't done that you regret.... not the things you have. Yes , I'm a philosophical old Hector. As far as I know, there isn't a Jazz Club on Scilly .... but there is one on here.... Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your life list is 386. But you could make it so much better with a few minor adjustments. You could certainly nudge it over the magic 400 mark. today. Now. OK ... I'm doing it for you now .... Aha .. it's 468 now !! And with a further slight mathematical tweak it is now 602 !!! Yes, it really is. But for that 602 to be truly legitimate, you would have to make a big sacrifice. You would have to cut off two of your fingers. Have a think about that. Is it worth it ? If you went to extremes with that, you could boost your list to 110000010 Which looks a lot, but actually it isn't. And if that isn't a massive clue, I don't know what is. Plus, you would only have two fingers left. So ... what am I doing ? You'll see after a bit of music .... Well, here's what I did. 386 is 4689 ... that is, in base 9 ..and it's 602 in base 8 .. "octal" or 6028 ... and in binary ( base 2) it's 1100000102 Luckily, you can do this just by asking the internet. If you want to boost your life list of 278 by writing it in base 7, you can just ask the net.... it comes up straight away with 545 ( 5457) That's quite a boost. But you would be short of 3 fingers. But the moral of this tale is .... numbers are fickle. They're in base ten because we have ten digits. And if you only have 7, the world's your oyster. And if you only have 2, the world's your killer whale. But focusing the bins might be tricky. In retrospect, you'd probably have preferred me to just show you lots of pictures of twitchers.
You could always try to spot yourself. But I've written the thing now. Bah ! You'll be pleased to hear that the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo contains 204 species of birds. Or maybe you won't. It depends on what your view of zoos is. Anyhow, what I wanted to know is ... how many species of birds are there in the Bible? There is considerable room for controversy over this ...what a surprise. "How could that possibly be ?" one might ask. Well ... there's loads and loads of versions of the Bible, and they don't all agree, bird-species-wise. To show you what I mean, here's a thing I wrote about Psalm 102 .... it's not half as boring as you might think, me being me ... there's disappearing Pelicans which later re-appear as corvids of some sort for a start ... In the paper the other day some bloke was writing about "sparrows on the roof" in Psalm 102. I remembered that , in Welsh, the sparrow is a " roof bird" .... aderyn y tô. I've always thought it a bit odd, because I don't see them on rooftops very much ... gutters sometimes, but the roof top, the ridge at the top, is more usually a place for starlings, gulls, pigeons, jackdaws ( jac-y-dô) etc. Anyway, naturally I went to my Welsh bibles and looked up Psalm 102.... it was very interesting. Oh yes. There's more than one bird in there for a start, and some of them get changed and/or edited out.... the "normal" English bible says ... 6] I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. 7] I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top. but ... but.. the "New" English bible goes like this .. 6] I am like a desert-owl in the wilderness, an owl that lives among ruins. 7] Thin and meagre, I wail in solitude like a bird that flutters on the roof-top. Well, that's no good is it! Where's the blasted pelican flown off to? Where's all this " thin and meagre" stuff come from ? And all those ruins ? Why has he started to wail in the second version ? This is all very odd !! I'm sure the Welsh will have it sorted ... let's see shall we..... here's what my "old" Welsh bible says about all this.... 6] Tebyg wyf i belican yn anialwch: ydwyf fel dylluan y diffaethwch. 7] Gwyliais ac ydwyf fel aderyn y tô, unig ar ben y tŷ . Well well well ... the pelican ( °belican) is back, in the wilderness, even though they prefer lakes and stuff, the owl's still there ( °dylluan), but they're using a different Welsh word for the wilderness/desert it's in. There's the roof-sparrow, all on its own by the looks of it. "ydwyf = I am , by the way. Let's get bang up to date with a look at what "Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd" has to say on this vital topic ... will the Pelican still be in its wilderness? Will the owl be in a slightly different sort of desert/wilderness? What will the sparrow be getting up to in the possible ruins? Is anyone going to be wailing ...or not ? Here we go ... brace yourself for a shock of biblical proportions ... 6] Yr wyf fel brân mewn anialwch, ac fel tylluan mewn adfeilion. 7] Yr wyf yn cadw'n effro, ac fel aderyn unig ar do. Cripes ... from Pelican to crow,rook or raven ( brân) in 1 easy step. The owl... yes, they've stuck to that owl ( tylluan this time) ... has got its ruin to play around in... as for the writer, no mention of any wailing , nor any solitude ...unlike the lone "bird" on the soft-mutated roof. And there's no fluttering either. Deary me ! What a carve-up ! You can't help but be suspicious that the Pelican has been Cymraeg-ificated into some corvid or other. I wonder exactly how many Pelicans there are in Wales.... I'm guessing 23. Isn't it interesting though to see how these bibles chop and change the content of these stories verse by verse, sentence by sentence? Yes it is. Very peculiar. There you are .... that's 1 tiny bit of the Bible in two languages , and already we're in a right old mess ! We're not even sure what sort of sparrow it was either. Can you just begin to imagine the chaos there must be among the many thousands of Biblical-Bird-Tickers in the world, not to mention the Biblical Zookeepers. Mad ! Totally doolally. I'll tell you something else too .... you know there's a big list of all the types of food that you're not supposed to eat ... well, they're somewhat different in other-language bibles !! Now that's a bit odd, is it not ??!! It's a good job there's me about to spot all these, er, anomalies. It was well worth learning Welsh just to bring it to your attention. And now back to some sort of sanity with Deacon Blue .... "Chocolate Girl " Incidentally ... it started drizzling about an hour ago ... the first rain here for about 22-23 days.
When I was a teenager, my binoculars were some hefty bomb-proof ex-WW2 things my dad had. They were so old, they had separate focusing for each eye ...which was a blasted nuisance, because whenever you wanted to change focus, you had to twiddle both of the eye-lenses at once. Following flying birds was a disaster. Even following a snail was quite tricky. I think they were about 57½ x 58¼ or something. But they were 57½ x better than nothing. Anyway, I had them for about 6 years .. until disaster struck. Me and The Significant Otter were going on the boat to N. Ireland where her parents lived. I had extremely long (and beautiful) hair then, of which her parents did not approve. Not only that, nor did the let-you-onto-the-boat-people. This was deep in the time of " The Troubles" in NI and hefty searches of everything were commonplace. And I and my long hair attracted a great deal of interest from the harbour police. On this occasion they did the usual thing and carted me off to an office where I was grilled thoroughly ... and they searched my rucksack ... and found lots of seeds in one of the side pockets. Oh dear. I pointed out that I was interested in wild flowers etc and these had fallen from various ones I had collected. I then went through them all, and gave them the common and Latin names of them all, which they patiently wrote down on little envelopes into which they put the various types of seed. It was bad enough having told them that the bins were for birdwatching ... but flowers as well ... and long hair !!?? I was already racking up the points like mad. It was very obvious that they thought it was all a pack of lies and that those seeds were actually drugs !! They told me they were going to be sent to a laboratory to be checked out. Anyhow, they did, eventually and only just in time, let me onto the boat. Result ! BUT .... once on the boat, naturally I did a spot of seawatching. In those days when nobody cared if you fell overboard, they let you out onto the decks and along the sides ..which most boats don't do nowadays. Anyhow, I was having a fine, but cold, time spotting auks and shearwaters etc, when my arms got a bit tired and I let go of the bins .... but readers, I had not actually put the strap round my neck, and the bins fell about 40' into the sea. Oh, calamity !! That's quite a lot of feet. But not quite so many metres. Sometimes, as I drift into slumberland at night, I think of them still there on the seabed somewhere in the Irish Sea. It's quite a romantic thought actually. They'll be covered in all sorts of organisms now ..... so at least something's getting the benefit of them. Now ... the moral of this story is .... Don't forget to put the strap round your neck. Mind you, they were pretty crap. The next pair I got was some much lighter 6x30 things, and they had central focusing !! Woo !! You'll be pleased to hear that the police sent me a letter about 3 months later to let me know that I was in the clear. The seeds were exactly what I had said they were. I think it was the latin names that impressed them. I knew that latin would be useful one day. Luckily I had just about managed to learn enough of it before I got chucked out for good half way through the 4th year. But now, after all that ,this ... Kate Bush .. "and dream of sheep " Hey ... now I come to think of it, I should have played something by The Bad Seeds.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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