Our local reserve, Grumbling Stumps, has had very limited access over the last few months ...basically, some paths only, with a one-way system, and every hide is shut . That, of course, is all to do with the near-impossibility of getting "social distancing." But ... I've started up a solution to all that. I'm a "solutions" sort of person. So , my first thought was .. ..why don't we "space people out" in the way we've seen at restaurants, on trains, in pubs etc .... that is, they've blocked seats subtly with notices on the "not to be used" seats ..... right up to having huge life-sized stuffed-toy bears/gorillas/Afghan Hounds etc doing the blocking. So ...having got permission from the "Top People" at Gr.St, we've got it going. We got a whole load of volunteers to make life-size stuffed toy versions of a selection of our local birders and famous ones ! Oh yes !!! They are toiling away at their task right now ...... and the first one has been installed, so I'm told. It's a larger-than-life effigy of The Flat Controller, made, I'm told, mainly out of takeaway food packaging, all carefully stitched together to create a rather intimidating " don't mess with me" atmosphere which should keep the rabid crowds under control. And in the pipeline are similarly gruesome cloth-based giant versions of Bill Oddie, Lee Evans, The King of Bryher, Silent Tommy, "Curly", "Mr. G", Piss Crackem, Me, and many others . Our volunteers are doing a fantastic job, the only setback being a serious case of uncontrollable laughing by one of older stitcher-uppers, who had to be carted to the local hospital where she was pronounced to have contracted a serious but also laughable case of " Cloth-based Oversized Birding Celebrity Syndrome" which fortunately can be reversed by a nice cup of cocoa. And a digestive biscuit. I'm hoping to get some photos of the "socially distanced hides" very shortly, and I will bung them on here when available. I know you can't wait. And now the music ... I was going to choose " They might be giants" but then I found this .. there's birds in it too ...
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Yes, I'm sure it does ... but what sort of bird is it ? And after that brain-boggler, here's more quirky questions .. [a] There's a stuffed bird in Westminster Abbey. So ..what is it ? [b] What British statesman has been photographed with a wild bird sitting on his head ? [c] Which bird saved a city from being destroyed ? [d] Which poet was killed by a bird ? [e] What bird was burned on the orders of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University ? [f] What bird is linked to the Prince of Wales ? [g] Which emperor wrote a bird book ? [h] Which flute-player, minor poet and famous doctor who also has a statue in Gloucester Cathedral discovered that the cuckoo ejects the nestlings of its host ? [i] Which famous composer kept a Starling as a pet ? [j] Which English king has bird book dedicated to him ? [k] Which king had a paper on ornithology in a scientific journal ? There you are then ... your whole day ruined by your self-inflicted inadequacy in the "Wild World of Ornithological Trivia" ... but don't worry, nobody will know. ...and here's the sing-along-with-the-Lumineers" version .... As both of my trusty readers will remember, over the winter a Gt. Spot was a daily visitor to our garden. I even managed to get a few snaps of it. ... but over the last few months, no signs of any at all . But this morning, a juv turned up on the fat feeder !! Whizzo !! This was my first attempt at a snap..... for a start, for some gormless reason, the "flash" was "on" which doesn't help ... and the cat chose that moment to barge into my arm ..apart from that, it was brilliant.... ...then, having farted around trying (unsuccessfully) to unflash the camera I took this one ... not the absolute apex, but you could at least see that it was a bird...which, by my standards, is good. ... ... and this one was bit too late .. but, as Sod's Law would have it, it is, technically, the best picture by far...... as crisp as a ..er ... crisp. Personally, I have always believed that when you see all those tip-top zoomy-in close-ups with every tertial fringe as sharp as a sharpener,they are actually the jammy good one or two out of 327 crap ones that were promptly chucked into the bin... thus concealing the sheer fluky-ness of the whole process. Well, it comforts me anyway. So .. here's a lovely song about failure ... lots of them .... Mit jedem deiner Fehler ... with each of your failures... ... and here's the "singalong" version .... go on ... you know you want to ... The Trogs have been a long-standing fixture at Grumbling Stumps for an unknown and probably unknowable number of years. As in every group, one of them is an amiable but useless birder... you couldn't really rely on any of his identifications . However, he's really nice bloke,and well liked too ... mainly because he isn't any sort of rival and he makes the other four feel like experts. Win-win. We'll call him Jim. And here's the others ... Dan ..... the best birder in the group, and he's been to Scilly .. twice ! Ed ....... the joker of the group. He's been to Benidorm and seen a Red-Rumped Swallow.. maybe. Stan ... the quiet one. But he carries a bird book with him. Not done in top circles. Mac .... the Scottish one. A giant of a man too. I hope he's a gentle giant. Every so often their usual routine of ambling round the various hides and seeing very little followed by a couple of hours in the tea-rooms drinking one cup of tea very slowly, is interrupted by something or other ... generally something strange, uncanny, unexpected or weird. So far they've " got rid of" an upstart intrusive git ..... 177-the-trogs-first-adventure.html The "duffer" amongst them has had a mystical experience ..... 259-the-trogs-have-a-strange-adventure.html ..so ...here's their most recent incident ... a Moral Lesson for us all ... .... as usual, Jim, Dan, Ed, Stan and Mac had been sat in the Weetabix* Hide for 40 minutes when a bird appeared .... right on the far side just poking out of the reedbed. Jim immediately called it as a Sora Rail ! A prolonged row ensued, as you might expect, with more heat than light being brought to the debate/row/tiff ! Usually their little tiffs lead to nothing ..but this time it got nasty, and the other four, led by Mac, made it clear that if he stuck to his ridiculous identification he could bugger off ..... effectively they kicked him out of their little coterie. Except it was them that left .... Jim watched them go, and then waited for the Sora/who-knows-what to reappear. Which, by the way, it did. Well, a week later. As the four of them stomped off to the next hide, they were adamant that his expulsion was permanent ... no going back. Then Dan stopped for a moment ... turned to the other three .... and told them that they ought to give him a second chance .... they'd been too hasty. But Mac immediately told him that he was barred too.... he couldn't put up with people who supported "birders" like Jim, who couldn't tell a sparrow from a snipe and should have been banned from the blasted reserve ages ago ! Without a word, Dan turned on his heels and went back to the Weetabix Hide to see if Jim was OK. The remaining three, a bit mystified at what was going on, resumed their walk, and were much quieter now as they turned left towards the Gannet Hide. * As soon as they were in, a big raptor flew by .... but only Ed saw it, as the other two were looking at the "recent sightings" list on the back of the door. Ed watched it for a good minute or so, but it was a long way off, and he couldn't get much on it..... and then Stan and Mac turned up, and wondered what he was looking at. They were not best pleased when they realised he had been watching it for a full minute and hadn't told them .... and even worse, he couldn't tell them much about it and didn't know what it was ! Of course, another heated argument got going, and the upshot was, Mac told Ed that he was bloody useless, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to keep that sort of thing to himself he could have to get used to it, because they wouldn't be birding with him ever again. So ... the remaining " Perfect Two", Stan and Mac, stormed out of the hide. They kept silent for the next 15 minutes as they trudged through the flooded track that led to the Sewage* Hide ... and suddenly Mac turned on Stan and asked him why he always carried a bird book with him .... and before Stan could get his "defence" in, and what with the febrile mood they had got themselves into, Mac pushed him off the track and into 8 feet of smelly sewage, turned his back on him and stomped his way home. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sitting in his kitchen, Mac went over again and again all that had happened. He'd shown them that he wasn't putting up with idiots, fantasists and halfwits ! And he certainly wasn't going birding with that lot ever again !! That would show them !!! The days went by. Empty, companionless days. He was "comforted" by telling himself that he was in the right, and they were all wrong. But as the days turned into weeks .. and months. Mac realised that HE was the one who was suffering. The other four had all got together again by the end of that strange day, and were happily birding without him. And it was HIM that was the twit left all by himself. THEY were all getting good stuff at Grumbling Stumps and elsewhere . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, there's a " moral tale" for us all. Of course, all could have gone a lot better.... BUT ... 'tis Music Time now .... but what would be relevant ? Well, there might be a bird in it ...who knows ? You shoulda heard me in the lounger
Telling people what they was Spitting out all types of sugar Just dying for a cause, cause, cause A smiler slithered to my corner On a face so true My word is always in the ready And I’ll attribute that to you I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't wanna belong to anyone You shoulda heard him in the bowery Learning people with a tongue Cut from second-hand cloth Make the women feel young I heard him serving as a soldier In the annexe of the earth Threw himself before a bullet And threw the metal to the dirt Hear the man’s word I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't wanna belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't wanna belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't belong to anyone I don't wanna belong to anyone . * Weetabix Hide ... because it is indeed Brown, Crumbly and Soggy. * Gannet Hide ... that's where everyone has their dinner. * Sewage Hide ..... sponsored by the local " Sewing Circle" Regular readers who have nothing better to do might remember a bizarre version of the" how many birds do you need to "get" all the letters of the alphabet" challenge. We'd already "done" it with the UK list. Then we did it using the Latin names instead. And then we went global doing it with any bird in the entire world. Crumbs ! But then, Tom, a Grumbling Stumps regular, suggested I try it with Welsh bird names. ... and I said, OK. ( I feel I should remind you, at this point, that "tom = dung" in Welsh) Well, as with those others, I've "done" it, but I can't be sure I've got the "best" solution. I'm going to put my "Welsh" attempt on here after the music ..... so if you're keen to try it for yourself,as many of you will, don't look beyond it unless you want to nick my solution. Smashing song this ... ( and video).... plus, the middle eight ( played twice) is brilliant. Here we go then .... but first, you need to realise that the Welsh alphabet is a bit different to ours ...here it is ... A B C CH D DD E F FF G NG H I J L LL M N O P PH R RH S T TH U W Y So ... here's my solution .... [1] Pibydd goesgoch brith Spotted Redshank [2] Yswidw gynffon hir Long-tailed Tit [3] Mulfran werdd Shag [4] Aderyn â phig mawr Toucan ( bird with a big beak !) [5] Llunos Ffrongoch Redpoll [6] Math o aderyn rhydd Godwit [7] Tinwen y Garreg Wheatear ( white-arse of the Rock !)) [8] Jac y do Jackdaw ( J is a rarely used Welsh + I needed the "c") IS-NODIADAU .. [1] Exactly why there is a Welsh word for Toucan I don't know. [2] Tinwen y Garreg is only there for the "t" ...surely I can get it somewhere else. I can't count the one in brith or math ... they're glued to the h. [3] #6 starts with "math o" = "sort of" ... .. and ends with "rhydd" = liberal, free, loose" ... .. I wonder if they meant " rhudd" = red ? ..... (which would make it " a sort of red bird) Anyway, I think I've done quite well ... but I'm pretty sure it can be bettered ... come on , all you native Welsh speakers ... kick me into touch with a better list ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What we need now is a bit of Welsh "bird-related" music ... Heron would be nice ... if only it had the words so you could sing along with it .... and even better, if it had the English words too ... but that's pretty unlikely... Anyway, I've "done" it in 8. Here's my massive collection of all the amazing, terrific and wonderful bird-related "poems" I've scribbled between posts 801 and now ... and what a collection it is. Strangely, my hopes that some keen publishing house would snap them up and make me into a millionaire seem to have ,er, c olla pse d. But never mind... you now have the chance to read and admire yet again my latest outpourings ....... This one was me wallowing in gloominess what with all the terrible March weather etc ... and bemoaning the huge number of years I've racked up ...
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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