This is the 2nd of two short posts to make up for the v. rambling ones that stunned the nation into advanced narcolepsy a few days ago. Off we go .... We ( The S.O. and me) were watching a detective story last night.. The best thing was, wherever they went, a mad and very loud blackcap could be heard in the background. Either blackcaps are 20 per sq m in that neck of the woods, or it was following them around the neighborhood, or the dubber-on of the sound track had a very limited imagination. But, of course, I loved it. It happens a lot. You get all sorts ... warblers singing in midwinter, calls and songs which are completely baffling and probably from Tanzania or wherever ... it's all there waiting to be spotted by us .. and only us. It's a little bit of payback for all those mega-hours we've spent learning them all. A rich reward. There you are.... I hope that was short enou..
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The last two posts have been quite lengthy... so I'm going to do two quick ones to make up for it ... here we go... A few years ago, when I was young and higgorant, I got a very, er, concise phone call from a local birder .... here's the message in full .. " Banjo-bird at Grumbling Stumps !" The phone was then slammed down, and I was left thinking ... what ? So dear readers, what was it ? I told you it was going to be sh.... Yep, it's Left-Hander's Day today, and I'm one of them. It's no fun you know ... we tend to have more accidents in a right-handed world, we're more likely to get schizophrenia, at school I was constantly forced to sit to the right of right-handed pupils so my elbow kept banging into theirs, and in my early years we only had " scratch pens" with metal nibs which you dipped into a pot of ink, and they were terrible for left-handers because when writing from left to right the sharp nib was always getting stuck in the paper... and in addition, my sleeve would trail through the not-yet-dry ink as I progressed across the page. Some left-handers twist their wrist right round to avoid all that. Not only that ... I had a violin once, which cost me a sheepskin jacket, and only later did I find out that when sitting next to other violinists my bow would bang into their bow going the other way. Doh ! My mum forced me in infancy to hold my knife and fork the right-handed way, and I still do to this day, though it doesn't seem right somehow. I play the guitar the right-handed way ... it just seemed to work better. You can just about see it in that picture up at the top right... cripes, that was centuries ago. Eeek. I once got given a piano-accordion, but I could never decide which way round to play it... neither way round seemed right..so I just got rid of it. I'm sure the world was quietly grateful. But ... but .... how does it affect my birding activities ? I couldn't think of anything much ... I wonder if those " monoculars" are shaped in any special way ? Oh, Ha! the "twisty handles" on tripods that you twist to allow you to turn the scope left/right and up/down are for right-handers... well they are on my tripods anyway. I always knew there was something awkward about them. Crumbs. Aha! The press-button thing on cameras is always on the right... I bet my snaps are a bit shakier than they should be because of that. Mind you, some might argue that my stronger left hand was holding the camera much steadier. Swings and roundabouts. And talking of them, I reckon they always go clockwise. As opposed to widdershins ... I hope you all know that you should never go round a church anticlockwise ... it summons up the devil. I've tried it lots of times, and it's never worked, Humph. But .. the main thing I wondered about was ... do us left-handers tend to draw birds facing the other way to how right-handers draw them? That's quite a deep question that is. Could you tell if someone was left-handed just by looking at their drawings ? That's even deeper. I'm going to do a bit of research ! [ Nips downstairs to look through wizard and valuable sketchbooks] [ Nips back upstairs] Looking at some of my own left-handed so-called drawings I found this ...... FACING LEFT 142 FACING RIGHT 101 FACING FRONT 40 Well.... that's quite a bias to the left. But probably not definite proof from a relatively small sample. I'll look at lots more and see what I find there... the main problem there is that when I'm drawing real birds, the ones in front of me ,I'm going to draw them the way round that they are. So what I really need to look at is drawings I've made without an actual bird too look at. Then I have the choice to draw them either way round. It's going to take a while to find enough of those. Maybe a better idea would be to look through books of bird art.... but that would surely have the same problem. They would mostly be drawn from life. [ Nips downstairs again to get photograph book] ] So to change tack a bit ... I flicked through a book with photographs in it and counted the right-facing and left-facing birds.... LEFT 14 RIGHT 45 FRONT 3 [Nips back upstairs again ] Well, it seems there is a "natural bias" for people choosing pictures of birds to pick the ones that show birds facing right. Only a small sample though . So then I flicked through a handy copy of BB and looked at their photographs ... here's what I got ... L 38 R 32 F 3 not much in it. [ That was upstairs already so no nipping involved] If we combine the two photographic samples we get LEFT 52 RIGHT 77 FRONT 6 ( total 135) As far as left/right goes, that's probably not a statistically significant difference. Put it this way ... if you chucked 135 dominoes onto the floor, you wouldn't be especially surprised to get 52 face up, 77 face down and 6 side-on. [ Nips downstairs to do a test of Significant Difference, but can't find the bloody calculator, so nips back upstairs ...again] That's more like it.. what you would expect from photos ... presumably actual real birds behaving normally should tend to be more or less equally facing left and right. I hope ! There is then the problem that flocks on the ground in a strong wind will all tend to face the same way, into the wind. ... the "randomness" of a foraging flock would be lost. Well, that was all a bit of a muddle .... but I'm going to take it a bit further with that " drawings of birds I'm not looking at" if you see what I mean. But overall, it does seem that birding is relatively unaffected by left-handedness, unlike tennis , boxing etc. LATER .. I've just thought of something else... when I was looking at this picture of one of my drawings..... When I drew all those cormorants, I was looking at them through a scope .. but I wouldn't have looked at each one in detail and pictured it facing the way it was...I'll have just drawn them any way round I liked. [Nips downstairs AGAIN to get original picture and lens] [ Then nips back upstairs] So.... here's my count ...a few I couldn't be sure of, even with a lens... LEFT 25 RIGHT 15 FRONT 10 That's not much different, in right/left terms, to the count I did (up at the top there) of lots of my drawings. (142/101) But now, some music. Can I think of something thematic ? Yes. Sorry about all the rambling ... but I wrote this more or less as I was thinking about it. A stream of consciousness some would call it.. and some might call it a stream of something less appealing !
But it does look as if I do have a left-facing bias ...but not anything like as much as I thought it would be. Personally, I think "Nipping Upstairs and Downstairs" would be a Terrific and Useful Olympic Sport, rather than all that pointless running round in circles getting back to where you started, jumping over things you could walk under much more easily, throwing things that you go and get back, and running around with a stick which you give to somebody else so they can run off with it. Bring it on. I promised you all I would show you the way that Eric Hardy wrote ... many years ago I concocted couple of satirical birding magazines, and wrote a parody of his writing to put in them. I even made a few photocopies of them to distribute to the thronging hordes. You'll never believe this ... I can't find them. I know ... it's unlikely, but true. I'll have to write a similar thing all over again. So here's an imaginary bit of quintessential Eric Hardy writing .. Of course, I've exaggerated a bit....... I'm writing this from a municipal Birkenhead bus shelter in the pouring rain ... that's how I like it. Lots of posh cars are shooting by, and I wave my stick at every one of the capitalist thugs. Having spent the whole of the weekend roaming the Mersey Marshes, I've got plenty to report. Fearlessly. I started out from Heswall Bank at 3am on Saturday, getting my first moth on a shop window pane, a fine Mottled Condom, not at all common in these parts due to draining of their habitat ( discarded dustbins) by right-wing factions.. There were plenty more in the next couple of hours, the highlights being 3 Crumbled Hassocks, a single Dishevelled Monastery , 27 Old Fartingales and an outstanding but tiny Crepuscular Halfscarf of the rare variety " crustipants." This would have been enough for the whole day, but there was plenty more to come, all missed of course by the lazy, fattened-calf-scoffing plutocrats snoring in their criminally-obtained eiderdown luxury dossbags, propped up by gold and silver bedsteads specially reinforced to hold the disgusting mass slumped upon them. Even before dawn I was constantly regaled by the calls of the Resplendent Bosh-Owl and, of course, the Prannet, only rarely seen nowadays due to the racketeer farming "community" trashing the landscape, whilst also pleased with the sheer numbers of Bog Sparrows, unique to Birkenhead and its environs, which nest in outside toilets, mainly to avoid having their eggs stolen by rich bastards with indoor toilets, which will be the ruin of the next generation , who will inevitably be in the thrall of consumerism, and will never appreciate the sort of wildlife I was experiencing right then, such as huge banks of Mild Sludgeroot, Evergreen Nevergreen, Three-Petalled Murgatroyd, Swigglers Posyflower and the extremely unusual 27-leaved Clover, by which time the sun was over the horizon revealing revelations like a swarm of 43 Pratt's Cathartics, only the 307th I've ever seen, a flock of 344 Solitary-Birds on the sea wall, or what's left of it due to tidal surges caused not least by the fat-cat industrial giants pouring chemicals into our oceans, not forgetting fungi such as Dog's Arsebox ( with 2 fruiting bodies!), Ruby-Crusted Halfstagger and its close relative Rudely-Breasted Thricetwice, Dribbler's Architripe, Fumerolic Scrad and, rarest of all, the amazingly dull Grey-Flanged Palebum, all under threat from "academics" in their ivory towers who want them all lumped into one "superspecies" just so they can write pompous research papers about it and add to all the jumped up letters after their double-barrelled names, and then it was time for my politically correct breakfast of dustbin-crusts washed down with gutter-water and the dregs left in discarded bottles and cans , which, by the way, turned out to be a source of further interesting finds including the rare, beer-swilling millipede Firkinn's Unremarkable , an unusual- for- Wirral slug, Frangularia graspercraps and best of all, the Temporary Scribble, which only lives for 17 minutes and is mainly seen as a fossil in northern climes, but then it was time to move on to the University of Birkenhead to have a quick go at Professor Hartley Bigwig and let him know how overprivileged he was and that I know that his PhD thesis was copied out of a special secret book for toffs which is full of PhD theses that they can copy out, but he wasn't in, probably because he was at a swanky lunch with lots of other jumped-up copycats like him, so I spent a little while looking for rotifers in the nearby Dregsley Park, shortly to be demolished to make way for a new Stately Home for Viscount Crabbface and his snooty pals, but I was lucky to come across such specimens as Terpsicursus replicans, Ultracumbria vertiginensis and best of all, the extremely unusual Unspeckled Grummage, one of the few rotifers to be given an English name, and which has only been seen once before but unfortunately was quickly consumed by a most unexpected Harpy's Upjerkin, which was well outside its normal range in Scabshire, where I have spent many productive hours dredging the extensive canal system looking for it's 87 species of Lamprey, so far totally unknown to science, but predicted by me in the Liverpool Echo 37 years ago but totally ignored by the usual blinkered fossils with posh connections in the Science Museum where I first noticed a most unusual specimen of the Dubious Mattress overlooked by the doddering old fools whom I have denounced for many years ........... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I think that's quite enough to give you an insight into the way his mind worked. And now, the Music spot ... I think Roy and Eric would have got on quite well... I thought I heard the sound of my name and I looked back down behind me And with hair like the ripened wheat she came, sure as the west wind to find me And just for a moment I wished my life to see our friends all around us And I turned to her but I held my breath in the far Norwegian mountains. For there we stood two children of spring as everything seemed to be gleaming Her looking breathless clean out of my mind and me with my crazy dreaming To think of my friends underneath the same roof in one common destination When all we do is remain aloof like we have no close relation. And love is my torment and I'll take when I can But I'll give in the moment when you are my woman and I am your man. And I watched her makin' her first daisy chain as her nipples hung hard in suggestion And naked, gnat-bitten we drifted fain in the hazy deserved sensation And we dreamt of all the loves we'd known and we never never thought of the sorrow With forelocks wound over primrose down in the wood by the emptin long barrow Two silver greenflies to flicker the backdropping, lush of the emerald springtime To lust for a moment in love of another is dust on a dragonfly's wing. And love is no torment for we'll give when we can And we'll live in the moment when you are my woman and I am your man. And the blackcap sings and the forest rings, the nettles tall around me With shafts of sun and moving things and poems fast and slowly And fantasies of luscious thirst for new lust and fresh waters to seek it Like diamonds set in realities of skies drawn back in secret But somewhere out there with my heart in her care and her prayers in the breezes that caught them She sits like the earth as I fly to her arms like the showering yellows of autumn And love is no torment for we'll give when we can And we'll live in the moment when she is my woman and I am her man. As far as anybody can remember, the last section of his fictional "article" ,which you will I am sure have noticed is an unbroken sentence, continued as such for another 7057 words, an unprecedented and record-breaking sentence which filled the whole of the next day's Liverpool Echo, even ousting the Crossword.
I was going to offer a top prize to anyone who could work out what this picture, taken by me of course, has to do with the following harticule ... but seeing as I don't know either, I'd better not. All Praise to the god of Randomness.Whoever he or she is. Here's a simple tale of ticking for you .. and it was exactly 16 years ago today. We ... that is, The Significant Otter and me ..were on our way to Scilly, and we stopped in Exeter for the night. But ... I happened to know a secret Cirl Bunting Spotting Spot on the outskirts of Exeter .... could this have influenced my Choice Of Stopping Spot ? Was it a Spotting Spot Stopping Spot or What ? Surely Not ? Yes. Anyhow, I got up at some ridiculous hour of the morning, and drove to the Cirl Bunting Spotting Spot and, er, Spotted it. It took a while .... there was a lot of wandering around and scanning, all looking wonderfully/worryingly Suspicious, Shifty, Suspect and Surreptitious. But eventually, there it was. I was able to watch it for about 20 mins... I even had my scope. I could carry it in those days .... coo. I've never seen another one since. My other best chance was thwarted and aborted, frustrated and discombobulated by the biggest traffic jam in the world. So it was a good job I'd spotted it previously. Had I known about it, I could have done this little celebratory dance ..I featured quite a few of these a few posts ago, and this is another one sent in by a reader.... it's pretty easy to learn, quite showy and fun, and only takes up a small amount of space, all of which might be important to you. When I got back home , I did of course do the right thing and climb my local Jum-Jum Tree ..... I had to climb it several times actually, because I got a few other ticks on Scilly . But it was well worth it. By the way, this is going to count as your music as well. Synergy, lovely synergy. Hey... I've just thought of something ! It doesn't happen often so I'll get the full mileage out of it. That Pogba Penalty Peculiar Run-Up looks like it was nicked straight from that amazing " Tick Celebration" post I did ... it's on the "Silly walks" one.... I'm going to see if it's on't net ... no, it's not on yet ... but when it is, as it surely will be, I'll stick it on here .... (weeks later) here it is .... Eric Hardy was the first "proper" birdwatcher I knew. Not just a birdwatcher either. He knew all about flowers, butterflies, moths, trees ... he was brilliant. And .... he was a true eccentric. Getting on towards the Eccentric's eccentric. For a start, he always wore absolutely ancient outfits ... they looked like they'd been through both wars, never mind one.He always looked like he's just crawled out of a tank. He was a Merseyside creature through and through.... and he published his major sighting in the Liverpool Echo !! That's the way to do it. His writing was both peculiar and rambling. I once wrote an affectionate parody of his writing style, which, of course, I can't find, but I'll make another version of it to give you the idea. He would write huge wandering sentences flitting from one thing to another almost randomly. He wrote more or less what his mind was doing. You also got the impression that he was outside almost all the time. I often wondered if he ever actually went indoors at all. He was also what my mother would call "cantankerous." I came across him because I was in the Merseyside Naturalist's Association when I was somewhere around 14 -16-ish. It was with them and their coach trips that I got out of the grot-spot that is and was Widnes ... we went to the Lakes, and into North Wales mostly. And he was the leader.... and he lead from the front, striding on ahead with his big stick and hefty binoculars, probably ex-commando jobs. Much, much later he had his own slot on Radio Merseyside .... what an amazing program that was ! He spoke exactly as he wrote ... but more so. And he would rampage on about all sorts of things, slagging organisations and individuals off left right and centre. I was looking him up on't net, and found he had written several books I'd never heard of ... as you can see, they got smaller and smaller over time ... I would never have thought that he would have written a book for " bird-lovers." I bet the publisher gave it that title.On the sly. Under the radar. I also found this ....... he lived to a good old age.... I bet he always looked old from infancy. The book mentioned in this brief article is the one at bottom right above, In the Footsteps of Eric Hardy. Through his weekly natural history programme on Radio Merseyside and his record-breaking column in the Liverpool Daily Post, Eric Hardy (1912-2002) inspired may people to get out and about in the North-West of England. In this wonderful book, a compilation and selection of Eric's newspaper articles, David Bryant has brought the wildlife of the area to everyone. Illustrated with copious maps, line drawings and photographs, the book will tell you where to go and what to see at every time of the year. There's not much else about him...well, I haven't found much ...but eventually I came across this. I never knew he was an Aquarist !! Surely he would never have been indoors to feed them. Maybe he kept his outside and got the neighbours to feed the beggars. This article is a bit long, but it does show you his rather cantakerous nature ... he was not slow to voice his left-wing views, partially moulded by the post-war years I would imagine ... I'll highlight a few of the choice bits ... right from the start with that dig at people who made a lot of dodgy money out of the war ... I've also added a few snide comments of my own ... and cut out some of the boring bits .. Aquarists and Fish-keeping in the 20th Century. Part 4: Eric Hardy Fifty Years On. Memories of Progress in the Water World by Eric Hardy, President of the Merseyside A.S. The golden jubilee of The Aquarist is a milestone in publishing history. In 1924, the hobby was truly for the "Amateur" Aquarist. Those of us whose parents didn't hold shares in wartime aircraft industries had little spare cash. It was a time of cold-water and marine aquaria before the advent of electrically-heated tropicals. More tanks were stocked then to study the natural history of native species than for anything like modern fish-shows. A striking change has been many more women sharing the hobby of fish-keeping. Societies were full of lonely old maids, particularly hopeful teachers, who seldom took office. What old fogies they were (and the men!). No field-meetings were permitted on Sundays. The toll of the 1914-18 war left an appreciable gap of young men between 20 and 40, unlike the aftermath of the last war. From his home in Astonville Street, Southfields, A. E. Hodge built up The Aquarist at 1/- a quarter to attract the more far-seeing naturalists rather than these worshippers of tradition out of touch with the future. In recent years, the M.A.S. has held field-trips to Anglesey and Birmingham water-plant nurseries whereas in 1931 the old M.A.S. went collecting no further than for pond-beetles and water-crickets by the Manchester Ship Canal at Warrington, stocking their tanks with minnows, roach and perch from now polluted Padeswood Lake at Buckley in North Wales, Liverpool's nearest haunt of palmated newts. Or collecting bullheads and nine-spined sticklebacks, and sweeping netfuls of dragonfly-larvae, pond-skaters and Planorbis shells from the now filled-in brackish pool behind Leasowe Embankment, by the Wirral sea. The latter pool was famous for water-spiders, which fed on the swarms of Gammarus. People who wished to delve in ditchwateristics (!!!)(brilliant!!) before Jefferies started his aquarium society had to join a rather expensive and aloof Biological Society, meeting at the university. It has since withered away. It pioneered in marine biology to the neglect of freshwater life, a position the university reversed in recent years. By the mid-30s, however, things were very different. Though without the present jobs for the new boys, conservationists were active enough to get the 1937 export of Chinese white cloud mountain-minnows banned. In his Richmond, Surrey, garden, my friend the late L. G. Payne had probably the first amateur open air vivarium outside Whipsnade's walled and moated rockery of snakes and lizards. He was in a bank.( Surely Hardy wouldn't approve of bankers !!??) The biggest changes since 1924, apart from tropical imports, have been in our native water-life and our access to ponds and waters. These have been filled in by speculative urban building estates and drained by improved rural farming, to the loss of much aquatic plantlife (especially in Cambridgeshire). In the March 1937 edition of The Aquarist I mentioned finding natterjack toads from the Solway marshes to the West Lancashire dunes below Southport, Leasowe and Hilbre in Cheshire and to Prestatyn. The latter haunt has gone and vigorous efforts are now being made to save the remnants at the others. In March 1940, I wrote of water-beetles. By 1960 DDT sprays had reduced them from many old haunts. The Severn has been occupied by barbel and the chub exterminated from the Dee. Little ringed plovers have come to nest by many gravel-pits and inland pools, and creeping New Zealand willowherb has travelled alongside mountain streams. If all the people working on natterjack toads, from biology to conservation, in south-west Lancashire alone would sit around a table and discuss their studies and problems amicably, there would be less suspicion and jealousy behind the scenes. Such a medium brings the fish-keeper to appreciate the ecologist's approach to the subject and the, perhaps a little snobbish and aloof, university student, or Ph.D., to tolerate the fish-show. After all, the late Dr. Francis Manning, from Cheshire, began, before he got his B.A. and Ph.D., as an enthusiastic pre-war member of Belle Vue Aquarium Society, where I first met him going to its shows and eagerly awaiting each new issue of The Aquarist. Fortunately, it has never descended to the wise-cracking almost illiterates of some North American pet-keeping magazines. Writing since pre-war in The Aquarist (and now defunct Water Life) brought me many new friends, but not, I hope, any enemies! I have brought home some of the interests and pleasures of my visits to the ponds and rivers, which I exchanged for the laboratory many years ago, and shared them with the readers of my notes. My typewriter has not always been such a tripewriter as proclaimed by critics of my stubborn stand for the right of every amateur, to study natural history in the countryside. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jings !! .. that was a bit long. Even after all my "editing." But it certainly gives you a flavour of what he was like. so ...let's have some music......... I'm sure Eric would have approved of Half Man Half Biscuit ... giving the Establishment a good kicking ... here they are with the real truth about our malfunctioning northern transport system and the dawning realisation that the Northern Powerhouse was in fact a Tory con to get half-witted simpletons to vote for them ... they never intended to do it right from the start ... here they are again with "Time flies by when you're the driver of a train." Well, first of all, I've sorted out a mystery.... regular rabid rip-roaring rootin'tootin' readers will remember that woman and her increasingly baffling description of some sort of duck/goose/whatever she had seen. Several of them actually. My brain was totally discrumbulated as she piled on more and more disparate details..... Incidentally, I've always wanted to create a superhero called Disparate Dan . He'd be good ... he'd be all over the place. Here's the link to it if you're not au fait with it ( pretentious, moi ?) .. it's a good title is it not ... gets to the point straight off. 163-baffling-descriptions-of-farcical-birds.html Ha ! Yesterday I found them .... and here they are, in all their glory ...get your notebook ready ... You can close your notebooks now. But ...here's a new mystery ... I was rootling through an ancient notebook , mainly because The Significant Otter has been banging on about all the blasted books clogging up the house, so I've got to pretend to be doing something about it, though god knows what, and I found an old map I had drawn for some mystery purpose... here it is ... It didn't seem to have anything to do with the writing on the nearby pages... at first. looking at the bottom bit, I thought it might be Cley .. the P is in the right place, and the East Banky bit, but the top bit's all wrong for that. Perhaps I've just made a pig's ear of the seaward end.... but if so, what's that dashed-line path just before the P ? It's all very odd... but it's the sort of stupid thing that bothers you all day. So any ideas would be welcome. Music later ..... I'm off out now to actually ,maybe, look at some birds. Back now ... no birds "of note" ..but a Painted Lady........ And as for music ... Death Cab for Cutie's latest "release" .. Autumn Love ... Yes ... you need to pay attention when you read this .... Whenever I'm around Grumbling Stumps STQC Reserve I eventually come across "The Trogs" ... a loose group of five birdwatchers who seem to spend most of their waking lives either sitting in hides for an eternity, or staggering around to the next one. You could, at a pinch, compare them to that lot from the TV .... the Last of the Summer Wine lot. We all call them the Trogs, though they don't know that. 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. So ...here's one of the many stories about them. The trogs had been on the reserve for an hour or so. They were still in the closest hide... nicknamed the Weetabix hide because it looked like one. And,like Weetabix, bits kept falling off it. And it's very permeable to water. Not a lot had been spotted, but Jim had ,sure enough, got them all wrong. As usual. The others never got at him though .. they had learned the important skill of putting things right tactfully and positively ..a rare skill for most birders. Anyway, they were used to it, and him. They got up eventually and moved on, and a slight drizzle started up. Jim took his hat out and put in on, and the others followed suit. . Hang on a minute, he said, isn't that a Cetti's Warbler singing in the distance ? The other hardly bothered to turn their heads, but then they heard it too. Hang on ...Jim had got something right ! Cripes !! They didn't say anything though. Every dog has his day. They got to the Gannet hide next. It's called that because that's the one where people tend to eat their dinners. There was quite a bit of ordinary stuff around, but then Jim piped up again. "That's a Green-winged Teal", he said, with an odd air of confidence ! They all swivelled around, expecting to focus on a Teal, or even a Garganey perhaps ..but, bloody hell, he was right. Double Cripes ! And throughout the the drizzly afternoon Jim kept on getting things right. He beat them to everything. After a while they got a bit tetchy..... they didn't like it. On the way back, a bit of an argument broke out.... they seemed to get the idea that he was cheating in some way. Poor old Jim was a bit bewildered himself actually, and he didn't like their attitude. But maybe it was just a blip ... he's had a lucky day. He slept badly that night .... he had dreams about more arguments, about losing his friends. He woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. Next day, another rainy one, real hat, coat and scarf weather, he decided on the way to the reserve that he would just keep his ideas to himself ...at least for a bit. But as they went round the usual circuit, he found himself having to hold back ...he spotted several noteworthy birds, a Cattle Egret among the Littles, an extremely out-of-range Chough way in the distance and a "heard only" Marsh Warbler deep in the reeds. Eventually he couldn't keep it all to himself, and blurted it all out ..... but rather than backtracking to pick them up, they turned on him and told him to his face that he was getting to be a nuisance and they'd rather he kept away from them in future. He could keep his new-found and highly suspect " expertise" to himself. Dan, the "2x Scilly one", was especially nasty, and as for Mac, he looked ready to give poor old Jim a good kicking. The truth is, they thought he was playing some creepy trick on them. He turned on his heels, almost in tears, and walked straight home. He didn't even stop for a better look when a Hoopoe landed in the field he was passing. His world was collapsing around him. And yet he should be happy... all sorts of rare stuff was round every corner. What the hell was going on ? He thought that they would like him better when he no longer made daft mistakes. He had always wanted to have their respect.... and now, it was working against him. He spent another sleepless night. What was happening to him ? He had always wished he was a better birder. Who doesn't ? But it had turned his friends against him, and his life had become meaningless. And all in a couple of days. He got up and had breakfast. He thought about what had happened, and why. What was different about those last two days ? Think, he thought. What is it ? Then he thought about that hat. This had all started when he put the hat on. The hat he bought at the weekend from a charity shop for a quid. He rushed into the hallway and tugged the hat from his jacket pocket. Then he went out into the garden ..still in his pajamas. He put the hat on, and looked over the fence. There was that bloody Hoopoe. Then a flock of Spanish Sparrows landed next to it. God almighty ! It was the sodding hat. He took it off ... looked up .... nothing at all rare or tricky in sight. He held the hat closer and had a good look at it. It was pretty old and battered looked at close up,but there was something faintly sewn into the inside of the brim .... Jim peered at it intently.... ROGER TORY PETERSON ... just about visible... but definitely there. It was his hat ! A magic hat !! He was made !!! He could be the best birder in the world at last. He did a little dance around the lawn. Then he stopped. He had tasted perfection, and it hadn't done him any good. Jim threw the Magic Hat on the ground. He fetched some paraffin from the garage, and a lighter. Then he burned that hat to ashes. Then he got dressed, and walked to the reserve. All the way there, he saw nothing noteworthy, and he wouldn't know if he had. He was himself again. There was Ed at the pools .... anything about Ed ? There's a Garganey just showing ..have a look through the scope. Jim peered through the lens ... "well, it's a duck all right. I'll take your word for it Ed .... looks like a Teal to me." Jim looked rather pleased. " We've got you back then Jim ?" " Yes ... I think so. One day I'll tell you all about it." Then Mac, Ed and Stan turned up, and off they all went to the Sardine Hide. Because it was always packed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now here's Joanna Newsom.... "The Sprout and the Bean" In case you're a lot younger than me, here's why that hat was special ...
I think this is one of my duffest drawings ever. It's a tough race,there's loads of competition. but I think this one wins it. In my defence, it's done in one of those tiny policemen's notebooks .. it's not the policemen who are tiny by the way. The book. I've nothing against tiny policemen. There's loads of things they could do that the big ones couldn't. There should be a special squad of them to get under doors and get down chimneys and hide in criminals' pockets so they can hear what they're up to. Think of all the possibilities. It was my idea by the way, but I'll let the authorities have it free of charge. Hang on ... I've wandered off the point a bit .... And it's quite hard to keep the dinky book ( not the policeman) steady when you're drawing on it. Quite a few years ago I took part in a "First to 50" bird race. It was a bit of an experiment really. It's pretty obvious what it's about. You all meet up at the start. Someone says "Go!" And you rush about spotting birds, and see how long it takes you to get to 50. Species, that is. Then you rush back to the referee with your list . Then you laugh at the others who arrive later than you. Then you all hoof it back to the Grumbling Stumps Luxury Diner. And talk and argue about it. What reminded me of that, was the swimming on the news this morning. Some musclebound bloke had won a 100m swim. And he was looking forward to winning the 50m swim on the next day. And I thought ... that's all a bit silly. How far does it go ? Is he going to do a 20m race next. And then a 10m race ? Why not 137m ? Or 235.6 m ? Or 3.726m ? It's just a way of letting them get loads of medals. And when you look at some sports, like cycling and sailing there's billions of different sorts of race they can do ... it's not fair. There's so many chances to get medals. But those poor old hammer-throwers, they've only got 1 chance to win a medal. And the javelinists. And the high-jumpers. So ...back to bird racing .... a "first to 10 species" would be farcical . Even more so ... first to 3 . I managed that before I'd got out of bed this morning. At the other extreme, first to 400.. or 4000 . Crumbs. That First to 50 race ... that was good. Not too long ... didn't wear us out or swallow up hours and hours. The prize was the fun that was had and kudos of winning. That was all. Fun. But maybe it would be better to "do" 60 ... or... well, what would be the optimum? It would depend on the place you were doing it in. And whether it was motorised or on foot. And the time of year. We were on foot. Two feet actually. Anyway, I came 3rd. That was OK. But what I do know is ...for whatever reason, there wasn't another one. If you've taken part in such a thing, and have 'owt to say about, please let me know ... my email is, amazingly ..... [email protected] So there. And now, the music. By now, I'm sure, you are all top fans of Death Cab for Cutie, and have got all their stuff ...but here's "I Will Possess your Heart" anyway.... All us keen members of the Flintshire Bird Club have been summoned round to the President's house tonight .None of us know why.... as far as I know.. Of course, there is wild speculation. Various theories have been mooted ..... moo ... moo..... [1] The President had been discovered having a secret and torrid affair with the club secretary, Winifred. This was top of the list, but I thought it most unlikely. Nobody has an affair with anyone called Winifred ! Unless, of course, it's two Winifreds. Surely that sort of thing doesn't "go on" in Flintshire ? Flintshire !!!! [2] Somebody has finally got proof that a certain member ..we'll call him " Derek" for now ... has finally been caught out faking rarity sightings. He's been under suspicion for years, but no conclusive evidence could be found. To be honest, I think he was pushing it a bit with his "sighting" a fortnight ago of a flock of 17 Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds in a local park. I wonder if he's invited to the meeting ? [3] Maybe somebody has worked out where that box containing 118 pairs of binoculars came from. There's all sorts in there, from the sublime to the ridiculous... and nobody has a flying fart of a clue as to how they got into the Treasurer's garden shed. Now that would be a turnip for the book. [4] It occurred to me that I might be getting some sort of award. It's about time. [5] On the other hand, maybe I'm to be voted out. This could be because, strictly speaking, I don't actually reside in Flintshire. My garden is in Flintshire, but the house isn't. This has always been a sore point with stalwart Flintshire birders, and occasionally notes have been put through my letterbox of a critical nature.* I'm not sure, by the way, whether the letterbox is in Flintshire. It could well be that the flap IS, but the spot where it lands on the floor isn't. [6] It's just occurred to me that it might be that thing that happened in the HMHB* Hide last week. It was nothing to do with me. It usually is, but not that time. I just carried on looking at the extensive sewage beds through my heavyscope, as it is called by everyone. Even when that Pork Pie hit me on the head, I didn't budge. I'm stoic, me. [7] The "top" theory is, that a real "biggie" has been found, and we're going to get told where it is, but nobody else must know. There have already been loads of emails and phone calls amongst the "in-crowd" of Flintshire birders, and things are getting tense. I'm thinking, Blue-Cheeked Bee-Eater. But where ? There's nowhere warm enough in Flintshire. Maybe Snowy Owl ? Capercaillie ? Anyway, I'm setting off in a few minutes, so wish me luck. Oh, by the way, I forgot to show you, in that post the other day, our special Flintshire " Tick Celebration" that we all do here .. but only when we're actually in Flintshire, obviously. This is the video we based it on ,and as far as I know, it's he only "communal" one in the country ... maybe we'll be doing it tomorrow if my last theory is right .. Now ... you're pretty jealous, I bet. * That's why I learned Welsh ... so I could read them. * Half man half biscuit ... thanks lads ! |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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