Last night The Significant Otter decided we would watch a film ... " When the whales came" which, she explained as a "reason", was filmed on Bryher. So we did. One does not argue with The Significant Otter. Just to let you know before you read the rest of this, it's a rubbish , deadly boring and gormless film, boring boring boring and crap. Pathetic. Preposterous. After a few minutes all I was interested in was the scenery and any possible birds. Well ,we weren't far in when I picked up a female Tawny Owl on call ! BUT ... looking in my Trusty Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland I find that Tawny Owls do not breed on Scilly. Hah !! And later on, I heard the song of the Song Thrush .... but they do. According to the Atlas, that is. Later on, much much later on, it seemed about 100 dreary years, there were some whales ... narwhals, if you're still awake. One of them beached itself ...it was an "animatronic" Narwhal and most convincing. It was easily the most realistic thing in the film ! How ironic. To be fair, the two children were excellent. It's a shame it was all such a boring load of old crap. And full of preposterous occurrences and plot-lines. Why did their " shacks" have slatted walls with big gaps between the slats so the wind and rain would come in ? How did the main family's shack mysteriously get poshed up in the last few minutes of the film ? Why did we only get to see a tiny tiny bit of Bryher ? When the whales came and one of them got stranded on the beach, a big mob of flame-carrying layabouts and thugs came down to the beach to kill all the whales because they thought they were a bad omen, but the little boy told them they mustn't, so miraculously and preposterously they all changed their minds and helped to cart the beached Narwhal back into the water. Very bloody likely ! Why did the film portray the school teacher as such a vicious bastard ? And so was the father of the two children. Why do that ? No ... I thought it was a feeble, nonsensical load of crap. As do lots of reviewers on the internet. Maybe the book is a lot better. What we need now is a bit of fine and relevant music .... Right then .... here's the excellent Huw M and "House by the Sea" ..... The strange thing is, I spoke to The King of Bryher about it, and he liked it !
What ? That was my "surprise of the week." I wonder where those anamatronic Narwhals are now ? They're probably in some dark, gloomy warehouse in deepest Penzance. A sad and ignominious fall from grace.
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All my regular readers know of my admiration for Merseyside naturalist Eric Hardy ..... and my occasional parodies of him have been, I hope, affectionate ones. He had a (fairly) regular nature column in the Liverpool Echo, and later in life he had a spot on Radio Merseyside which was, to say the least, riveting and entertaining in his own special way. If you've read those parodies, you will know what I mean ! For example .... 181-an-affectionate-parody-of-the-writings-of-eric-hardy.html 481-elric-hardly.html That Mr. G ( man of mystery) sometimes sent me tapes of his "show" and they were certainly good value ! I was just too far away to record them myself, up in remote Lancashire as I was at the time. Anyway .... a while ago I found an interesting article ( presumably written in 2003) about him on a blog, and I ferreted it away ... but now I can't remember what the blog was called. It makes an interesting read .... and further on there is an affectionate and characteristic account of the way his Radio Merseyside talks were recorded as well ....................... Eric Hardy died last year (2002) he was 90 years of age with him went the last link with another great north - western naturalist and perhaps the most famous of them all, non other than T.A. Coward, Hardy actually knew Coward and also Oldham, with whom Coward wrote "The Birds of Cheshire" and "The Verterbrate Fauna of Cheshire and Liverpool Bay" Talking to Hardy I was surprised to hear that he had such a low opinion of the two of them, but then, listening to his Countryside programme on Radio Merseyside it soon became apparent that he thought much the same of most of his contemporaries, especially those who at some stage in their career had actually shot birds! He came along to the KOS one evening in the 1970's and gave us an evening's entertainment that is still remembered by those lucky enough to be there! He brought only a handful of slides, and these were black & white, but managed to enthrall us for two hours, it could have been longer, much longer! but at 10pm with the Civic Hall caretaker stood at the back of the room, keys in hand, we had to ask Eric to finish - just as he was launching a verbal attack on the Royal Family, his favourite target! He often reviewed publications sent to him and gave his verdict during the Countryside programme - I sent him a copy of our own Knutsford Ornithological Society Bird Report for 1976, and he was quite complimentary about it. This tended to be the case, he was scathing about any professional publications that weren't up to scratch, but with amateur efforts he was much more relaxed and I never recall him causing embarrassment to any local bird report editors. At the time Radio Merseyside was broadcast only on the medium wave band so, here in Knutsford we were just at the edge of its coverage, and in the evening when the programme went out there was lots of fading on the signal, with occasional interference from Continental stations that made reception difficult. I remember recording the programme when our report was reviewed and recently tried to find it amongst a collection of old audio tapes rescued from the cellar when we moved house. It wasn't to be found but I did find one tape containing a couple of Hardy's programmes from 1977. I've selected from this tape a 5' section when Eric talks of a day on the Lancashire Mosses, alone for most of the time, surrounded by Pink-footed Geese, but with a gentle dig at the end about the newly opened Martin Mere Reserve. This is part of a typical Eric Hardy Countryside programme..... (it works .... I've listened to it ... ) Click here to download. Additionally I've appended below an account by Paul Freeman of his dealings with Hardy when he (Paul) was a technician at Radio Merseyside - Hello, I've just come across in your archives, your obituary piece concerning the naturalist, Eric Hardy, with its references to his broadcasts on BBC Radio Merseyside. You refer obliquely (well, perhaps not so obliquely!) to his sometime scathing reviews of people and publications. I was working for Radio Merseyside during those years (1969 - 1980) and well remember the recording sessions. Apart from the Journalists responsible for the news output, the station was staffed by a very few Producers, 2 engineers, and a handful (5 or 6) of Station Assistants who did everything else. I was one of the latter contingent. It always fell to the poor SA who had done the early shift (06.00 - 14.00) to record and edit Eric as the final task of the shift - usually on a Monday or Tuesday I seem to recall. I know many of my colleagues dreaded it (when you've been up since 04.30, sitting in front of a studio desk, recording one man talking, can be surprisingly soporific) but I quite enjoyed it. He was a fluent and accomplished broadcaster, and his was a programme I was happy to produce, once I'd got him to double-space his scripts in order to allow me to mark repeats for editing out mistakes. There were precious few of those, too. For a 14 minute broadcast there were seldom more than 3 or 4 errors in the whole recording. If you think he was sometimes scathing on the broadcasts, you should have seen some of the original scripts! We would frequently argue (very gently, of course) about how far he could eviscerate someone. I usually lost the arguments, but eventually I realised that it was easier to record it all, then edit out the libels ! He hardly ever noticed - I'm not sure he ever made a point of religiously listening to the broadcast programmes, but if he ever queried a cut or a change I would just say "Oh it was a bit tight for time, so I had to do a few nip and tucks." I don't believe he was fooled for a minute, but he realised I was the one with the razor-blade, so therefore had the final say. He was definitely one of a kind. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well ... for all us " Northern Naturalists" he was a great man. Much missed I'm sure. But now, an uplifting song .... Why do you think I've picked this song ....... If you didn't catch it, here's a words video of it .... Yes .... there's a bird in there .... a Canary. But it wasn't mentioned in the title of the song. A sneaky one ! Back in the old days of steam radio, the presenter of a music program would often set the listeners a challenge ... send in songs, say, about steam engines, or songs that had an American city in the title ... that sort of thing. But with the onset of the internet, that became much too easy to find. But ... finding songs with birds "inside" them is much trickier. Well, my challenge to you is ..... what about songs with birds inside them ? And .... I want more than just one. We've already had a "1-er. " So ... are there any songs with lots of birds inside them ? What is the most bird-filled song in the universe ? So ...any ideas to [email protected] And I'll put them on here. Just to get you started, here's one with three in the title ... but there's another one that's not in the title ... tricky ! ..it's easy to find ones like that, where the birds are ( mostly) in the title.
.... it makes them easy to find. ...... there may well be songs with lots more, but with none of them in the title. ... plus, in that song they're not very well defined are they ! A bit vague . ... what sort of owl ... and what sort of dove ? .... and what sort of crow ! I thought it was time for a short thing for once ...and here it is ...................... The P♥ridge is an easy target one c♥ridge is enough to kill it. especially if it hits the ♥ which is, of course, the ideal p♥. The head's another dodgy p♥ the brain is in there for a st♥ once dead, it's thrown into the c♥ and taken to the superm♥ ! You lure him with a lemon t♥ then with a hefty ♣ you'd clout it and nobody would give a f♥ if you put it in a π and ate it ! You could have a go at Magπs too they perch in πns the whole day through it's quite an ♥ 2 catch 1 I think I'd eat it in a b1 ! In the warmth of hΩ sweet hΩ ....... ... and give a morsel to my garden gnΩ ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What music could possibly go with that ? I'll just play a lovely song .... one that goes straight 2 the ♥ One that hits hΩ , and sends a shiver down your sπn ... DCFC .... We looked like giants ....... Having done all that " blimey, what a lot of birds got shot in the past" thing a few posts ago,(575-576-577), I thought I would try to find out which species got the biggest pasting in that huge and ancient " Birds of Lancashire" book...... and after extensive research ( piddling around the various likely candidates) I reckon this one takes the biscuit (in terms of % shot/obtained/taken etc)....... Spotted Crake ....... read on .... There's one thing I haven't been able to work out. What the heck are " snipe pantles" ? We need to know. We DO know that snipe get caught in them. The only other thing I found was this, which is probably not relevant ... Pantles When someone's pants are really too short to be pants but too long to be kapris. especially frequent on middle aged men. "OMFG, look at the pantles he's wearing!" #pants#capris#kapris#pantals#short#clothing This, of course, leads to the vexed question " what are kapris ?" Moving on ..... In view of all that, I think that the Spotted Crake should be renamed ... "The Shottest Crake" But now, the music ..... " Another one bites the dust" ... BUT ..... not your average accompanying video ..... Yesterday I went on one of my usual strolls .... and after about 20 minutes I had seen more butterflies than birds. Three species of Whites, 2 Speckled Woods, and a Meadow Brown. Amazingly, no Painted Ladies . How many birds did I see ? 1. A single Swallow flew overhead. How many birds did I hear ? Er, none. It's the time of year. Most of the adults have shut up. They're busy trying to make sure their young will survive. Good luck with that then. Over the whole day I only saw 2 Swifts. And so far today I've seen none. And looking back through my "records" I see that the only rarity I've seen on the 7th of August ever was a Crane ... 7/8/1987 , and a fine bird it was too, at Horsey in Norfolk. And looking at the 8th, nowt ! I've never seen any type of rare/unusual bird on that day of the year. But after that, I had a bit of an "August run" ... ..but not all in the same year obviously ... 9th Balearic Shearwater 10th Purple Heron 11th Cirl Bunting 12th Black Duck 13th Wilson's Petrel (2) 14th Storm Petrel 15th Bonaparte's Gull ! 16th Med Shearwater 17th Oriental Pratincole 18th Semi-palmated Sandpiper ..... .. that was when I were "young" and "keen" but now I'm just an old has-been my knees no longer fit for purpose my brain more like a 3-ring circus! and no doubt soon I'll be decrepit so now's the time to write about it as a warning to you lot out there getting old, it's just not fair. Don't get married ! Don't have kids ! It puts your birding on the skids !! Do all that bird stuff while you can before it all goes down the pan ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As usual, I thank you for your kind attention ...... ....... and now, the music ........ .......... Steely Dan .. "Reeling in the years" Your everlasting summer you can see it fading fast So you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last You wouldn't know a diamond if you held it in your hand The things you think are precious I can't understand Are you reelin' in the years Stowin' away the time Are you gatherin' up the tears Have you had enough of mine Are you reelin' in the years Stowin' away the time Are you gatherin' up the tears Have you had enough of mine You been tellin' me you're a genius since you were seventeen In all the time I've known you I still don't know what you mean The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand Are you reelin' in the years Stowin' away the time Are you gatherin' up the tears Have you had enough of mine Are you reelin' in the years Stowin' away the time Are you gatherin' up the tears Have you had enough of mine I spend a lot of money and I spent a lot of time The trip we made in Hollywood is etched upon my mind After all the things we've done and seen you find another man The things you think are useless I can't understand Are you reelin' in the years Stowin' away the time Are you gatherin' up the tears Have you had enough of mine Are you reelin' in the years Stowin' away the time Are you gatherin' up the tears Have you had enough of mine.
( I bet no-one's ever rhymed "purpose" with "circus" before. ) ( Today I found a Brown Argus ... my first I think ..... woo ! ) Here's a dinky quiz question ... I came across this shoot-fest while I was going through an ancient " Birds of Lancashire " book ( see previous post) ...... but I've covered the only mention of the species using a tiny bit of paper. So .... what species of bird is this sorry tale about ? There are a few clues scattered around in there, so you're in with a chance. The music's coming up now, and after it, an extra clue. You extra clue is ... its got something in common with this bird ..... OK .... here's the article again, but this time with that dinky bit of paper removed so you can see if you got it right....... All you've got to do now, if you haven't already, is to work out what it has in common with that Kittiwake. And why I used " Fool on the hill" as the music.
After my musings about all those rarities that got shot in the grim-and-gripping pages of "The Birds of Lancashire" in the previous post, I thought I'd amass some examples of the mass destruction of rare birds in years gone by. If you haven't read it already, nip back one and have a gander .... Let's have some examples this litany of destruction ...this is about ¼ of a ¼ of a % of the actual frequency of "shootings" in the book.... here's a jolly start .... You can't help wondering how much of a Shore Lark would be left after it had been shot... and you've got the added bonus of a Skylark getting killed by a golf ball, and "large numbers" being trapped and killed for food. Terrific. That's before you even get to the Shore Lark section ... which has two bits of its own ..... all packed with lots of shooting etc..... Here's another top bit of shooting .... I wonder if it is still in the "Liverpool Museum" ... and while we're at it, where are those two "specimens" of Little Bustards eh ? Aha ! Pallas's Sand Grouse ... on the previous page they use the euphemism " obtained" instead of the more truthful " blasted into oblivion" .... I wonder if "the museum "at St. Michael's- on- Wyre is still there [yes it is ] ... complete with a "specimen." Oh look ! A Gull-billed Tern was swooshing around Blackpool in the no doubt lovely summer of 1832 when some bastard shot it. Woo ! I see that H.P.Hornby shot 4 Great Snipes "for" that St.-Michael's-on-Wyre Museum .... it must be stuffed with stuffed stuff by now ! Are they implying that birds were shot "to order" by hordes of pot-shotters ? Closely related, no doubt, in pre-indoor-toilet-days, to pit-shitters. This is all very jolly is is not ? What fun they all must have had..... And now the noble Chough .... and lo and behold, one got shot near Wigan in 1908. Incidentally, there's a lot of "qualifiers" in that little passage ... "no evidence", "assertion", "probably", "possibly", " in part", "based on", " said to have been", "appears to be" .... do you think there might be a slight frisson of doubt about some of that ? "Preserved" ... that's another euphemism .... it was most likely shot. Here's another nifty use of the word " obtained" ..... and obviously he wasn't going to stop at that first one ... no ...he ploughed on "securing" further examples. ..... I believe his nickname was Potshot Arsehole Clancey. I hope so anyway. This is all about Black Terns.... and amazingly, most of them survived .... and I see that that H.P. Hornby of "Four Great Snipe" infamy was at it again with his musket, fife and drum..... that's Halfwit Peabrain Hornby as far as I'm concerned. And now ,the Bittern. ! At the start of the ( long) Bittern article, the author bemoans all the shooting of Bitterns that has gone on. Well well. But throughout the rest of the book, he hardly puts in a word of criticism. And here, at the end of the account,he expresses his pleasure in noting that one was "watched" by ..oh no ! ...a gamekeeper... but ONLY watched. Mind you, who's to say he didn't come back later and shoot it ? ... and our last example is, of course ... American Bittern. For some unknown and inexplicable reason, that one went to Preston Museum. Perhaps that one in St. Michael's-on-Wyre was full up ! As we have seen, for some, life is short, but hopefully sweet .... This is a Roy Harper song, and this is the David Gilmour version ... Oh yes .... that's the old, old adage. In modern terms, it would probably be "If it's not shot, it's not got ." Yesterday I was dipping into my ancient copy of The Birds of Lancashire by one Clifford Oakes M.B.O.U. ( pub 1953). It's a hefty old book. A large proportion of the "unusual" birds recorded in that book finished up getting shot. And often, stuffed. I suspect many of them are in front rooms right now, or in museums. And I suspect that, if they didn't get shot, the record would probably not have been accepted. But what I wonder is ... what did they think about it ? The shooters. Were they totally happy with it ? Blasting the guts out of all those beautiful birds. And no doubt leaving lots of them to a slow and painful death. Had I lived in those times, would I have been happy with it ? I remember vividly as a ±10-year-old going into Newark's dinky museum and being amazed at the array of glass cases full ..often too full ... of stuffed birds. I've written about them .... the way many of the specimens were incorrectly labelled ! I told them about it, and told them what they should be, but on subsequent visits nothing had changed. So, having been exterminated, they finished up being used to misinform the public ... brilliant eh !? That sort of crap response could easily have turned me into a bitter old cynic. Instead of the wonderful person I actually am. Occasionally. Sometimes. Hey...I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they still had the same crap labels. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So ...that was all a bit sad. We need a stunning bit of music .... The sort of music that will possess your heart .... Some years ago, shortly before he sadly died, Professor Stanley Unwin spotted a rare bird and sent in his remarkable account of what happened to the BBRC .... just in case you don't know what he was like, here's what he was like ...... Rightly oky-boky, and we're all of a readily sorty-out for the rarebly-scene birdicle docrementals so hangly-on to your seetly-belters ......... Sortly-of- bird ...... Creebly-Cobbled-Coaster Skytriffic no-menkly-trousers ....... Curslysore-arse corsets Place & dasterley-of-bird ...... Stagnes 4thio orgustly tooth-arsing hand-ninelies We allsettly-off on the Silly Onion bouncy-boatly heftling two-words the rockety Aisles of Slyly all of a sloth and tiltio froo-and-toe sicky-up slithery-about-the-deckly and biconklers straggling us and our jugglyscopes slimying acrops the deckboardlies , ink-lundling The Gink of Brightly, his conkerbine, Kween Brightly, Sneevly Heavens, Washly Handbasin, our dogglo Worrals, and a copplof hangly-onners we pict-up on our straggles. Hargly hadwy startled when we evently spottled elevnty Albert-Rozzers snookling acrest the Wavely Newts , swiping our co-blinkers with our honkysleeves to replus the brainys pray in aries. Sniftly I astempled a scrapply-diacrap of the spacy-mens with my trussly byro and snotpad for proposterkitty. Howleverly, evenstubberly we disparked on Briherlo itshelf and swooshled up to our flaverit copspatch wear we ineverstribely stubbled acres a worthitofspotting rary-tree or flagrant wondererer, and we orllcreeped uponi-tanditwas nodoughtly the Creeply-Converted-Corker that wasattick for everlybodly and great joy abountied and parbly our mainlytarglit was eventurgly fullfulluped. Byth thistimely my snotpad haddgot snoako and snoddern with the turble drown-poor engrulfring emblythinglys gurgly sinkly-in. I'm eggspeckling the kermitty will orl be watling for the descrapshun of the Crap-Covered-Corker and earwiggo .... legthn ruffly coprarible to the prevlious one, lettsay a bitless than afoo-torso, curvly of beek, longlylegged, sarndly paleale of boddly, longlytripeyes, sedentlerry molstly, voakulele PRAAKPRAAK harslycroak, swhooshyflitty, unmushtarkarble in evriwey. Unforkutakly no fortycraps were snappled dewtoo inclampment atmosqueclerics and iggorance of the baysicks. I sinkerly and hartlyhope that you will get thatlot scrootly proseedcaked and postlo certstifflicats by the norbel canals. We had a turly turble hellycropper-ryde backlyover to Penance aswel. I subtext the driveler was sploshed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unushurrel birds are allveery wellblo .... bertcan-U-findem ? Further Rarity submissions by top celebrities can be found using these nifty links
196-from-the-rarity-committees-files-joris-bohnsons-black-stork.html 542-amil-garglers-bbrc-submission.html 501-the-bewildered-bird-rejection-committee-bbrc.html |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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