My sister sent me that picture down there,,after reading that "ghostbirding" thing a few posts ago.... she reads this blog religiously ... i.e. with her eyes shut. If you don't know what "ghostbirding" is, skip back a bit ( using this handy link) and you can read all about it ... 250-things-to-do-in-the-car-31-ghostsbirds.html So ... now you should know what the "ghost" of a bird is, and how you spot them on car number plates, or anywhere else for that matter..... and now you can appreciate the "giant ghost" on that signboard up there . LAATERBINESAK is the "ghost" of LANCASTER BUSINESS PARK after loads of its letters have fallen off. Clonk. In the same way, U is a "ghost" of NUTHATCH. As is HH .... NUTHATCH And so are TT and UAH and HAC and THAT. And many others. Anyhow, this is " ghostbirds extra" and that's what you're going to get. For a start, you can reach out a bit further .... ... you can include foreign birds. ... you could allow latin names ... that's educational that is ! ... you can branch out even further ... flowers trees butterflies woodlice ! spiders mammals fish fungi famous birders !! infamous birders !!!!! ... you can play about with the scoring system.. Rather than just 1 point for "doing it" ... it's harder to do it if you don't use the obvious " first letter".. For example ... if the "ghost" was SOW you could get 1 point for Swallow. .. but that's easy because that first letter S is used in your answer.... ... a much tougher one to spot is Grasshopper Warbler !! ... I reckon you deserve 2 or maybe 3 points for that ... it's not so obvious ! ..... ... if you were doing flowers, you'd get Sowthistle in ½ a second. ..... but Sosnowsky's Hogweed might not occur to you for a minute or two. ... plus, I'm not sure if it's on the UK list ! If it is, 10 points I reckon. On top of all that, some people take this really seriously ... eg .. they try to learn all the birds with a "V" in them. .. and the ones with other " lesser-used" letters. .... it cuts down your thinking time so you're more likely to be first. ..... if you're sticking to the UK list, they'll learn all the really long ones.. .... they're more likely to be "ghostbird" fodder. So, as you have seen, there's endless possibilities with this simple, do-italmost-anywhere pursuit. After all that brainbustin' stuff, here's some earbustin' stuff .. Dolly .. " Manga Tears" .. the main riff, once it gets going, is like a tank ! Plus, of course, here's some for you to have a go at .... with car number plates, you just use the 3 letters at the end to do your ghostbirding with ... some easy, some not, some perhaps intractable ... and if it's too easy, try to find a harder solution .. you can award yourself more points ... and points mean .... er, very little !! ... now you know what to do ... have a go in the great outdoors ...
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I'm sure we all miss CP's "song titles" silliness in the early days of Spring-/Autumn-Watch ... they were ingenious and entertaining ...and I showed you lucky lot some video compilations of them. Who can forget " Vicar in a tutu" for example ? Why he stopped doing it I don't know ... was it "the management" not liking the frivolousness of it all, were watchers complaining, did he run out of ideas ... who knows, but it's a sad loss. So, just in case he has run out of ideas, here's some suggestions from me, myself, the writer, yours truly .... maybe the most glaringly obvious one in the light of the recent broadcasts has to be " (I'm not looking for) a New England " ... by the excellent Billy Bragg ...go on, we'll have a listen ... But Mr. Bragg can supply the idea-less Christopher with more ... I'm even going to suggest suitable scenarios into which they could be surreptitiously slid .... here's just a few to get him started ... .. he's birding with top birder Ron Johns .. " I don't need this pressure, Ron." ... he's seawatching, successfully for once ..... " Birds and Ships" .. he's mammal-watching, but unfortunately ... " The wolf covers his tracks" ..Chris and Michaela get turned away at the "Unisex Chipshop" .. he trying to get his car-list up a bit ... " From a Vauxhaul Velox." .. he's had a lot of trouble finding a Treecreeper .. " Someday, some morning , some time." ... the Scilly boat has sunk, with his entire production team on board .... " Island of no return" .. the producer wants greater "presenter diversity" ... "Greetings to the new brunette" ... He's had one of his rarity descriptions queried by the BBRC ... " Must I paint you a picture" ... he's spent the whole day mansplaining everything to Michaela, getting his graphs upside down, endlessly recording never-to-be-used links, he's sick of "cheeky chipmunks" , and showing us views of astonishingly empty bird tables whilst sitting on a tiny freezing-cold benchlet.... " Days like these" Oh look ... they're real song too ... here's one of them... .and here's a remarkable "version" of "Unisex Chipshop" by Bill Bailey ... this video is odd in many ways, including the comments it has attracted. Great stuff, especially the " S l o w e d- D o w n" bit. This is the "answer" to a challenge I'll set you all in the future .... June 2020 actually .... It may not be the perfect answer, but I've done my best .... so here it is .. Jynx torqilla Dolichonyx Oryzivorus Galerida theklae Emberiza melanocephala Tryngites subruficollis Larus delawarensis ..and if you want to know what the "challenge" was , here's the link to it .. 895-the-latin-solution.html Well, obviously birding can't last for ever ... I mean, in a few billions of years, the sun is going to fry us all to fritters.... so there's the death of birding. Probably But there are more immediate threats ... when Universal Credit, robots depriving huge swathes of the workforce of their jobs, the rise and rise of cohorts of gormless, witless, uneducated 1st-class degree-holders taking over the country and making even worse the dire state of management, not to mention the Ebola virus which will inevitably be ferried on our airlines to every country in the world, and, of course, Amazon, and all those Antisocial Media sites.... Witter, Acebook, , Bumbler, Napchat, Instagran (for the over-twelves) ..all of that and more ...reduces the world to utter chaos, birding will get a bit marginalised. Or worse. But there is a much more imminent danger to birding .... any day now, some dickhead will put a new sort of binoculars on the market ...it will have, tucked away inside its gubbins, bird-recognition software which will ID any bird within seconds and name it onscreen. And a range of telescopes that do the same. ¡ Ouch ! Oh, we'll all say we're not getting one of them, but you know what ... soon there just won't be the old sort. But "we", we happy band of real birders, will hold on to our old bins and scope and keep on using them. Maybe we'll have to do it surreptitiously as they will become valuable collectors items and be worth several Banksies ... that's the new currency that coming in soon. It's a sort of Craptocurrency that will sweep the world. But we can't hold out for ever. It will be The Death Of Birding. But on the plus side, we can revert to type...wandering round the, er. countryside ( the what ?) enjoying ( what?) watching and hearing the birds. ( ?) ( the what ?) How very odd. But it might catch on. And as for music, this'll do ... Jethro Tull, " Living in the Past", 1969 !! Happy and I'm smilin', walk a mile to drink your water
You know I'd love to love you and above you there's no other We'll go walking out while others shout of war's disaster Oh, we won't give in, let's go living in the past Once I used to join in, every boy and girl was my friend Now there's revolution but they don't know what they're fighting Let us close our eyes, outside their lives go on much faster Oh, we won't give in, we'll keep living in the past Oh, we won't give in, let's go living in the past Oh no, no, we won't give in, let's go living in the past Three posts ago ( #261) I wrote a long thing about strategies to see a Treecreeper in a hurry. But it was more than it seemed ... The thing is, that these days, what with old age and too much standing near to 200 watt speakers I can no longer hear Goldcrests and Treecreepers. Grrrr. So ... Treecreepers have become really hard to get. I now realise that the vast majority of my Treecreeper encounters started with me hearing the blasted things ! But now that idea no longer works. Eek. And the startling and, er, pathetic fact is, that I haven't actually seen a Treecreeper during this calendar year. Ouch ! Jings !! Damm and Blarst !!! Crivvens ! So that wot I wrote was really me sort of mulling over various strategies for me to find A Quick Treecreeper. Smartish. Soonish. Nowish , preferably. So, over the past couple of weeks I've been sauntering around various Treecreeper Hotspots searching for one ... just one will do. Not that I'm desperate or anything ... no no no ! It's hard work actually, what with them spending half of their monotonous existence on the wrong side of the trees, and those trees being neck-strainingly tall and me being way down below, and all those stupid leaves and things getting in the way. So, up until 2 days ago I had no success ... they were lovely walks though, loads of Nuthatches, Jays, Squirrels, dogs .... but not a single TC. But ... 2 mornings ago .... I went to a different TC hotspot ... and after about 10 mins, one of my recommended techniques did the job ... there was a TC fluttering down from the top of a tree to the base .. and chuntering its way back up. Ace. Brilliant .. but I only got to see it for a tantalising 30 seconds or so. But ... job done ...sort of ... in a sort of "tickitandbogoff" way. Anyhow, I strolled on and 10 mins later I latched on to a couple of goldcrests and after a few seconds there it was again .. or a different one. And this time I was able to watch it for 15 mins or so as it hoofed up a huge tree-trunk in a treecreepery sort of way. Absolutely brilliant. I even had time to take some pictures with my tiny tiny tiny pocket camera, and it's on that picture at the top there. But 'tis rather small ..small.... very small. If I had the technological skill I would put a big › pointing to it ... and just now I used my reversed bins to peer at it closely and yes, there it was ... it's about 3 tenths across and 4 tenths up, near the left edge of the left trunklet at 7 o'clock from the forklet. Another waylet to find it is, it's at about 7 o'clock from a double white patchlet on the trunklet, which looks a bit like a white sluglet. I hope you have a bit of lucklet and find it. You can also blow it up by holding down the Control Key whilst whizzing that wheelybobs thingy on your mouse. Any road up, I was inordinately chuffed. Plus, I've got an additional, but bleeding obvious TreeCreeperSpottingTip ... get out early. You know it makes sense. I don't think there are many songs about Treecreepers, so I'll put something else on for the Music Spot. Ah-ha ... I've remembered something ... something that looks like a Treecreeper-Spotting-Expotition .... here we go ... take your anti-dizzying tablets NOW ... here's Gruff Rhys, once voted Sexiest Male in the World , and the invigorating "Epynt" ... Epynt, Epynt
Mae'r dewis yn dod yn gynt ac yn gynt Wyt ti isho brenhines Neu hen awdures? Epynt, Epynt Calonnau'n curo yn gynt ac yn gynt Wyt ti isho dyfodol? Neu dim ond gorffennol? Gwario, gwario Beth sy'n well gen ti wario, wario? Dy blastig neu bapur Neu dim o gwbl Dewis, dewis Dyro i mi fy newis, newis Dw i'n dewis dim, Dim dime, dim An eventful day ... as you have probably guessed from the title. For a start, I've bought a new mouse ... 30 hours have gone by and that mouse-borrower has not returned it. Secondly, I ferried my daughter and The Significant Otter up to a science exhibition which was being "presented" by said daughter's husband. He was there to answer visitors' questions, but wasn't getting many so I was hauled in to bombard him with lots of questions.. and I did. Oh yes ! And I got filmed as well, as I fought against the laws of Entropy by making a Fujimoto's Cube .... they're apparently going to show it both forwards and in reverse. Woo. I also pointed out that that e=mc² thing is a bit corny. Why is it exactly 2 ? I mean, we invented numbers like 2 and 456 and 45.337 and 7¾ ... but Einstein's Equation just neatly happens to have a power of exactly 2 .... that's remarkably ,er, neat isn't it ? A bit of a coincidence. He never gave me a proper answer to that. Ha !! But the real highlights were ... I got the first Fieldfare of the season on the drive up, and the first Redwing of the season on the drive back. Result !! Woo squared !! Proper birding !! And very appropriately, here's "Tous des Stars" ( all the stars) by the excellent French band Dolly, performing on their version of Top of the Pops.... . and here's the Deep Field .... ... ..endless galaxies ... ..and in all that lot, surely there must be life ... and just maybe, birds... but probably only a minuscule chance of birders to watch them. But ...what birds might they be ? What a thought .... what might they be ?
... or rather, while "it's" away ..because a neighbour of mine has "borrowed" my computer mouse, and, many hours later, she's still got it, so I'm writing this on a mac and I've no pictures etc to illustrate what I was going to write about so I'll just show you a quick thing that only needs writing .... here we go ... What have all these birds got in common ... what thing do they all display, what feature do they all have .... that sort of thing ... ? Starling Chiffchaff Chough Fulmar ..any idea yet ? ...... OK then, here's some more ... Redstart Rustic Bunting Sabine's Gull Scop's Owl Thekla Lark Sanderling ....... still stuck ? Here's a few more ... Nightjar Snow Bunting Cream Coloured Courser Andalusian Hemipode ............. here's some super-dooper ones ... for different reasons ... Dabchick Turnstone ... and there's plenty more ... and I haven't ventured into exotic stuff yet. So ... no pictures.... but I should be able to get some music ..... let's see if I might pick something relevant and suitable ... .... right ... got it at last ... it's Stranger things by ABC .... Here's the scenario ... some eccentric offers you £1000 to take him (eccentrics are mostly hims) to a Treecreeper ... he's desperate to see one, he's got a bet on with one of his mates that he can spot a Treecreeper today ... not tomorrow, not the next day.... today. As it happens, you're in desperate need of exactly £1000 .... what a coincidence. So you say ..OK, I'll do my best. Now think about this ... you haven't got long. The days are drawing in. The nights are getting longer too. Treecreepers spend half of their time out of sight round the other side of the tree, so that's a right pain for a start.They're tiny, cryptically coloured, and fairly silent,they don't like being looked at and often they're about 70' up and a right pain in the neck in all senses of the phrase ...... lots to worry about. So ..what would be your technique ... your strategy ... your plan... your modus operandi.... your nifty nack, your trusty trick,your cunning ruse, your top scheme to deliver the goods ? You've only got a few short hours ... and you've got to get today's Daily Star to prove you spotted it today, and you've got to leave a note for t'significant other,if any, and you've got to make some sandwiches and a flask, and put in some cackets of prisps ... so much to do ! Cripes !! Anyhow, here's my list of possible strategies ... • You take him for a stroll in a Treecreeper hotspot. Just wandering around. • You go to the same place, but sit down on your folding chairs and wait and watch. • You could also try lying down on your nifty rugs and look up.They're often "up." • Whichever of those you do, you might especially watch out for the most conspicuous thing they do... when they get to the top, they sort of swoop flutteringly down to the base of the next tree and start again ... a dreary life. But it's the only life they've got. Are Treecreepers free from the chains of the barkway ? • Even niftier... seeing as there's two of you, why don't you sit-or-lie-down one on each side of the trees, so you'll stop the little beggars hiding round the back. • Mirrors can do the same job, but they're heavy and hefty. • Another important thing ... you must know the noises they make. Bleedin' vital. • You could try using my "vismigophone" I showed you a few posts ago.. actually, I'll show you it again ... I'm quite proud of it. Here it is in full "treecreepering" mode.... that's you dangling form underneath it in your super-comfy chair. • You could go to some houses that back onto or are actually in Top Treecreepery Woods, and ask them if they get Treecreepers in their garden. These houses do exist ... I know of quite a few of them of them personally. Then you tell them you're doing a v. v. v. IMPORTANT TREECREEPER SURVEY and could we sit in your garden please and spot one. All in the interests of SCIENCE. And you do it. • Why stay on the deck ? What about climbing a tree, and sit up in the canopy with a huge view of all the activity up there. After all, looking up from below is hard work. And a bit eye-boggling too ... • Or you could go a stage further ... what about going up a tall thing... like a block of flats or similar .. that just happens to overlook a Good Treecreepery Place and scope stuff from there. Why not indeed. Well ... maybe you know some more .... things that worked for you. In this context, longer-term strategies like planting your own wood or flying to somewhere where you have to swat Treecreepers out of your way to get to the Post Office, or buying one on the internet and releasing it, or spending weeks preparing a special tree in your top TCSpSp .. Treecreeper Spotting Spot .... by filling all the chinks in the bark with peanut butter and squashed flies and dead beetles so that said TCs will spend all their days on that tree and no other ... they're no good. Nope. Long-term ... do-able. Short-term ... crap. But what about music ... what on earth will go with that ? Aha .. here's a lovely, intimate cover of U2's " I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" .... plus " Stand By Me" ... although, as I mentioned above, round the other side might be a better strategy. On this day in 2002 I was on St. Mary's, and what a beautiful day it was both weatherwise and birdwise. Having seen a fantastically cryptic Wryneck sitting in a field seemingly forever, long enough to draw it anyway, a Red-breasted Flycatcher, 2 Firecrests, a Red-rumped Swallow, 2 Serins and a Great Northern Diver the day before, this time I got a Ring Ouzel , 2 Clouded Yellows, 1 Painted Lady, Red-Rumped Swallow again, a 1st-winter Bluethroat , a Ring Ouzel and top-of-the-lot, a very elusive Melodious Warbler, and later lucked in on a fine Firecrest amongst a long troop of Goldcrests processing along a hedgerow. By the end of the day I was, as they say, tired but happy. Mind you, there were bits of interest locally today. Down at the lowish-tide river, I did a quick Common Gull count, the reason for which my regular readers, ( Arnold & Edwina Throgmorton, 523 Migraine Terrace, Wigtown) will know already, and got a startling and excellent 34 in a huge flock of ± 570 assorted gulls ... but there was no sign of last week's Med. I also encountered my first "winter tit flock" even though it's not winter, but you know what I mean. There was all sorts in the approx 50 individuals, but one major and highly disappointing absence which I will reveal to a waiting world (?) shortly.Or longly, depending. Earlier in the day, a big straggling 120+ incredibly high-up Pinkfoot flock went right over the house....redolent that was. Right redolent. And The Significant Otter gave me a smashing present ... a vinyl "extended single" with 4 Singing Postman songs on it. I haven't listened to it yet ... I'm saving the pleasure for later. Music later .... the excitement has worn me to a frazzled remnant of my former self ! I hope you liked that Wryneck drawing wot I did ...here's the Firecrest I mentioned ...
Grumbling Stumps STQC Reserve has its own little band of regulars .... Here's what I wrote about them the first time they appeared on here ... ... 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. OK ...back to today's story .... This one is a much more recent adventure .... The Trogs and the Ovenbird The Trogs are usually an amiable bunch, if not perhaps top birders, but what does that matter. But, they are loyal, if nothing else, and they provide entertainment to all they meet. But over the last few weeks, their equilibrium has been disturbed by an interloper, a rather bumptious, over-confident type who had latched onto them. But the thing is, he spends all his time criticising them, insulting them, belittling their birding skills, and generally being a prize turd. And he hangs around with them for hours at a time, dogging their every move, and generally being a bloody nuisance. The only positive is that he's doing it to everybody else as well. The tearooms are awash with people complaining about his awful presence, his insulting attitude. In fact, many have stopped going there so often, keeping away just to avoid his attentions. They are all desperate for him to bog off to one of those top twitches he keeps boasting about. Anyway, after a few weeks of this, Ed, the one who's been to Benidorm and claims to have ticked Red-rumped Swallow, hatched a plan. A cunning plan. An ad hominem plan, to boot ! Here we go then .... So there they are, the Trogs, minus Ed for some reason, and sure enough, Stodgy ( that's their nickname for him) turns up and get going with his usual slagging-off routine,when Ed burst into the hide (most unlike him) brandishing his smartphone ,and shows it to the assembled Trogs ... their response is .. "blimey" ..not that any of them has a clue what he's showing them ... for it is an Ovenbird ! Stodgy takes a look .... bloody bastard Ovenbird ... he knows his stuff, fair do's ... and before you know it, they're all racing up the path to the remote corner of the reserve where it was showing... Stodgy continually telling them to bloody well speed up.... but after a bit the Trogs can run no longer, so Ed quickly tells him how to get there ... he's then got to climb a tree ... he can't miss it, an ancient, dead tree which just pokes above the canopy and from there, from the top, the very top branch,he will be able to see it. It's the only viewpoint really ... and off he goes, does Stodgy, at great speed. But guess what ? He never comes back. We'll never know whether he saw that Ovenbird. He's never been seen again, not that anyone wants to. Only 5 people know what happened to him. And that's those five Trogs. Mind you, Ed didn't tell the others for years ... just in case they couldn't keep it to themselves. But once the whole thing had died down, and Stodgy had been forgotten by everybody, he told them what had happened. Here we go ... Ed, besides being a keen birder, was also a local historian. And especially, the interaction between "natural history" as it used to be called, and the human population. And one day, in the County Archives, he came across a curious tale about a large, dead tree which ,way back in the 1700's, had been rumoured to have strange powers. The gist of it was, anybody the villagers didn't like would be encouraged, tricked if you like, to climb up it. Money would be offered, fake " competitions" would be invented, whatever it took. And up they would go .... never to return. As soon as they set foot on the top branch, they vanished. Totally. Gone. And for about a year, Ed had known this. All the locals had been told about it, and if anyone came to stay in the area, they would be warned. Most poo-poo'd the idea,but they didn't risk it ! Some of the locals he talked to were able to tell him of more recent incidents .... or things their parents or even grandparents had told them about that tree.It had brought the tally up to around 20 or so. But Stodgy .... he was a fly-in. He would just come roaring up in his fancy fast car ...and bog off to whatever distant place he lived in. He was a prime candidate to be got rid of ! An ideal candidate for a spot of tree-climbing ...of course, there was no Ovenbird.Ed had just snapped a picture from a magazine. But here's an odd thing ... exactly 1 year later, an Ovenbird did turn up on the reserve... no tree-climbing required ! And it was Ed that found it. Well well. ... and all manner of things shall be well ! If you fancy reading their first story, its here ... 177-the-trogs-first-adventure.html And appropriately, from Stodgy's point of view, here's Manu ... "Goodbye" Here's a "3-part extravaganza" of "birdwatching" hosted by Bill Bailey. It's Bill Bailey's Birdwatching Bonanza. This is part 1. Rhan un in Welsh . Pam lai ? Dere ymlaen pawb .... Well, I think we can agree that that was more of a lesson in how NOT to do it. There's some odd counting methods in there for a start. And here's another thing ... once again, my mum Doris, were she still amongst us, would want to know where, exactly, were they going to go to the toilet. A good question. An important question. And, an unanswered question. Hmmmm. This next one ( "Part Two" is its nifty name ) starts with an awful, AWFUL bit of dastardly doggerel, vile verse and putrid poetry. Ace !! And good to see that Kara has taken the trouble to do her nails with pink nail varnish, in a gloomy, dank,putrid tent, in the perishing cold and damp, by whatever-time-of-the-morning-this-is. But basically this is "bad-lad-birding" on a grand scale. Yes, a "new" genre of birding has been created. By me.. or rather, them.... You'll never guess what this next one's called. Anyhow, Jeff and Joe are typical examples of the old farmer's maxim for hiring lads .... If you've got 1 lad, you've got a lad. If you've got 2 lads, you've got half a lad. If you've got 3 lads, you've got no lads. ( This also applies to lads in cars.) Actually, Jeff and Joe are worse than half a lad. They're half of a halfwit. Fractions in action or what ? Let's get on with it then ... you're keen to find out who will win ... I bet you are .... Well, there's one good thing come out of all that ... we all feel like birding giants compared to that lot of lumpkins. Result !! What bit of music could possibly "go" with that then ? Got it ! Roy Harper ... " In a beautiful rambling mess" I was taking the air one sunny evening
watching everything being happy in a fire the restless sun was turning in my body the pages of my love and I saw them all soaring past (ha) from the first to the very last through the surging crest of the waves of a memory made from them all by everyone yesterday's laughing loving 'round my head I remember the times when I was (?) (um, what a beautiful sunset sky... um) pleading words, burning eyes and ripping heartache scorching fury of youth that fills me but as sweet as these memories are (what a fantastic sky) they're as near as the farthest star just a daydream away sheltered by some nearest far what a sky, laughing, loving round my head what's her name? oh, she's a lovely piece of woman flowing hair in the early morning well I think I'll sit down and use this sunset as a timeship to travel through my head and I'll wander just where I please through my wallowing dreams with ease and the cows can come home and go out again and I'll still be here after pancake doomsday what a beautiful rambling mess we live ... in. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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