Inside that rat costume is MR. G ... oh yes ... Abergele Amateurs Xmas Pantomime, 2017 .. Sometimes you get to see a decent bird through a trail of random incidents..... like this .. [1] I was looking to find some silly, entertaining French songs to uplift the spirits of all those billions of followers of my French blog.... ( learnfrenchin88years) [2] ..and eventually I find a good one and put it on this blog as well..... see previous post ... [3] ..because, as mentioned in said previous post, the "singer" looks very very like Mr. G, a mysterious but excellent fellow-birder .... [4] ... and I text a message to him so he can have a look at it ..... [5] ... and I get a text back in which he tells me there's a Long-tailed Duck at a local spiffing spotting spot.... [6] ... obviously, I don't jump into the car straight off .... I don't want to look too desperate of course ... [7] ... off I go about 2 hours later ... and there it is. Quite close too. [8] ..... so, you're thinking ...where's the photograph ? Or the drawing ? [9] ..... [a] it was absolutely belting down with rain, and there was a force 482 wind...so.... [b] ...said wind and rain chucked the "drawing" idea out of the window.... [c] ... and I forgot to bring my camera with me. [d] ...... but apart from that, everything went swimmingly. He hasn't showered me with gleeful joy about his performance on that video. I have a terrible feeling that he maybe didn't like it. But never mind ... I got the bloody LTD after all !
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That's the mysterious Mr. G in the middle of the picture .... more of him later ... Yesterday, amidst the drizzle/hail/rain etc, a Grey Wag landed on our "water feature" , paddled around a bit, drank a bit, and then flew off. Well, over the years we've had plenty of Grey Wags on the "seen-from-the-house-list" , esp in Sept-Oct migration time ...but I can't remember a single one actually coming into the garden ...let alone actually landing on it. So ... I was quite pleased. Definitely the " Bird of the day." And as I finish that sentence, the has sky darkened, there's rolls of thunder in the distance, and the "office" windows are getting pounded with hefty rain and hail. Eek. OK ... the music. The title of this article is New Arrivals New Arrivals ... it was the final shout at the end of a song .... probably from the 80's/nineties ..... but I can't track it down. So we're going to have this instead... I discovered it this morning ... .............. serendipitously ..... Well, that singer must surely be the mysterious "Mr. G", my birding companion on many twitches/jaunts/successes/failures over many years ... but I didn't know he had a sideline doing French songs. I've even written about him on here ..... quite a few times ...... but right now I can only find these two ...... 41-white-billed-diver-twitch-and-straw-boaterists.html 60-birding-eccentrics-1-mr-g.html The Significant Otter has come up with that "New Arrivals" song .... and here it is .... Flesh for Lulu .... "Subterraneans" ..... Exams have been a big issue lately. And over the years there's been a steady "grade inflation" Which is making the whole exam system a bit of a farce. But ... are us birders experiencing a rather dodgy " tick inflation" scenario ? A few posts ago, in the aftermath of "The Great Shambolic Exam Fiasco", I wrote about how you could make exams piss-easy or, at the other extreme, as hard as nails ... complete with examples. And then I showed you the sort of exam that Eric Hardy might have written. It was certainly unique ... and in many ways, rather baffling. 925-eric-hardys-exam-paper.html And so will this one be ...yes, 'tis the sort of exam that Bill Oddie might set ... as imagined by ME ... " Possibly Bill Oddie's Baffling Brain-Basher"." [1] How short should your binocular strap be ? Or long, for that matter. [2] Where do I pretend to do most of my birding ? [3] Why do "experts" tell us that there's a lifetime of birdwatching right where you live, and then those same "experts" fly all over the planet to make "wildlife" documentaries and make pots of money out of it ? [4] Do you have "dodgy ticks" on your lists ..... ? [a] Yes [b] No. [c] Er...sort of [d] Yes and no. [5] Which of these scenarios have ended in a "dodgy tick" for you .. [a] You miss the bird by 2 seconds because the twit in the car in front took ages to get out of the way. But, of course, you counted it anyway. [b] Listening to your "companions" on the way back, you realised that the bird they saw was not the one that you were looking at..... oh dear. [c] "They" all saw "it", but you were carefully drawing a cow-pat which you thought was "it." But, yet again, you ticked it. [d] The "rarity" was half a mile away, flying up up and away but they all assured you that "that" was "it". Rather mysteriously, there is a detailed, annotated drawing of "it" in your notebook. [e] When you get back from your Scilly fortnight, your next-door neighbour gleefully shows you a photo of a Veery in your back garden. But you tick it, I mean, it was in your garden an hour ago, and its not your fault that you were away at the time. [6] At what point would you not tick a rarity.... [a] It is staggering about, then drops dead. [b] It breaths its last breath as you arrive. [c] It expires 5 seconds before you arrive. [d] Its been dead for an hour or so. [e] 50% of it is sticky-out bones. [f] Only bones and feathers are left. [g] Only its head is left. [h] Only its beak is left. [i] Just one feather is left. [j] Only the last centimetre of a feather is left. [k] The bird has flown, but you find one of the bugs that were living on it, and you pay £377 to get the DNA from it and it turns out to be a bird you need, so, er ... ? [7] You find a ring under a hedge .. an American ring. You send the number to the " American Ringing Board" or whatever, and find out it was from an Ovenbird ... do you tick it ? [8] Seeing as Universities are now giving almost everybody brilliant grades, would you consider ... [a] Getting to be a professor of birdy-sort-of-things. [b] Then doing some dodgy "research." [c] Creating lots of splits, mostly named after he-or-she. [d] And then ticking them all. Right folks .... I hope you've all got good answers to those tricky questions. But now is the time for the music .... ... and marvel at the sight of a juv Packemus christophorus minimus at 7m13s approx. ..... I wonder what impact CV19 has had on the Scilly Season ? ... its certainly affected me ..... one of the main " not-done-things" is our annual trip to N. Ireland .... birthplace of The Significant Otter. N. Ireland is excellent for birds, and the "getting-there-boat" and the going-back-boat" are good for your actual auks, skuas etc.... all sadly missed. Here's one of my rather ridiculous exploits from said N. I. ... .. but it is quite educational ....... 114-how-i-lost-my-first-pair-of-binoculars.html .... and so was this.... oh dear ! 133-the-loch-erne-mystery-bird.html ... and this strange sighting wasn't actually a bird at all... 313-my-very-own-ufo.html .... but seriously, we were a bit worried about the possibility of not getting back from N.I. if some change in the rules happened. As they do. Every 10 minutes, apparently. And the winter is on its way ..... "I can't wait till summer"... that's "Methu aros tan haf" in Welsh .. Rwy methu aros tan mehefin I can't wait till June
Aros tan haf Wait till summer Rwy mynd i torri ti y haf hwn I'm going to break you this summer Torri ti'r haf hwn Break you this summer La, la, la.... (Euros says something that I can't make out...) The ocean paths this summer It's easier to waste your day away Rwy methu aros tan mehefin I'm going to wait till June Aros tan haf Wait till summer La, la, la.... And, of course, we didn't get to wonderful Wales either .... which is now banning anyone going to it. Bah ! Two posts back I set you the task of finding birds in the Sherlock Holmes books ..... I also did more searching on the net to see if I could more occurrences ... and.. .... sure enough ... I found this ... ... which sticks to corvids.... ... so there's still plenty to discover ! "You do occasionally find a carrion crow among the eagles," Holmes tells Watson in "Shoscombe Old Place," using an avian metaphor to describe the possibility that Sir Robert Norberton is a bad 'un. It's not a kind way to speak of crows, who by all informed accounts are highly intelligent and social creatures, but he said it and we have to deal with it. Norberton is the only crow mentioned in the canonical stories, unless we count "the Crow Hill mine" referred to in The Valley of Fear. Or unless we are using a carefully selected edition of the stories, such as a version of the Doubleday Complete Sherlock Holmes published between 1930 and 1960. For there, behold what we find in chapter 3 of The Sign of Four, in the episode where Holmes and Watson accompany Mary Morstan to meet her mysterious benefactor: "At the Lyceum Theatre the crows were already thick at the side-entrances." The word should, of course, be "crowds," as it was in earlier editions and later ones as well. Newt and Lilian Williams, prominent figures now greatly missed by their friends in the Occupants of the Empty House in central Illinois, discovered this amusing typographical error in the 1970s. It launched them on a massive project to identify all the errors in the Doubleday text (and there are many of them) which they came to call The Great Crow Hunt. My father, Donald A. Redmond, BSI, 2s ("Good Old Index"), dedicated his 1990 book about the printing of the Canon, Sherlock Holmes among the Pirates, to Newt and Lilian. And Les Klinger, compiling his Sherlock Holmes Reference Library volume for The Sign of Four, was able to consult the Williamses' much-marked-up copy of the Baring-Gould The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, now treasured in the Occupants' library under the name of The Annotated Annotated. It records: "Peter Blau and Cameron Hollyer determined that the 'crows' appeared first in the Crowborough edition." Crowborough was the village near the country home where Arthur Conan Doyle spent his final years; its name regrettably comes not from crows but from an old English word for yellow. The "Crowborough edition" of ACD's writings, in 24 volumes, was produced at the end of the author's life, in 1930, by Doubleday, who subsequently used some of the typesetting in the Complete SH — including the Crowborough crows. Perhaps it was the memory of all these theatre-going crows that stimulated Canadian novelist Shane Peacock to make the birds play a significant role in his first "Boy Sherlock Holmes" novel, Eye of the Crow, which appeared in 2007. So much for the crows who are birds. For the record, there is also Erasmus Crow, one of the victims in "The Adventure of the Reluctant Corpse" by Matthew J. Elliott, which appears in Volume III of the never-ending MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. And many of us are acquainted with @221BCrow, who is an actual person, a writer and enthusiast of Victorian gay history well known in the Sherlockian twittersphere and the Pacific Northwest. In a different category are the crows who are sounds rather than winged creatures. "Finally," Watson writes, again in The Sign of Four, "he [Holmes] broke out into a loud crow of delight." That's not the hoarse caw of the crow, but a totally unrelated sound that has been called by the same word at least since the first English translation of the Bible a thousand years ago, which contains the phrase "Se cocc crawe," the cock crew. It is, in fact, the same noise referred to in "The Norwood Builder" as "Lestrade's little cock-a-doodle of victory". And that's a peculiarly interesting phrase because, if you look up "cock-a-doodle" in the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the quotations documenting the word's use comes from the 1853 novel Peg Woffington by Charles Reade. "It seemed not unlike a small cock-a-doodle-doo of general defiance," Reade wrote, in a book Conan Doyle must certainly have read (he was a great admirer of Reade's later and greater book The Cloister and the Hearth) and, it seems pretty clear, borrowed — and improved — for "The Norwood Builder". Apart from crows, there are other corvids, notably ravens, which figure in The Hound of the Baskervilles as a pair of them "croaked loudly from a tor." Faced with Selden's body, Holmes observes that "We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens." The Canon also twice refers to "raven" hair; in both instances the black tresses are borne by villains. As far as I can tell, the tales make no mention of rooks, jackdaws, or magpies, and there is just one jay: Abe Slaney, captured at the end of "The Dancing Men," laments that Holmes tricked him with "a note which made me walk in here, like a jay, and give myself into your hands." I have no idea what that idiom is supposed to mean. ... the music spot must be a Counting Crows song ... ... and for us birders, every day is a " Possibility Day" .... Well, there's no doubt about today's " Bird of the Day." Unless something really remarkable turns up. Having staggered downstairs at 0640 BST, it was very dark outside as I entered our dinky kitchen and switched the radio on, keen to hear more about Boris and his cunning strategic talents in "The Field of Shambolics" . But instead, I heard the unmistakable call of the Tawny Owl. Naturally, I assumed it was on the radio ... they're very scarce round our way these days ..and, of course, nights. So I turned it off. BUT ... sure enough, it still carried on ke-wicking. I opened our luxurious back door ..and there it was, right up near the top of that Eucalyptus, calling lustily. Which was smashing .... having not seen or heard one anywhere in the 3k, let alone from the garden, for many, many months. After about 10 mins of this welcome sighting, it retreated somewhat but continued calling for another 15 mins .. There's been Tawny Owls up there before, so 'tis not an addition to the recently-written-about " Eucalyptus List" ...(see post 954) but I was dead pleased. BUT..you're wondering .. where are all those Common Gull counts ? Well, tides and circumstances have been against me lately, but the main problem is, my "new" camera's so-called "instructions" are not very helpful. It took me a week and lots of Trial and Error to work out how to look at the pictures I had taken !.. but now the main problem is taking close-ups ... like those graphs we all know and love. I'm still working on that. Here's the basic figures so far ..... 1st figure =Commons/ 2nd figure =flock size 8 Sept 11Sept 13 Sept 21 Sept 8 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 2/232 3/368 5/290 1/191 6/131 2/256 11/323 The obvious thing is the hefty jump in numbers on that last visit. I've been putting "happy" songs on my French blog for obvious reasons ..... here's one ... fou en plus ! Yet another project for our uncertain so-called "Future" ! And totally do-able whilst we're locked in for 8 years. As regular readers should know , I've been a long-time campaigner for the compulsory inclusion of birds in works of fiction. They're much better for it, for many reasons ... and here's a few ..... [a] More people would buy them, because we are always being told that we are a nation of nature-lovers. [b] Us experts are more motivated to read them. [c] Admittedly, that's mostly because we want to pick holes in their accounts of the birds they include..... it gives us a warm feeling of superiority. [d] ..and even better, we can also have a larf at all those fictional depictions of birdwatchers of all types, from " nature lovers" to " compulsive mega-twitchers." But what we need is a database of bird-filled fictional books .... so we have a baseline from which to expand our campaign. And my first question is .. "How many birds appear in the Sherlock Holmes stories ?" It's the sort of "fact" that you just can't find by googling it .... .. nobody, I assume, has "done" it ! ... but I've made a start .... .... in the story " The Gloria Scott" several "hen-pheasants" appear. .... also, a rather vague "wild duck." If you want to include mammals, there's a Mongoose right at the end of " The Crooked Man." It even includes a description in case the BMRC sticks its nose into this innocent pursuit of knowledge. So ..that's another "lockdown" project for you .... So what I want you lot to do, is, pick one of the stories, or a single chapter, and make a list of said birds .... and then tell me about them. .... or you could "do" it with any work of fiction ... conservative party manifestos, anything written by Trumpy, the Noddy books .. the world is your Oystercatcher. [email protected] Or, of course, as a comment. And let's not forget, there's billions of hidden-away birds in all those thousands and thousands of works of fiction just waiting to be "spotted /"ticked" by us lot. And then there's other questions ....... What's the rarest bird depicted in fiction ? Were there more in the past ? Do female authors favour passerines ? Do male authors prefer raptors ??? With your help, we might, one day in the far future, actually know. So ... I'm hopeful that within 340 years we might have a list. Meanwhile ... some lovely music from DCFC ... Hey ...we're all going to get locked down again ! The "rules" are changing every 20 minutes !!! We need something to do "now" And we need sooomething to keep us going in the dodgy future. So ... I've dug out some things for you to have a go at.. .... some indoors ..some outdoors .... some take an hour or two, some could go on for ever .... ... so ...here's some links ....... 255-the-dream-list.html 57-yet-another-birding-challenge.html 58-the-ultimate-birding-challenge.html 129-your-world-cup-bird-list-how-is-it-coming-along.html -176-first-to-50.html 250-things-to-do-in-the-car-31-ghostsbirds.html 278-the-too-tame-effect-a-dubious-in-car-game-and-a-dreadful-dip.html 301-things-to-do-now-that-winter-is-here.html -317-tales-of-the-trogs-3-the-magical-ring-number.html 331-a-new-years-day-tricky-task.html 361-plagues-1.html 369-write-your-own-celebrity-birding-book.html 377-the-demise-of-the-swift-and-how-to-stop-it.html 405-birds-all-over-the-world-have-colours-in-their-names-but-which-colours-are-the-most-popular.html 466-how-do-we-know-when-spring-has-sprung.html 488-the-birdlessest-county.html 550-i-hope-youre-all-tour-de-france-bird-spotting.html 567-uk-250-club.html 588-another-way-of-looking-at-that-984-day-count.html 602-a-new-survey-strategy-the-random-walk.html 642-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe.html 820-things-you-can-do-indoors-birdwise-that-is.html 822-how-am-i-getting-on-with-that-bird-book-pyramid.html 836-another-lockdown-entertainment.html 854-another-topping-lockdown-thing-for-you-to-do.html 928-more-tricky-tasks-from-brattish-birds-2.html 946-a-new-quest-for-jaded-twitchers.html Now ... the music .... who knows where the wind will take us ? I keep putting these drawing on here in the hope that some halfwit will buy them for oodles of cash... but oddly, it hasn't worked. So I suppose I'll have to get along with my current measly income.... Back in the deep well of eternal time ( posts 947 and 942) I showed you parts one and two of my amazingly remarkable " hidden birds" quiz ..... which itself was from an even further back in time ragbag of rubbish called Brattish Birds 2 ..... and now, here's part three. ... The idea, by the way is easy to grasp ... here's a couple of tough examples .... [0ne] This summer Lincoln City won the Premier League Cup for the fifth time ! [Two] If you're going camping, don't forget the tarpaulin net you bought last year. ( Due to the limitations of my crap Emmanuel Tripetapper there might be a phew mipsprints ...... ) Well, I hope that passed a few minutes of tranquility in a turbulent world. But now ..music ! Well, the stars and planets have been showing well lately ....so here's " Sbia ar y Seren" ( look at the star) performed by some twit called Si Apus ... and not me, obviously ... ..here's some proper people doing it ... I'm glad to see they cocked it up at times too ... Every so often I put "The Big Bird Race" into Google. I'm still hoping that one day the long-lost footage of it will be found. Well... this isn't "it" ... but it IS a Big Bird Race. Off we go .... That sort of thing's a bit* out of my reach these days ..well, any days really .... but we're all at various parts of the spectrum are we not ..so why not have a gander at what the affluent-er birders can get up to. But I've no regrets ... after all, I've got a Lithuania List .. so there ! .... ...which leads us into a " relevant bit of music ..... If you are one of those lucky people who have not heard about my Lithuania List, now's your best chance ... 288-when-i-was-in-lithuania-part-1.html 293-when-i-was-in-lithuania-part-2.html 389-when-i-was-in-lithuania-part-3.html 486-when-i-was-in-lithuania-the-final-installment.html It's just occurred to me that this would have been even more apt .. apter ... * ..when I wrote " a bit" I meant " totally and incredibly" ...
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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