Surely that's Harry Kane !!?? Anyway, about this time of year, we start getting all these adverts in the colour supplements about presents, and holidays and the like........ But when I look at that one for example, I'm not looking at the binoculars, I'm not looking at him, or his hi-tech rucksack ( Rück = back in German) . No ... my attention is immediately drawn to those rock formations. It took yonks and yonks of years for anyone with half a brain to realise how old the Earth was. I blame religion myself ... the bible tries to persuade us it's only about 6ooo years old. Ha! Shite ! But that sort of thinking held sway for a ridiculously long time. That Harry-Kane-esque person is bounding over huge swathes of geological time! And the rocks he's whizzing over are going to be ground down to cobbles, then pebbles ... that's started already, then sand, then to even smaller bits, then they might well get squashed down into new rocks...sandstones or slates or gritstones or mudstones etc ... and eventually maybe they will again rise up as mountains as the result of some upheaval/orogeny millions/billions of years hence. And in many places, pebbles are clearly visible in rock formations ... which themselves are evidence that there were other mountains before the present ones, that themselves got eroded away, and the resulting pebbles were incorporated in the new rock formations. And some of those pebbles will themselves have fossils inside them. Crumbs ! And people will look at them and think ... oh, the bible explains how they got thousands of feet up even though they died in the sea ... it was that flood. Of course, So blinkered in their thinking were they that obvious things, visible to everybody, weren't even noticed or thought about. In the UK, our gardens, well northern ones anyway, are full of all sorts of different pebbles .... did anyone question how they got there ? All over the north, there are loads of clues about those massive ice ages that enveloped the land..... but nobody, for a long long time, even noticed them, or realised how they were formed . Boulder clay, drumlins, pingos, rock striations, erratics ... they're all over the land. And the northern bit of the UK is still rising up due to the release of the massive pressure when the ice melted... and the south is sinking ... hence all those flooded estuaries ( rias) on the Cornish coast. The whole country is like one of those arcade games where you tilt the table to slide the pucks around. Why are the Alps/Pyrenees so big ?.... because compared to our dinky little hills, they're very young in geological time and haven't been eroded down much. But ours are old ...... old .. old ... and have been eroded and glaciated as well. But they were that big once. And there's a wider picture ... what else is staring us in the face but we aren't really seeing ? What indeed ! 6000 years old ? Tosh ! Hey .. that's two (2) relatively serious posts in a row. Ouch. Serious music too ... New Order .... Ceremony This is why events unnerve me
They find it all, a different story Notice whom for wheels are turning Turn again and turn towards this time All she asks is the strength to hold me Then again the same old story World will travel, oh so quickly Travel first and lean towards this time Oh, I'll break them down, no mercy shown Heaven knows, it's got to be this time Watching her, these things she said The times she cried Too frail to wake this time Oh I'll break them down, no mercy shown Heaven knows, it's got to be this time Avenues all lined with trees Picture me and then you start watching Watching forever Forever Watching love grow, forever Letting me know, forever
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I know you all want to be kept updated with those gripping Common Gull counts I'm doing. If you don't know about this exciting project, well, last winter there were almost no Common Gulls on my usual stretch of river, which was very odd. So this winter I decided to count them. And I have been doing. So, here's a nifty plot showing the numbers of Common Gulls plotted against the number of all species of gulls present ... the flock size. With occasional counts of 30-40 ish, things are back to normal so far, though they do fluctuate right down to zero sometimes. I wasn't expecting to get anything else of interest out of it, but look ... there seems to be a fairly good correlation between the number of Commons and the total flock size. OK. I thought. But then I thought again. If there is a correlation, then why ? Why should a bigger flock of gulls have more Common Gulls in it ? Those Common Gulls are winter visitors ... and I'm presuming they've all pretty much arrived by now .... so why would there be more of that local population turning up when there's more of the others? Well, one thing is, they seem to be roosting/resting there. When I turn up to count them, the vast majority of them aren't feeding. So maybe the "total flock" splits and goes to other roosts/resting sites sometimes. And if they did that species-randomly, you would, on average, get similar proportions of each species each time., but split up into smaller flocks in different places. Roughly. It's a possible scenario. I certainly don't think that the Common Gulls look around and think ...hey, there's too many of us in this flock ..... you lot over there .... bog off somewhere else. No. Or .... hey, we're not very well represented here ... wake up, Bernard, go and fetch some of the others from that lot down the river . About a dozen will do. No. Any other ideas would be welcome .......... [email protected] Here's a fine Einstürzende Neubauten song , " Nagomy Karabach" ... brooding, that's what it is ! By the way, there's some comedy programme which seems to be about birds tonight at 11:15 pm.... it doesn't look too promising but you never know ...
As you all know, these occasional nature notes are brought to us by a whole panoply of nature-noters from all over the UK, even including Flintshire , but not, of course, Greater Manchester. This tranch of whimsical autumnal musings comes from our Southern Counties correspondent, Sweetie Pie. NATURE NOTES by Sweetie Pie How I love these autumnal afternoons in my tiny, dinky-winky 7-acre garden, with the falling autumnal leaves swirling past me into their winter resting-places, where they will, in the fullness of time, become, once again, part of the wonderful world of Mother Nature's Amazing Cycle Of Being. I'm sure all my dear readers will do the same. And amongst the darling, fallen leaves I glimpse the shy, retiring Snowy Owl, which, as you all know, sifts through autumnal swathes of multicoloured, dazzlingly polychromatic iridescent newly-descended abandoned leaves looking for gentle, kindly, dinky, whimsical nature writers like myself who like nothing better than to pretend, if only for a few fleeting hours, that they are at one with Mother Nature's eternal cycles of being . I'm sure that all my readers will do the same. Ah, here's one of my gardeners,Basil, assiduously cutting the lawn with a pair of nail scissors ..it's so so important not to hurt any of the tiny creatures of the lawn with their little legs and everything. They've also got a pair of little antonys on their heads which they depend on when they start to migrate to Hyde Park for the winter as well. I hope that all of my dear readers will do the same. Some people say I'm rather twee but I am simply being ME! Oh how I love the shiny rook that lingers in the inglenook his silver beak glows 'midst the gloom that fills my sweetie-kins bedroom. I love the dinky-winky flowers and stare at them for hours and hours I wish that I was one of them I'd have a lovely slender stem and petals nodding in the breeze which saunters 'tween the lovely trees. Tomorrow, until half past ten I'm going to be a Jenny Wren and after that, a Turtle Dove till comes the dusk, when I just love to turn into a Firecrest and slip inside its tiny nest. I know that you, dear readers wish like her you could be but there's no room for all of you in the halfwit heirarchy ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And as for the music, here's the remarkable Joanna Newsom ... " Sadie" .... it was re-reading the words to this song that got me having a gentle go at those people who "sweetie-pie" the world that birds etc inhabit. It's a mild dig at them, but the point is, I hope, made...... Sadie, white coat, you carry me home
And bury this bone and take this pine cone Bury this bone to gnaw on it later Gnawing on the telephone Until then, we pray and suspend The notion that these lives do never end And all day long we talk about mercy Lead me to water, Lord, I sure am thirsty Down in the ditch where I nearly served you Up in the clouds where he almost heard you And all that we built and all that we breathed And all that we split, or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me And bless you, and I deeply do No longer resolute, oh and I call to you But the water go so cold And you do lose what you don't hold This is an old song, these are old blues And this is not my tune, but it's mine to use And the seabirds where the fear once grew Will flock with a fury and they will bury what'd come for you And down where I darn with the milk-eyed mender You and I, and a love so tender Stretched on a hoop where I stitched this adage: "Bless our house and its heart so savage" And all that I want, and all that I need And all that I've got is scattered like seed And all that I knew is moving away from me And all that I know is blowing like tumbleweed And the mealy worms in the brine will burn In a salty pyre among the fauns and ferns And the love we hold, and the love we spurn Will never grow cold, only taciturn And I'll tell you tomorrow Sadie, go on home now And bless those who've sickened below And bless us who have chosen so And all that I've got and all that I need I tie in a knot and I lay at your feet And I have not forgot, but a silence crept over me So dig up your bone, exhume your pine cone, my Sadie You might well remember my shocking revelation that the RSPB, when moved a mere 2 places up the alphabet, turns into a TURD !! In case you are not familiar with the mysterious workings of the alphabet ... RSPB STQC TURD You've got to laugh I suppose. The Merseyside Naturalist's Association doesn't do so well either .... in one simple single shimmy up the alphabet it turns into ... MNA NOB How lovely !! But my regular readers know all about them.... but I wanted more ! So, I've made a sort of machine that works them out for me. It has a database of loads of birding-related organisations, and it zooms them up and down the alphabet and shows me the "good" ones. It's been trundling away all night, and here's a few juicy ones it has turned up .... There's the Tewkesbury Institute Ringing Group ... a worthy bunch of ornithologists I'm sure .... but all you have to do is shunt TIRG up the alphabet a mere 9 places up ..... and .... TIRG UJSH VKTI WLUJ XMVK YNWL ZOXM APYN BQZO CRAP Yes ... it all turns to CRAP after 9 shunts !! But what about those poor old Dawlish Warren Ornithologists ? Oh dear !! Let's move them 2 places down the alphabet shall we ..... you can probably work it out in your head actually ... DWO CVN BUM Yes .. BUM .... simple pleasures ! Next up ... RATHLIN ISLAND BIRDING UNION .... 12 up does the trick .... RIBU SJCV TKDW ULEX VMFY WNGZ XOHA YPIB ZQJC ARKD BSLE CTMF DUNG Yep! From a venerable and worthy group of birders to a heap of DUNG in 12 easy steps !! Via such gems as VMFY , ULEX, ARKD and the rest obviously. What about the long-established Avon Valley Migration Observers ? Well, what about them? Just try moving them 5 letters up the alphabet. Go on. That'll put the wind up them !!! And the machine's just this minute spat out a result for the worthy North Clyde Valley Birders ..... try shunting that 5 letters up ... not only does it give you a bird, it's a bird with an unfortunate alternative connotation! Of course, it's not just birders that overlook these gaffes .... there's the Royal Gardens Horticultural Society ... they're a group of volunteers who give their time to tending various royal gardens .... but they're only one jump away from .... well you can work that out yourselves. Thinking about it, it might be deliberate you know ... they must use a lot of it in their line of work! Back to us orthingistilogs .... sorrigothilongs ....thongistogls..nothingrogls... ornithologists .... cripes, it's starting to spread all over the place ... why I've chosen this song to go with all that stuff I don't know .... Primal Scream ... "Movin' On Up" ... I should call that machine of mine Florence, then we could have a song from Florence and the Machine ! We'll see. By the way, here's a warning to the faint-hearted and people of a nervous disposition, like me. Whatever you do, don't go trying this with the Death Valley Ornithologist's Union . You've been told, so you've no excuse. Footnote 1 ... Bird of the Day .. several candidates, but I'm going for the 200+ Pinkfeet that flew v high North over the house at midday. Evocative. Redolent.That sort of thing. Footnote 2 .. the machine is still pouring out more and more ... Shut up for a minute Florence !! Footnote 3 ... as you've maybe noticed, I'm cleverly planning to hit the 300th post exactly 9 months to the day since this mad blog started. I'm a crafty old Hector . I bet you have tried that Death Valley thing. Well, I did warn you.
[ I wrote this last night, so everything's a day out.] I hope you keep a "Bird of the Day" list. As opposed to the rather duff "Tweet of the day" which usually annoys me. It's much more do-able than listing rare stuff, and you get to appreciate the simpler things in life . It's cheaper too. Today ... Goldcrest ! ... right up by the window in the hedge. They only come into the garden very rarely ,in the deepest cold of the winter, so to "get" one this early is remarkable. Plus, the Significant Otter got onto it as well. I suspect it's only the 5th/6th record in the garden ! Yesterday ... Water Rail at Grumbling Stumps .... it crept out into view ... and crept back in again.I know how it feels. Day before yesterday, of course, it was Woodcock.... that one I saw crossing the road. Woo. The day before that, it was Bullfinches for me ... first thing, two of them were soooooing to each other in the tall trees on the embankment behind the house. And later on , they spent a lot of time in the Eucalyptus in the garden. We've had them around on and off for years, but they're not often in the actual garden. If they were rare, they'd be total grippers! ... nothing remarkably rare there .... some days I might stick a fox or a butterfly or a good moth into the list .... whatever happens to be the highlight of the day. I've even had woodlice etc in there ... I live in quite a good area for unusual woodlice. Roll on Platyarthrus hoffmannseggii ! But 99% of the time .. it's birds. Seriously folks , it's a good thing to do. Celebrating the small things in life. Sometimes, it seems to me that chasing after all that rare stuff is too much like going up the down escalator ! (The story so far ..... Mike Duck and me have got on the plane ... and I've taken some cloud pictures and have marvelled at how sensible cloud systems look from above.) After a mind-boggling woosh over the North Sea we arrived at Copenhagen in pouring rain. So much for my Danish list which after a frantic dash around all the airport windows stands at 5. All too soon we boarded a Honking Great Jet for Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.We flew high above the Baltic, then turned inland over seemingly endless forests interspersed with agricultural land and little settlements. It looked good. We came down into Vilnius in a cloudburst. It is fair to say that Vilnius airport was somewhat different to Manchester and Copenhagen.For a start it was about 60 miles from Kaunas where our conference was. Needless to say our pre-arranged taxi did not turn up. We had been warned about taxi-drivers ripping tourists off so we decided to walk round to the bus station which was " just round the corner." That cloud I mentioned earlier was still bursting as we set off and we got very very wet in the first few yards. Mike was distinctly displeased as, being a bit of a snappy dresser, he had a massive suitcase full, rather appropriately, with suits. However, I was feeling very pleased because my Lithuanian list was now, after only 5 minutes, a lot bigger that any of yours, dear readers. Yes, Tree Sparrows were everywhere, and as we tramped down that wide, wet road Swallows flitted about us and Jackdaws called happily. The Jackdaws, by the way, were considerably blacker-and-whiter than ours. There's a cline going on there. It took two buses and a long soggy walk to get us to the coach station, from which we were transported in Lithuanian luxury to Kaunas. All the way my nose was glued to the coach window as we swept past a totally agricultural landscape with miles of forests interspersed with fields and the odd cottage. Key sightings were a White Stork and a Honey Buzzard, plus my first World Tick ... Short-Toed Eagle ! Ever since that day my world list has been 1 more than my UK list. I'm a domestic old Hector ! We arrived in the semi-dark and rain at our hotel in Kaunas to find our fellow delegates partying it up and swapping gifts. It's a big local tradition. But we hadn't brought any .... nobody told us about that. That got us off to a great start. We went up to our hotel rooms to change into dry clothes .... and I was bit irked to find that mine were covered in some sort of oil, presumably from the luggage compartment of the coach. All week I looked like some bedraggled mechanic ! Ace. But less "ace" was the meal .... my introduction to what must be the crappest food in the world. Fat is very big in their diet, followed closely by salt. I'm not allowed to eat salt. There'll be more about the food as we go along. But the basic theme was ... bloody awful. I did enjoy the bottled water though ...we were all warned NOT to drink any of the tap-water. How reassuring. Lovely. (We also discovered that the reason we had no taxi and had got soaked and oiled and knackered was because three of the aforesaid party-goers had nicked ours 20 minutes before we arrived.)(Grrrr.) Oily or not, ill-fed or not, I was up at 0530 and out into the drizzle to the local park, Azuolynas Park by name. It didn't look much on the map, but ........ ( There's a bit of a cliff-hanger for you.What exotic birds will I spot in the mysterious Azuolynas Park ? Will I stink of oil for the whole week? Are Mike's suits going to be OK? Will I remember not to drink any of the tap-water, which was remarkably brown in colour ? What am I going to eat ? Will we be shunned by the others for not bringing any presents ? Is the journey back going to be an equally soggy disaster ? Will my Zeiss bins get nicked by the ubiquitous street gangs that roam the, er, streets ? Will I even survive in this land of huge blokes with vicious dogs ?) That's the view from my hotel room. Those trees look promising. A forest really.......... Aha ! The Cure ... "A Forest" Robert Smith is very underappreciated as a guitar player ..... I've met him you know .... I bet he never stops talking about it. This next bit is the "answer" to a tricky question I'm going to ask you in the future .. on the 14th of March 2020 to be precise ....
I can't remember having drawn this ... but I did. Very festive ! Apparently Christmas is on the way. In the pipeline. Looming up. And ...... all the big bird organisations are getting their Xmas catalogues ready, packed with seasonal, er, tripe. But this morning, as I woke up to the cataclysmic din of our alarm clock, I thought of the ideal thing for us birders, or whatever we're calling ourselves this week. I've been on the net already, and they're all dead keen on the idea, there's a bidding war going on right now as I write this, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if I wasn't a millionaire by Boxing Day. I can tell you about it now, because I've already copyrighted the whole scheme via the internet. I've got both of these ... © ® so there. Right ... I've invented an alarm clock that doesn't do BOOM BANG CRASH BEEP BEEP like all the others. No. It starts off with a little warbling bird, then a slightly louder warbling thing, then ..well, you get the idea .... and finishing up with a huge flock of deafening BIRDS which frighten the life out of you. That's the way us birders should be woken from our slumbers. It's obvious. The BTO's clock will have the sort of birds that get surveyed and graphed like Blackbirds,Thrushes and Orioles. Note the quiet start and the final racket ! The RSPB version will have cuddly birds that complete drips will know about like Robins, Song Thrushes, Pied Wagtails and Blackbirds and they'll probably need a bit of gradual amplification. The one for the 400 Club ( if it still exists) is going to feature rarities of course .... Cream-Coloured Coursers, Canvasbacks, Cedar Waxwings, Lammergeiers, Upland sandpipers and Bobolinks .. as usual, getting louder and louder. Flintshire Bird Club is going for Firecrest, Bonxie and Cormorant. The World Wildlife Trust has chosen Willow Warbler, Willet and Thayer's Gull. You might be wondering how this could have been done so quickly ... well, it's all chips isn't it.... these clocks are going to have a custom-programmed chip in them to suit each customer's requirements. They just phone in their required species and the computer will do the rest. We all know how reliable computers are at understambling wht wee tel thm....... They assure me that this will ensure error-free results. They exhume my hat while issuing terror-free insults. The fumes might wish you terrible free uncles. They loom nightly with terrific knuckles. The loony nitwit effing chuckles. I can't see any issues there. all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Order now for complete stupefaction . I ordered this music through the net ... I wanted Master Jack and his lovely. positive song, "Be Good" and here it is ... Actually, there's some nifty "tick celebration" moves there.
I braved the cold this morning and went down to the saltmarsh. It was dead, flat calm down there. But, mysteriously, the wind turbines were whizzing round, as usual. I've had deep suspicions about those turbines. But .... back to the world of sense, causality etc. Having humphed along the soggy heaps of tideline detritus, stopping occasionally to pick up various disposable lighters, plastic straws, chunks of plastic mesh etc, I came across a big ( 70+) flock of the dinky stuff .... chaffinches, greenfinches, goldfinches, a few blue tits and house sparrows ... amazingly cryptic when on the deck, and amazingly obvious when they flew up into the bushes. I searched and listened in vain for any Bramblings, Twites, Tree Sparrows etc to no avail. So ... I humphed back, getting a few chunks of firewood as I went, and set off home in the vehicle. This is all very humdrum, you're all thinking.... but coming up shortly, as they say in the movies, is a first. well, for me anyway. Tonking along a narrow country road, suddenly I saw something crossing the road ... and I thought, hang on, that's a Woodcock! I hope you've noticed, by the way, that I've given all the "interesting" birds a Capital Letter, but not the other stuff. I didn't do it consciously .. maybe I always do it (??) And sure enough, it was, I've never seen a Woodcock crossing the road. Flying over roads, yes. I've only rarely seen them on the deck at all .... 3 times I think. Counting this one. I stopped the car, and it trundled along through the accumulated soggy leaves lining the road..... I drove a bit closer, , stopped, and I got the dinky camera, and took a record snap at maximum zoooooom. Done. That's it up there. Not all that impressive. Then I drove very slowly past it, so it was walking towards me, and zoooomed some more. Luckily,they came out all right. Once I was close to it, it didn't look too good.... at the very least, I should try to get it off the road. I got out of the car and tried to creep up on it, but it always flew up the road a bit . I did this a few times, and it flew over a low hedge and into a big garden. Then it went through another hedge into another garden. Well, at least it wasn't on the road any more. It was on its own now. A strange, and rather sad encounter really. In situations like that, you always feel you've not done enough. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Music now ... why do we like these sad songs ? Editors ... An End has a Start Whilst I was busy rummaging through various heaps of books, cupboards full of books and big stacks of books in search of books for that 12" Birding Bookshelf ( see recent posts) I found other books. Yes. One thing I found was an ancient copy of The Griffon, my old school magazine. That's my old school, up there. Packed with a nasty lot of teachers, most of whom couldn't teach a pig to shit. And in that magazine were two (2) things by ME. I'm only going to inflict all of them on you poor souls. And one thing is obvious .. .. I haven't changed much .. not mentally anyway. As you are about to see. It's not about birds, but it is about Science, which is all part of the same thing. Here we go, unabridged and just as gormless as it was back in , er, oh dear, 19??. Ouch. AN EXPERIMENT DURING THE HOLIDAYS During the holidays a group of enterprising schoolboys decided to find the volume of the school. After consulting our Physics text books we set to work. First we shut all the windows and doors, and filled the school with water.We then weighed it. We then filled the school with Physics masters and weighed it again. ( A slight snag was encountered here.Before putting in the Physics masters, one should remember to empty out the water).We then washed and dried the Physics masters and heated them over a bunsen burner.We observed carefully the increasing violence of their reactions.All was ready for the final calculation. To find the volume,we took the weight of the school and water, and we divided it by the number of Physics masters which will fit into a telephone kiosk at 525°C. ( This turned out to be 3½, which was rather unfortunate for the ½).Unfortunately the results of this experiment were confiscated by a member of the police force who had swum up Kingsway, after we had opened the door to release the water.They will ,however, be published when my fellow experimenters return from the holiday which they are at present spending with a certain regal personage at whose pleasure they were detained indefinitely. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here's another one of mine .... much shorter, you'll be glad to hear. It is based on one of the more obscure theorems of Pythagoras. Very popular in exams ... to try to stump the poor pupils. THE EXTENSION OF PYTHAGORAS Pythagoras was extended while fishing one day. He put one foot in his boat, which moved away from the bank, and his other foot. This unfortunate event extended Pythagoras to such an extent that he made a theorem about it :- The square foot on the side of the bank is equal to the hydro deluge caused by the projection of the apex into the water. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And now .. Roy Harper ... "One of those days in England ( with a sword in every pond)" I've had quite a few birding-related problems coming in lately. So I thought it was time to actually sort a few of them out, seeing as all is pretty quiet out there. Right then ... here's a "problem" sent in by a reader ... we'll call her Violet ... why not . Mind you, it's a tricky one .... and not suitable for my younger readers. Dear Mini-Birding Problem Solver ( I like the sound of that)... Since my husband took up birdwatching a year ago, things have gone a bit odd. Well, there are good sides to it, he's out a lot of the time, going out early, getting back late, which is good. However, one thing is, he's started using birding vocabulary around the house ,,, well, around me actually. It all started when he started calling my breasts "bins." I wondered what he was on about at first,but he explained that bins=binoculars and they are a "pair" that "stick out" and that he really loves handling and twisting them .... that was his excuse anyway. It's a bit odd though isn't it ? So I learned to put up with that, and of course being out of the house so much, and being knackered when he got back, he didn't need to use that word all that often. But then things escalated. I don't quite know how to put this ...but I'll have to come straight out with it. He started to refer to my ,er, you know, as "The South Hide". And that's not all ! After he'd got away with that a few times ... He started calling my mouth " The North Hide." He did explain why, but it's fairly unrepeatable . And as his "visits to the South Hide" came to their, er, ultimate, um, peak, he would shout out " it's a Gripper !" at the top of his voice. I can't think how to tell you what happens at the North Hide. I'm speechless . He tells me it's a compliment. I'm sure the neighbours are a bit puzzled by it all. Well, so am I. And I don't dare to think what the next development will be !! What can I do? The Mini-Birding Problem Solver Replies .... This is, you will be pleased to hear, a common problem. My father was a plumber and he would use his work vocabulary when ,er, on the job, quite often. I don't think I need to give you any actual examples, but it's enough to say that I got a pretty thorough idea about the processes that brought me into the world just by hearing my father's exclamations through the (rather thin) wall . So, I think that your husband's transference of his vocabulary from one field of enjoyment to another is certainly normal, probably healthy, and as far as I can tell from your examples, flattering. Hides, whatever their orientation, are cosy, secret places where wonderful and pleasurable things happen. And binoculars bring things closer, do they not ? Much much closer. So ... go with it! And if I were you, I'd start bringing a few knitting terms into the mix ... " knit two together" comes to mind,and " twist tightly" and " check length using scale provided" ... then there's cooking terms such as " knead gently till firm" and " bring to the boil gradually." You'll feel empowered again. Sorted !! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have any birding-related problems, don't hesitate to send them in to... [email protected] After all, running a Seaside Bar like I do, I hear all sorts of problems, so I'm used to it. I know this has been on here before, but it seems appropriate somehow .... this is entirely different, but equally beautiful version of "Such Great Heights". After reading this post, whenever you go into a North or South hide, you're going to remember this ! Oh yes you are !!
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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