Yes, 'tis another Sarcastic Side-Swipe at the Wacky World of Super-Sketching from Brattish Birds 2 ....at some point I must get round to "doing" BB3 before I drop dead of old age and Cauliflower Ears..... I hope you have all learned something from "all that" . I know I have. You start off with a rough outline. Next, you do it a bit better. And then, you miraculously do a terrific drawing. Bah ! But what music could have any relevance to that ? I've written a lot about drawing birds. But I can only find these three ... ....but they are all quite good .... in my opinion ... .... and they have frequently (dis?)-graced these pages. 56-adar-wedi-marw-dead-birds.html 103-drawing-and-not-drawing.html 111-88-ways-to-get-slightly-less-bad-a-drawing-birds-1.html BUT ..for every good one, there's twenty crapulous ones.
....... there's even some of ME.
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Here's a site-ticking video ...well, that's how I see it. ..in our current Lockdown Mark 2, we can't zip around like we used to.. They tell you what most of the birds are ... ... and you'll know them anyway .... .... but ...you can do a bit of "virtual site-ticking" .... and, of course, hide-ticking .... ...... so ...start ticking all the sites/hides that you've been to ... ..... try to ID them before they tell you ... ...... quite a few of them are obvious as soon as they appear.... so... they, and you, have been here, there, and eveywhere ... corny link ! At last I can put one of my Common Gull Count graphs on here. My "new" but crap camera still won't "do" close-ups so I've spent several weeks trying to persuade The Significant Otter to photograph one of them with her fancy-pants I-Pad.... and eventually, she has . Reluctantly. She has suggested that I should get my own .... but I'm not going to spend 300 quid on something we've already got. Anyhow, there it is ... with the first 8 counts. It's a plot of the number of Common Gulls against the Total Flock Size. It's early days yet,, and it is a bit diffuse, but already there's a reasonable correlation between the two variables. There's two "outliers" to the right and left, but the rest of the dots show a strong link between Flock Size and CG numbers. So, let's compare it to a previous. more complete CG/Flock size graph .. Here it is ... as of Jan 19th 2019 .there's definitely a diffuse "trend" from lower left to upper right..... When I started doing those counts, I wondered why there was a correlation .. albeit not a brilliantly precise one ... between the two variables. Especially as the Common Gulls are strictly limited in both timing ( winter only) and numbers ( fairly low and fixed once they've arrived). The obvious question is ... where are the "other" Common Gulls when they aren't at my chosen spot ? Presumably with some "other" mixed flock somewhere else. So ... we've got off to an interesting start .... ... and it keeps me out of mischief..... ... so let's celebrate with a spot of fine music .... filmed on Bangor Pier ... just a few yards away from the pub in which I met The ( Eventual) Significant Otter ... it's strange how things turn out ...... My highlight yesterday was a Goldcrest in the garden ... really close up in the hedge ... and after a while it flew into the Eucalyptus ... yet another "Eucalyptus Tick !" I think it was maybe the 3rd ever in the garden .... crumbs. But ...... over that few minutes, I had been several "versions" of birding, looking at Coal tits and House Sparrows, watching the Starlings whirling around ..... being, basically, well down the scale. Then the Goldcrest turned up and I felt I was going up the rankings a bit. Once it had gone, I started lamenting the fact that it hadn't been a Firecrest ...which is a mean and cheap shot ... but does sort of haul me up a rung or two more on the "birding spectrum". And later that day I went Common Gull Counting .... that's boosts me a bit up the ranks ..... that, I think, might make me an ornithologist (!) ... hmmm . ...and that afternoon I got talking to another passing birder about that Long-tailed Duck I had "sort-of-twitched" a few days ago, that puts me even further up. Some time ago I wrote a daft poem about the whole hierarchy ... ... and here it is .... in order of uselessness .. I want to die in the way a Robin-stroker ought to whilst making some repairs to my home-made Blue Tit box .. and falling off the ladder that I've propped against the lean-to A worthy way, I think, to pop your clogs. I hope to have a dude's death, it's completely up my street, by falling off a cliff whilst Puffin- spotting. As I bounce from rock to boulder, I'll think, how very sweet, that I'll be feeding all those sea-birds whilst I'm rotting ! All us top-rank twitchers, we'd like to kick the bucket tearing down the motorway, at 80 ,90, faster, So, with my mates all in the back, hoping we will tick it I'll crash the car into a bridge,so of our fate I'll be the master ! Maybe I should meet my end the way us birders should Doing something "conservationist" and consequently "good" so I'll make a papier-maché box and then get buried in it then it and I will slowly rot, which will maybe "Save the Planet." [ A worthy cause, you must admit I'd love to contribute to it But maybe not that drastically I might just give "them" 50p ] As an avid birdwatcher I'd really love to die lying in a field whilst logging migrants flying by, and then from out of nowhere, a tractor would squash me flat and in 10 seconds I'd expire, and I hope that would be that.. Now bird-watchers, well, they all have their very special way of taking leave of this sorry world .... on a soggy survey day they'll get swallow-ed up in squelching mud, and step off this mortal coil, and if you're lucky, you will too, which helps fertilise the soil. The Ornithologist has ways most logical, off his perch to fall, these days they're hardly relevant, they ain't no use at all to birders, twitchers, robin-strokers, all the others too... one "breathed his last" last week, inhaling fumes from gannet poo ! ( that's a "scientific" way to go for your normal ornithologist, it was probably at the top of his "bio-logical" ways to perish list ! ) As a lifelong Scientist I feel that I should croak in some way that's appropriate, and fitting, and bespoke and logical and numerical, not as do "other" folk, so I think I'll eat my slide rule, and consequently, choke. ( there's another scientific way.... eating lots of graphs and charts, so I'd expire 3 hours later from my exponential farts !) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AND NOW ..here's a nifty guide to the different sorts of us ...... As you will have noticed, there can be many other " types" of birders ..... which, in my opinion , is a good thing .... .... and now, the music ..... enjoy !! (B) So there we were, The Significant Otter (TSO) and me, strolling along by a waterside path, and somewhere ahead of us came an intermittent squeaky call ! (ISQ) TSO turned to me and said ... "that sounds a bit like some sort of bird." And I said .. "Yes, it does, but which one?" And the TSO. said ... "Well, you're the one that's supposed to know" And I replied "I can't exactly pin it down, I'll need to see it." So we stopped and I scanned around with the bins, to no avail. The Intermittent Squeaky Noise ( ISN) continued merrily in the near-ish distance... (NID) It did sound like some water-bird of some sort. ( WBOSS) And then we went round a slight curve, and there, about 20 metres away, was a rather athletic-looking youth (ALY) pumping up a gaudily coloured plastic raft. (GCPR) And that pump was making the ISN. Bah and double-bah. And just to rub things in, by an incredible and ridiculous coincidence,(IARC) another well-known local birder (WKLB), initials SC, was standing there watching the action. Treble Bah. (BahBahBah) But later in the day, a horrible thought (AHT) occurred to me. Could it be that there WAS a rarity nearby, and it had landed there because it heard that artificially-generated squeaky noise (AGSN) made by said boaters ? (SB) Well, yes, it could. That ISN/AGSN had lured the hidden rarity (THR) and was missed by both SC and me (M). ..... all the mistakes are out there, just waiting to be made ... Can I come up with some relevant music ? ... er, yes ... "Au bout De la course Remonte jusqu'à A la source
One trip One noise Circuit Nuit bleue Spécialiste De l'enjeu One trip One noise Longue attente avant de s'élancer / one trip Longue vie et tout a recracher / one noise Carrosse D'acier Cendrillon A jeter One trip One noise Longue attente avant de s'élancer / one trip Longue vie et tout a recracher / one noise Hé toi Répond à Qui sont Ou va moi? One trip One noise Longue attente avant de s'élancer / one trip Longue vie sans jamais s'écraser / one noise " I 've decided to write a quite rambling poem in this cold November that's freezing the phloem my first bird today was a Great black-backed Gull and the second, Black-headed, which some would think dull I was doing quite well, when a Black-throated Diver swam into view, so I bet a fiver that the next one we'd see would have to be a Red-breasted Flycatcher, soon spotted by me it was hopping about in a Mulberry bush 'til a White-fronted Goose , in a terrible rush scared everything off, and darkness descended and we failed to ID an invisible bird and later, a Nightingale was briefly heard. This poem has in it a sequence to find To get it you'll need to use "knowledge" and "mind." But there's quite a few gaps, that just don't exist but don't worry, you should get a half-decent list. After the music, there's a link you can click which will reveal my dastardly trick ! And now, here is that very music ... especially picked for its silliness and prancing about... and snatches of various songs .... we need to be cheered up in these 2nd-Lockdown Times .... Here's the link I promised you ... once you've clicked it, you'll need to scroll down through all sorts of pottery birds .... lucky you ! 626-the-penguin-book-of-bird-pottery.html Up here in't North we huddle in our little sheds, wrapped up in ragged junk-shop coats hoping, just hoping that the coming ferocious winter will bring some winter birds in. Up where I "live" ferocious has been the right word.... we've had two successive "more than an inch of rain" days, and the winds have been ferocious .... last night loads of the recycling bins in our road got blown over, distributing loads of rubbish ferociously all over the place. And the river has been ferociously high, whooshing down honking great logs, upturned tables, garden sheds etc. Ferocious might be the word for all that. So ..will we get, for example, any Waxwings this year ? They were more or less non-existent last winter. Up here in the ferocious North anyway. And as for Bramblings, they've been v. scarce over several recent wintery months. Will some " wintering warblers" pick our garden to live in ? Will my 2020 3K list be seriously underwhelming for "not-my-fault" reasons ? Will fat-balls be categorised as non-essential items ? And peanuts/sunflower seeds/bird-tables, notebooks, pencils. ?? What about next year's diary ?? That's not essential. Not really. We will probably have to draw all our spottings on the walls of the caves we'll have to move to because houses will be classified as luxury items ... just like those cave-men did. And why we're at it, why do we never hear about " cave-women" ? We need to know. Without them none of us would be here. And what if my tripod collapses ... as it is, it only has two proper legs, with a totally different leg held on with sellotape ? Is that "essential." ??? Hey ! ... with Xmas more or less cancelled, and Christmas cards also non-essential, how am I going to compile my vital list of "birds on Christmas Cards" which I know brightens up your lives every year ? We top-spotters need to know. On top of all that, there's the 2nd ferocious lockdown starting/starling/startling. So ..for me, it's mostly back to my 3K patch, which ,by the way, has been mostly mud lately. Enough of this miserable and probably non-essential diatribe ! We need a bit of music ...preferably uplifting in some way ... and this is ... Yes, here's the next round-up of the various rare stuff I've seen in a whole string of past Novembers........ plus a few incidental things... pretty thin pickings actually ... Nov 1st. Nothing. Nov 2nd Still absolutely nothing. Nov 3rd 1991 Rustic Bunting, Easington, Humberside. 1996 Hoopoe, Hartsop Hall, Cumbria. 2002 Great Grey Shrike, Stocks Reservoir. Nov 4th Dusky Warbler, Heysham, in the hand !! Nov 5th Nowt. Nov 6th A barren emptiness. Nov 7th An indescribable emptiness. Nov 8th As above, but worse. Nov 9th 1991 Desert Wheatear#2, Fleetwood, Rossall. 1996 Isabelline Shrike, Stocks Reservoir, Lancs 1997 Lesser Yellowlegs, Martin Mere. Lancs. Nov 10th A birding vacuum. Nov 11th An even worse vacuum. Nov 12th An even emptier vacuuuuuuuum. Nov 13th As above, but "vacuum has 113 u's in it. Nov 14th Even worse than above, with 3471³ u's in the vacuum. Nov 15th 2007 Pale-bellied Brent off Heysham. ..do I hear barrels being scraped? Nov 16th 1986 Desert Wheatear, Walney, Cumbria. Nov 17th ........ dim byd ( = "nothing in Welsh) Nov 18th 2001 Long-tailed Duck at Pilling Lane Ends, N. Lancs. 2001 Green-winged Teal at Grizedale Hide, Leighton Moss. 2008 Long-tailed Duck on canal , Galgate, Lancs. Nov 19th Zilch. Nov 20th 2007 Gt. N. Diver off the harbour wall at Heysham. (I know it's not rare ... but it's rare enough there) Nov 21st 1987 Long-billed Dowitcher Nov 22nd Nothing at all, at all... Nov 23rd 2002 Slavonian Grebe at Leighton Moss Nov 24th 2008 2 Cattle Egrets Milnethorpe. Nov 25th 1987 Long-billed Dowitcher at Anthorn, Cumbria. The rest of those past November days are empty, barren and desolate. Here's a song about November .... it was the only November song I could find with a bird in it .. you might just spot it if you look carefully ... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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