A few soggy days ago, you might remember my excellent spotting of a female Blackcap only a few metres away in the garden hedge. And the intervening days have been even soggier .... it completely wiped out any remote chance of seeing those Geminid meteors .... But .... this morning, in spite of the wind and rain, a fine male Blackcap made a welcome appearance on the fat-ball feeder. Excellent. Will they stay over the winter ? Last year we had at least three, maybe four. And now here I am in my dinky writing attic, and it is still pouring down. And for the rest of the day, no noteworthy spottings at all. But there's some to find in this lot .. you get the 1st one free ... [1] We live here because of the low rent. [2] We run this town constitutionally [3] Hand over that gun, Marmaduke. [4] Have you renewed the offal contract, Deirdre ? [5] Cobble a Glee Club together tonight darling. [6] There's a butcher on the prowl, Derek ! [7] Bruno's Preying Mantis is an illegal immigrant, fishface ! [8] It's pure bliss wandering around the rubbish tip. [9] Bernard Shaw knows nowt. [10] Gareth has half-inched my spinach. [11] "What's pi ? " " Pi ? 'tis roughly 3.14159 .... , Gareth." [12] Once I saw a baroness wallowing in a muddy moat. [13] Crosby, Bing roused himself from his slumbers . [14] You're bloody 4 hours late, Allan ! [15] I hope this is normal lard, Hermione ? [16] Geraldine Smoggins was the finest wit ever to grace the stage. [17] A new star lingers in the night sky, Kevin. [18] You've got an awful accent, Orville. [19] Geraldine always writes "wif" though she actually means "wife." [20] There a many biblical chapters, including Genesis, Kings, Deuteronomy and last but not least, Job. Right ... music time looms ... all about swallows .. "golondrinas" ......... .. and here's the "sing-along-with-Nena-Daconte" words video ..... singing in Spanish is very sensual ..
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From a Tulse-fringed grot amongst the Tansy a Weed-warbler pops his tousled head to snap at a Bobfly for breakfast. His nest, hidden from prying eyes by the tall Snodgrass and thick-growing Chickflower, is but a short flight from the wood where he finds the succulent Parsley-Fly. Here is a glory of Tinkersfoot, Dwarf Umbrella, Sharkskin Bugloss, Sweet Chumbril, Duckspur, St. Anselm's -Wort and Mopsy-under-the Wall. Above, in the only Jub-Jub Tree in Soppyshire, I hear the thrilling trilling of Spavin's Spongebird, and within seconds he spreads his spurgly wings and flies away no doubt to meet his mate in her intricately woven nest of Herbert's Tangleweed and hundreds of dinky legs plucked from the abundance of the rare Boggler's Crotchbum which has invaded the nearby hamlet of Hamlet, unfortunately deserted now after all the scrofulous inhabitants were eaten by a huge flock of Jagglers, not seen in the county since 1846. Then, a few seconds later, a loud scratching noise grasped my attention, and I was soon amazed to be watching two of the only three Boswell's Snaggle-Flangers in the county, as they put on a superb display as they pranced around ,emitting their trademark" Crark-Squirk-Spodge" calls, which they repeated every 2½ seconds and gradually increased the volume as their notes dropped lower and lower ,eventually got out of breath and staggered out of sight into the 340-acres of Burke's Noseweed, renowned for their dreadful pong. Oh, if only "binoculars" had been invented ! Unfortunately, old Tom Cackhandle did make a pair, but was bludgeoned to death only minutes after he had assembled one by a 300-strong flock of Hogfart's Prattle-Craps, thought to be extinct for the last 240 years, but sadly, wrongly and inaccurately ! Good to see them back, though. Strolling back to my Crumbling Cottage, I was enthralled at the sight of the Sadbadger, and watched in awe as it devoured in a few gulps a passing battalion of Pisspot's Arse-ants, usually only seen at 25 past whatever the hour is round here. Nobody knows why, and probably never will. Hey ..what do you reckon about those 6 birds towards the end of that mysterious video?
The Geminid Meteor shower is at its peak this evening, ( 13th Dec) from about 10 pm onwards .. but, of course, it is almost certain to be cloudy/rainy/freezing cold or even all three. I'll be out there though ... despite many attempts, I've never seen a really good meteor shower. Here's two strange questions about that rather peculiar bit of "nature writing" .. Was it a rat I saw ? Do Geese see God ? I've been wondering when the expected " winter Birds" are going to put in an appearance in my dinky patch. No Redwings, Fieldfares, Bramblings etc have turned up at all. Well, not round my way. There's been loads of Whoopers about 8 miles south of me, and some Fieldfare flocks even further south, with a few Redwings. But no mention of Blackcaps at all. But ...at last ... a female Blackcap popped up in the garden hedge, only about 3 metres away, at 1325. Today's turn-up Blackcap might, of course, just have been a "stayer". Either way, I was pleased to see it. Another New Arrival is Pete Dunne's " Diary of a Low-Rent Birder" which I bought as my upcoming Birthday present ... but needless to say I couldn't resist reading it, and have got through a sizeable fraction of it already. The only problem being, I'll probably now only get crap presents from, er, not many people. I can't blame them. Nearly all presents you get from relatives etc are not very good. And apart from that Blackcap, I've seen almost nothing, due to a whole concatenation of things happening .... a bloke coming to fix our gutter, the woman over the road needing loads of buckets of water because her boiler's bust, I've had to ferry the cats to the Vet with The Significant Otter, then it started to rain, and now it is getting dark and wet and very cold and I've made the tea.......... CONCATENATION .... CON ....... Common Gull ONC ........ Common Rosefinch NCA ........ Magnificent Frigatebird CAT ........ Crag Martin ATE ........ Arctic Tern TEN ........ Common Tern ENA ....... Oriental Pratincole NAT ....... Northern Waterthrush ATI ........ Grey Partridge TIO ....... White-tailed Plover ION ...... White-throated Needletail If you can't remember what that book is up at the top there, the full details are at the far end of this lovely link ...
40-the-book-youve-all-been-waiting-for.html Us birders wot are trampling around the crustryshite to spot ,er, birds, are often so frazzled when they get home at 3 in the mourning so tanked up with emoshuns that they have trubble getting to sleep. Luckily, I've already helped you lot out with these terrific suggestions .. 73-how-birders-get-to-sleep-2.html 64-29-ways-to-get-to-sleep-1.html ...but that was ages ago ...we need something oven-ready and world-beating nowadays ..and here it is ... my patented, oven-ready " getting -to-sleep " panacea .... ... and the only thing you need to learn to "do" it, is what "ghostbirds" are. ..... it's simple .......... LBR is the "ghost" of BLACKBIRD . .. and so is CID .... BLACKBIRD ...basically, it's what's left when Hurricane Henry has blown all the other letters away. So here's what you do .... you get a nice long word ... e.g ORNITHOLOGY And you settle down in your lovely snug bed .. ..and you start off by finding a bird who's ghost is ORN ..... CORN BUNTING ( too easy) ...and then you shift it one place onwards ............. RNI ...... AMERICAN BITTERN (exotic) .. and then you shunt along to NIT .... LONG-TAILED-TIT ( a bit trickier) .... next up is ITH ..... WHITE'S THRUSH or even WHITETHROAT ..... right, it's your turn now to finish it off.. and you're probably fast asleep already. ..... but if you're not ... THO OLO LOG OGY are still waiting for your attention. And there's loads and loads of long words for you to explore ... you'll never run out.... SUPERANNUATION EXTRAPOLATION UNDERESTIMATING PREDESTINATION SCRUMPTIOUS CEPHALOPOD PARSIMONIOUS MICROCEPHALOUS JEROMEKLAPKAJEROME CIRCUMNAVIGATION COLLYWOBBLES FALLACIOUSNESS INTRACTABILITY GORMLESSNESS IGNOMINIOUS TERPSICHOREAN SCHUNAMITISM (well worth looking up in the dictionary) ( I could do with some of that!) .... that should get you to sleep ..... and this will wake you up ... ... If birds wanted to communicate with inferior entities like us humans, how could they do it ? Here we seem to have a pre-determined sequence ... 4 6 4 3 5 0 ..... 2 0 0 1 0 0 ...... ..... lots to think about there. .... and what about those those two gulls patrolling sinisterly above them .... ? If we replace numbers with letters of the alphabet we get .. D F D C E ? B ? ? A ? ? The mystery deepens. My best bet is ... they're musical notes. But is it two lines of music ? Or is it the instrumental part and the vocal part ? With no accidentals, we could assume it's in C. Maybe. DFDCE makes quite a nice tune actually ... I've just got the keyboard to try it out. A bit mysterious and unresolved .. a bit Dr. Who-ish maybe. Try it for yourself if you don't believe me. So ... I've been trying to find a song that starts DFDCE But all I get is Death Cab For Cutie and Derby County Football Club. So ..I'm writing this on Monday Morning and here's Death Cab for Cutie ..... proper music. Oh no ! Not another Top Blasted Ten ! Oh yes ..... As with previous top tens, why not try making your own list first. Before looking at the video ... "Destructive" is, of course, a matter of opinion. One person's "destruction" is another person's " Beneficial new railway line" And one person's " cutting down a forest" is another person's " growing crops to survive" And my driving around the UK ticking rarities is another person's lung cancer. It makes you think/thick does it not ? And now, a person who looks remarkably like me ( lucky him) telling us about the moon. Both of my parents were born on Dec 14th .... ( lucky them). .. and here's a person who looks nothing like me ( lucky her) singing a little French song .. These last few days have been absolute rubbish birding-wise. Rain .... rain rain rain ..... everywhere is soaked. And I'm much too old to get repeatedly drenched. I'm surprised any birds have survived it all. And my usual strolls have become sludge- corridors. So I've been thinking up some of those Qristmas Quiz Questions. And here's one of them ....here's a bird description, but I've put all the words in alphabetical order, as all us indexers do..... above and- and and and and as black breast Calls -coloured desert desert entirely head- in Lark, Lark's locally low- lying Occurs pattern rarely relatively sandy- semi- Shore Shore Smaller than unstreaked white with ... There you are then ... it shouldn't be too tricky. And now, a thematic song ..... "performed" by four grumpy old dodgers ..... Ich wäre gerne ein Gummibär Da gibts die die gelben und die roten
Das sind alles Vollidioten Ich hätte tausende Kollegen Wir müssen uns nicht gross bewegen Und würden doch auf grosser Fahrt Die Welt bereisen bis sie Uns verspeisen und erspart Blieb mir das um die Häuser zieh'n Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Trübe ist die Aussicht Trügerisch das Wort Gib mir eine Nachricht ich Geb dir einen Korb Da sind viele Erinnerungen drin Die kannst du in der Pfeife rauchen Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Wo die Luft am schlimmsten ist Ist das Atmen intensiver Und das Husten attraktiver Als irgend sonst wo auf der Welt Und irgendwer hält immer Die Glühweintrinkerfahne hoch Da geht am Ende viel daneben So wie überall im Leben Wer nicht mehr stehen kann fällt hin Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Ein Raucher ist der Nebel Ein Penner ist der Tag Ein Loch ist da wo gestern noch Der Minigolfplatz lag Da kommt jetzt ein Einkaufszentrum hin Da kannst du dir was Schönes kaufen Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Im Grunewald ist Holzauktion Die brauchen da Folklore Wie die Junkies ihre Schore Und wenn die Blaskapelle lärmt Sind alle Sorgen weit entfernt Und ob du deine Currywurst Mit oder ohne Darm isst Ob reich du, oder arm bist Da guckt kein Schwein genauer hin Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Rot ist Curryketchup Grün ist Steuerbord Trenn die Spreu vom Weizen und Wirf den Weizen fort Ich hab noch irgendwo ein warmes Bier zu steh'n Du kannst die Blumen damit giessen Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Wo dieser Weg zu Ende ist Liegt ein Engel auf der Lauer Da wo einst die Mauer Die Welt zerteilte wie ein Kamm Die Haare scheitelt und auf Dauer Wird das wohl zwischen dir und mir Sagst du, nichts Richtiges mehr werden Doch im Himmel wie auf Erden Kann keiner in die Zukunft seh'n Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin Komm zu mir nach Hause Auf eine Tasse Tee Ich zeig dir meine Sammlung von Steinen aus der Spree Die sind rund und schwer und glatt und schmutzig grün Die bring'n wir alle noch weinen Wenn es dunkel und kalt wird in Berlin. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Throughout this latest lockdown, which has ended just a few hours ago, we've only been allowed to do "essential things", whatever that means. I'm sure that Boris & his Pals are all sticking to that rule, but now, on this New Dawn of Freedom, I can inject a trifle of non-essentialness at last ..and here we have an example ....or is it more like a pudding? Here we go .... Here's another " top ten" sort of thing .... but this one is for small AND beautiful birds only... but before you watch it, why not try to make your own list of what you think might be on this video .... those two you can see might give you a start .. or not .... Well ... did your list have some of those on it ? Don't despair if it didn't ... it's a tough task ..... But you're going to have another chance. because here's part two ... the next ten most beautiful small birds... maybe some of your list might be on it .... ... Oh dear ! Still no luck ? BUT ..worry not..... you've got yet another chance .... because ..... here's the next ten !!! but this is the last chance saloon.... But beauty isn't everything ..... but it helps. Anyway, in general, music is sort-of essential, and every tribe throughout the progress (?) of the human race have all had it in one form or another...... and what is birding if not " Human Racing ?" But ... what do we mean by "beautiful" ?
And what do we mean by "small " ? |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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