Happy Christmas! Peace on Earth, goodwill and so on. But
forget all that, let's get to the important thing about
Christmas - presents. So did you get anything good? Maybe you
got the Batman t-shirt you asked for? Possibly even the
GI-Joe action figure with the Kung Fu grip? What about
your Optimus Prime Transformer that you wanted, did you
get that? Or instead, did you get Optimus Prime's nemesis
the evil Deceptagon, as I did on that exceptionally heart
breaking Christmas of 1986? (I've never forgiven my parents for
that)
This year I got no toys or games (not even
Twister or Operation!) but I did get two lovely, big,
expensive bird books - Birds of Shetland written by loads
of people, and The Migration Atlas written by loads and
loads and loads of people. Big and expensive - excellent
(although not as big or expensive as those God damn HBWs. £140
each? Someone's taking the piss, yeah?). Because gifts have
absolutely nothing to do with the thought being the only thing
that counts - no, that's just bollocks - size and price are what
matters above all else.
The birth of Jesus Christ was celebrated by a trip with Ma
and Pa McKinney to Parkhall CP to look for Long-eared Owls. We
couldn't find any. But we did find a Tengmalm's Owl:
Back in the car park we chanced upon a fine car-load of chav
vermin, battered out of their tiny rat boy brains and smoking
what, even from 25 metres away, was the strongest skunk ever to
obliterate my sinuses. And when I say skunk I don't mean that
French cartoon thing who was always chasing after the sexy,
lithe black and white cat.
I thought it's supposed to be warmer the further
south you go? Well it wasn't tonight. Pre-Christmas insanity at
McKinney Manor in Stoke was alleviated by a trip to Chasewater
at dusk. Nice. First up a Snow Bunting:
(I really should start taking photos when there is
actually a bit of light.) Then a Great Northern Diver. And then
another. And then a drake Smew. And then a Yellow-legged Gull.
And then 2 adult Med Gulls. And finally an adult Caspian
Gull. Fucking hell - possibly the best birding I've done all
year! Other than in Peru. Which I still haven't finished writing
up. Even though I got back in August. Mind you I still haven't
finished writing up India... from 1999...
...I must warn you that the successful
birdwatcher is an early riser... if you leave your start in
observation until mid-morning, you will have missed the best of
a birdwatcher's day... on no account lie in bed wondering what
you will see. Get up and see it.
So wrote Ian Wallace in Discover Birds.
So I did. Only the timer is fucked on our boiler and the house
was colder than a battered Leach's Petrel in a birder's freezer
alongside the Christmas party buffet food, perhaps such as
sausage rolls, volervonts (?) and Iceland prawn rings. I
required warmth. And so instead of getting to Chorlton for dawn
I put the kettle on and made a brew. A coffee brew. Whilst
consuming the coffee brew I wondered if the thick fog that had
shifted last night's gulls onto Audenshaw had shifted something
good onto Chorlton. Hmmmm....
...my mobile rang at 8.15am. "There's 21
Bewick's Swans on the lake," Pete told me.
So I moved dead fast out of the door
and drove at the fastest speeds imaginable down to Chorlton -
Richard Hammond styleee, only without the crash and coma (no
you're wrong, that's not a sick joke because the guy is
alive and well. I saw him on Jonathan Ross last night. What? No,
not on Jonathan Ross like that - he's got a wife and kids
- I meant on the Jonathan Ross show as a guest. Who the
fuck am I talking to? Nobody. Well who the fuck am I typing to
then?). Let's cut this long story short: the Bewick's Swans, all
21 of them, fucked off west about 30 seconds before I got there.
The quaint English expression "cunt bollocks" shall suffice in
expressing your author's disappointment.
So there you go, lesson learnt: never send to
know for whom the bell tolls; because like, you know, it tolls
for thee and stuff.
Still, there was plenty of
fog-displaced stuff on the lake, such as 8 Shoveler, 3 Wigeon
and 12 Teal, as well as 2 Fieldfare. 2 Lapwing over west were
only my second record of the year, and the elusive Green
Woodpecker is back wintering on Barlow Tip.
An invisible flock of Pinkfeet flew west behind
Chorlton golf course; I estimated there were 33 even though I
never saw them. How's that for skills, bills and bellyaches? 4
Mute Swans and the Scaup provided further entertainment.
However, the best gift of all this Christmas was 3 Fieldfare on
Barlow Tip - a Chorlton year tick.
***
A Mute Swan in its death throes was of some concern to one of
the regular dog walkers, and our advice was sought in how to
help the poor, helpless creature. But upon inspection of the
said dying beast, we did find ourselves confronted by a feeding
up-ended Mute Swan, alive and kicking. Good to see the BBC's
mega series Spring/Autumnwatch is having a positive impact on
the general awareness of natural history amongst the lay
observer. Of more concern to us birdspotters, however, was thick
fog on the hills which had obviously forced hundreds of big
gulls (400+ Herring) down to Audenshaw tonight. But not a single
white-wing. In fact nothing new to report, except that I'm dying
of terminal cancer. Not really. But Coronation Street and
Eastenders are doing it, so why not me?
Cold. Brrrr. Wrap up warm at Audenshaw is my
advice. Or just don't bother coming. Well, unless you want to
miss out on a leucistic Black-headed Gull, 2 Great Northern
Divers, an adult Yellow-legged Gull and a Kingfisher. So do you?
Do you want to miss out on all of that? Exactly. Just stay at
home and watch the Paul O'Grady show. For a start it won't be as
cold. Unless you live in an igloo (although aren't they supposed
to be really warm?), or you're really poor and can't afford to
put your heating on.
16th
December
Christmas has come early this year. Look what Santa brought
me this morning:
If you don't know, it's the Witherby Handbook, all
five volumes, and for only £10. Thank God for eBay! So those
looking back bits in British Birds should make
some sense now, seeing as they always mention The Handbook.
You know, something like:
The other day whilst stood in my garden chatting to
Mrs Fitzsimmons (I was inviting her to a rotary club meeting for
the coming Friday evening), I noticed a Jay fighting with my
neighbour's domestic fowl, which he is rearing in preparation
for his Christmas luncheon. The Jay appeared to be attacking
the fowl for no reason other than a lack of basic common
courtesy and manners. The Handbook makes no reference to
the Jay fighting with fowl, although it does indicate elsewhere
that the Carrion Crow is certainly no friend of the fowl.
(unless stated otherwise all events take place at Kenny the
butcher's house in Wythenshawe, near to where that bloke got shot
the other week. Maidenfest organisers take no responsibility for
the likely deaths and injuries caused by visiting Wythenshawe)
9am The
Basics of Bird Ringing(or Banding for Americans who
always have to complicate everything)
Nicko McBrain gives us a hands-on
introduction to the
fascinating world of bird ringing whilst playing drums with
Iron Maiden. Nicko explains how trapping already confused
and exhausted migrants in mist nets and then subjecting them
to a 20 minute violation, before releasing them back into
the wild only to be caught in the same mist net again an
hour later or battered by a Sparrowhawk, has been essential
to furthering our understanding of why some birders choose
to socially isolate themselves from the real world and hang
around bushes all day long with pliers and a copy of the Svensson guide.
***
Celebrity Lecture Series
(sponsored by Fender & CJ Wildbird Foods)
11am The Sound Approach to Iron Maiden Having
trouble separating your Wrathchild from your Prowler? Can you
tell whether it's Dave or Adrian playing the guitar solos?
Is that Bruce Dickinson or Paul Di'Anno singing? Well Mark "I
know loads and loads of ID gurus really really well" Constantine, on behalf of the
Sound Approach team, is here (or hear) to lend a helping hand
and ear. Mark demonstrates that through a better understanding of
the basic nuts and bolts of the greatest ever heavy metal band,
the key to unlocking the door to Iron Maiden can be attained by
anyone. Even the uneducated and homeless.
12pm Arrivals and Revelations In 2002 Adrian
Riley set out to see more Iron Maiden gigs in a single calendar
year than any other person before him. In his attempt he spent
over £75,000,000 and travelled over 7 billion miles, only to
have his efforts rubbished by Iron Maiden Fan Club manager Laz
Novak who claimed to have seen five more Maiden gigs that year. Through relating the highs and lows of his
big year, Adrian will have us astounded and leave us
wondering just exactly what are the reasons (other than obvious
psychological imbalances) that motivate some people to go to
such lengths to win the coveted title of being the greatest Iron
Maiden fan of all time. Not to be missed!
Lunch
2pm Setting the Record Straight
Ian Wallace
presents the results of his extensive research into the
notorious Acacia Avenue Rarities scandal. In
the early 1980s an unusual number of extreme rarities -
including Long-billed Murrelet, Black Lark, Audouin's Gull and
Long-tailed Shrike - were claimed from within a 5 mile radius of
number 22 Acacia Avenue, a brothel allegedly visited by various
members of Iron Maiden, and immortalised on track 4 of their
album The Number of the Beast. Ian offers us his detailed
analysis of the Acacia Avenue Rarities, which has now led to major
revisions of the British list, and discusses the various reasons as
to why bassist Steve Harris committed such extensive
ornithological fraud, and wore spandex all the time.
3pm Everything you always wanted to know about Iron
Maiden... but were afraid to ask Why did Adrian Smith
always wear that terrible headband? Whatever happened to Blaze
Bayley? Who was Charlotte the Harlot? Were Maiden really
Satanists? Why does Janick always insist on butchering Adrian's
solos? Does Steve Harris actually think he is shooting
people with his bass? In this tepid end to our celebrity lecture series,
Stephen Moss (author of such lameness as Maiden and Blokes
and A Social History of Maidenwatching [yawn], and
producer of the hit Sky One series How to Watch Maiden
presented by Buzzcocks disgrace
Bill Oddie) answers all of your questions about Iron Maiden that
you never dared to ask, or simply couldn't be bothered to look up on
Google.
***
4pm We're so, so sorry. We've made an absolutely huge fuck up Paul Di'Anno sang with Iron
Maiden from 1978-1981 before being sacked for his rock n' roll
behaviour (Maiden are all about the music, dude). After
leaving the band Di'Anno vanished into obscurity before being
declared officially extinct by Maidenlife International in the
late 1980s. However, rumours were rife about sightings of Di'Anno
throughout the USA, resulting in Tim Gallagher's book The
Grail Singer. So when the Cornell Laboratory of Iron Maiden
presented their startling findings of 'confirmed' sightings of Di'Anno in
the Lousiana swamps, the Iron Maiden
community were overjoyed. Even the renowned and internationally
respected rock journal Kerrang published their findings
shortly after a public announcement. But then the wider Maiden
community saw the
evidence for themselves. Oh dear.
Blurred and heavily pixelated video clips of a tree
were alleged to show definite evidence of Paul Di'Anno climbing
the side of the trunk; the video was dross, so life-size models
of Di'Anno were made and placed on the side of the same tree in
order for... err... hmmm... no idea. Along with the video
evidence, Cornell also placed 16,000 microphones throughout the
Louisiana swamps to record 78 billion hours of ambient sound in
order to... err... hmmm... The lab claimed that sonogram
analysis of the sound recordings contained a number of examples
of Di'Anno singing the Maiden/Di'Anno classic Phantom of the Opera.
But after a while it became clear that the evidence
spectacularly failed to conclusively identify Di'Anno, and could easily be
attributed to other more common rock Gods like Nikki Sixx,
Alice Cooper
or even Ozzy Osbourne. Before his untimely death the
British popular music expert John Peel declared, "I've never
seen such a poorly documented record. What were they on? Can I
have some?"
Tonight, at long last, the Cornell University
Laboratory of Iron Maiden finally get down on their knees to beg
for the forgiveness of the Iron Maiden community.
Time for tea
***
7.30pm, Manchester Evening News Arena
Iron Maiden
(they'd better play Powerslave)
***
Scream for me, Manchester!
14th
December
2006 is the official National Iron
Maiden Day!
Announcements
1) I'm redoing this whole site for
2007, so if anyone out there has linked me from their own site
and I've been a complete cunt and not returned the favour, then
could you let me know as I'm like doing like a proper like links
page and stuff. Ta. Either email me (scroll to the bottom of the
page), or you can contact me by semaphore. I'll be on top of my
roof looking for flags and Aldis lamps tomorrow night (8/12/06)
from 18:31-19:43. Look forward to it.
2) I forgot to add two birdspotting
entries, one of them including two Manchester megas that I found
at Audenshaw, so there's a special treat for those of you brave
enough to scroll down to the entries for 14th and 16th of
November. Trust me, it's worth it. *
Peace, love and universal sharing of
bodily fluids,
T(om) M(cKennerly)
* please note that may not be true, indeed
very little is as it seems. Especially right now. So take care.
Look left, then look right, and never cross the road until the
green man is flashing, the filthy pervert.
A Common Buzzard flying over Sale golf course
should have been cause for pre-solstice jubilation, only the
whole Buteo scenario has now been tainted by the presence
of an escaped Red-tailed Hawk in the area. And so based on the
views it has to go down in the birdspotting jotter as Buteo
sp. Lame. Aythya numbers still frighteningly low. Displaying
pair of Great Crested Grebes encouraging. 1w drake Scaup
moulting fast; it might just end up looking like a proper Scaup
at this rate.
There was a dog with three legs this morning.
Poor thing, limping and hobbling about. You shouldn't laugh, but
well, you know, it's just so funny. A big flock of over thirty
Redpoll wouldn't let me get close enough to check for any scarce
siblings, so for now I will just assume, until proven otherwise,
that there were two Mealy and one Coues's (pron. Cowzeez and
not Coooooozeeeez) Arctic amongst them. I flushed a Snipe
from right underneath me whilst wandering about in Baillon's
Swamp; I'm not sure who was most terrified by the sudden
encounter but at least I didn't lame off over the trees making
stupid squelching sounds, oh no, I stood my ground and
confronted my fears head on. A drake and kid drake Teal were
hiding under the willows and the Scaup is still asleep.
It must be all of the rohypnol in the water.
***
Despite the
Punkbirders' encouragement to keep my pecker up (!) in my
quest for a storm-fucked Mancunian Leach's Petrel, I can't be
bothered looking for the little fuckers anymore. I'd much rather
induce epilepsy by staring for far too long at skanky gulls. But
good things really do come to those who wait. Indeed. And what
better prize than a 1st-winter Med Gull in the roost at
Audenshaw tonight? No better prize.
Both Divers are still on reservoir 2 and seemed
to be getting on a bit better tonight; the counselling seems to
be working. Despite the howling gale Audenshaw was quite nice
tonight and the gull roost was absolutely enormous. Just on
reservoir 2 alone there must have been in excess of 10,000
birds. Amazing.
Two adult Yellow-legged Gulls tonight,
a monster 13 (thirteen!) GBB Gulls and both Divers still keeping
well away from each other on reservoir 2. Stuck it out looking
for Leach's Petrels until it was pretty much pitch black. Nicht
Leach's Petrel aus Audenshaw.
For tea: Bratwurst sausage, goulash mit
sauerkraut, apfel strudel, eine gluhwein und zwei Paulaner bier danke schoen, from the
Manchester Christmas maket.
Wow, with the SW gale force winds there were all
of these Leach's Petrels flooding past west coast headlands, and
surely some of them were going to end up getting completely lost
inland and eventually fucked over by gulls? So Miss Cole and I
braved the horrific conditions and set out to find a Leach's
Petrel, or maybe even two, at Audenshaw.
There were no other birders on site due to a
Firecrest being at Pennington Flash, so it was ours for the
taking. This was going to be really easy. Reservoir 3 was
Petrel-less, but then again 3 is usually pretty shit full stop,
but at reservoir 2 we picked up both Great Northern Divers still
winding each other up. There were no Petrels on number 2. So
obviously it was the slightly better sheltered reservoir 1 which
would be hosting the Petrels (I reckoned there would be about
7-8 of them), and probably even a Sabine's Gull or two. There
were no Petrels on number 1, and not even a single Sabine's. We
double checked all three reservoirs again. Minge grit!
Our only consolation was that when we got back
to the car and checked the pager there wasn't a single report of
an inland Leach's Petrel anywhere in Britain, so it wasn't just
my presumed inferior birdspotting capabilities. But later at
home I was to discover that there had indeed been one inland
Leach's Petrel that day. Just the one, mind, so it still wasn't
such a bad thing that I didn't manage to find one. However, this
particular single Petrel, the only one blown inland anywhere in
Britain that day, decided to turn up just 7 miles away at Heaton
Park reservoir whilst we were checking Audenshaw. Wrong place at
the right time. Flange sand!
And now get this, what do you reckon happened
the next day when I couldn't go out birdspotting? That's right,
another, or perhaps the same, turned up at Audenshaw.
So it was really a case of right place at the wrong time.
Lesbian mammoth bollocks!
"There's two now!" I was told as soon as I
walked to reservoir 2. So I wandered around to a few birders on
the west bank quite close to the juvenile and newly arrived
adult Great Northern Divers for some digi-hammering. The aim was
of course to get a picture of them together, but they were
staring each other out at quite some distance, clearly the
massive reservoir being too small for two Divers. Yeah, well
they should have thought about that before they started flying
around looking for man made concrete basin monstrosities to sit
on, rather than bob about on the sea. They'll probably end up
dying of boredom here, I know I almost have a few times. Serves
them right. There was some serious animosity between them which
was keeping them apart, so I focussed on trying to photograph
the closer juvenile. Dross photo after dross photo began to fill
up my memory card when suddenly the adult surfaced directly
underneath the totally baffled juvenile and started kicking off.
Thankfully I managed this novelty photo:
The adult Yellow-legged Gull was in
the roost again, as were 3 GBB Gulls and an unusually high
number of Herring Gulls (about 9 - wow!). 2 Redshanks and a
Kingfisher as well.
I remembered my camera this morning, not that it
was much use. The light was so low that I could barely get a
shutter speed faster than 1 second, so even though it was about
15 metres away and sat perfectly still, every time I tried to
photograph the Scaup each picture came out totally blurred.
Another problem was that it was fast asleep throughout, I think
it put its head up three times in 45 minutes. Eventually the
light increased a bit and it went for a very brief swim, giving
me chance to blast this prize winner.
***
My first chance to do Audenshaw for a while and
typically there was no sign of the longish staying Great
Northern Diver. Twat. The small adult Yellow-legged Gull was
scant compensation, and two GBB Gulls could piss off and die. As
for the 11 Teal? Fuck 'em. But then one quick scan of reservoir
2 as the light was rapidly fading sent my heart a flutter as the
Diver surfaced from out of nowhere. A Manchester tick. Now in a
better mood I took another look at the Gulls and Teal,
apologising to them for my earlier disrespect.
I had some roast beef on Saturday. It was really
nice. Medium rare. But afterwards I had this strange lingering
taste, sort of reminiscent of that DMS (dimethyl sulphide)
fertiliser shit they use on pelagic trips to make petrels vomit
in the chum. If you've never smelt it then I guess it's sort of
like silage, but not quite as sweet, and with an aroma of
distant Old Spice aftershave mixed with roasting chestnuts
at an open market with overflowing sewage pouring out of the
grids. How's that for descriptive!
So I reckon this beef might have been a bit off
- although it didn't give me food poisoning, amoebic dysentery
or AIDS, but every morning I've been waking up having just been
dreaming about eating mounds of raw beef. Seriously. I'm just
there in these dreams eating big thick slices of raw beef, and
unconsciously I can actually taste DMS. I think it's an omen. A
bad omen. One of those mad old cackling witch and soothsayer
type omens that Shakey used to write about in them big clever
plays of his about Scotland and incest. I think the dreams might
have something to do with usurping my father's throne, killing
all my family and hanging around outside Threshers off-licence
waiting for a winter of discontent. But I'm not sure. I looked
for one of those advice hotlines advertised in the back of The
Sun, but the only things it had were What to do in the event
of finding a crab stuck to your sack, How best to treat
full rectal prolapse, Why sticking barbed wire up your
bell-end is not a very clever thing to do and finally
What your dreams about eating raw lamb actually mean. Lamb?
Well that was absolutely no use to me. I tried the back of The
Independent, but they just had interpreting dreams about eating
raw nut roasts and cauliflower cheese. Fucking hippies.
I decided not to let my dreams get the better of
me and headed off to Chorlton to look for the 1st-winter drake
Scaup. And I saw him. Marvellous he was as well, showing to
within 10 metres. I forgot my camera. Obviously. Over 250
Woodpigeons came over in three separate flocks heading south, a
Sparrowhawk was kicking off around the feeding station, there
were definitely 4, and possibly even 5, Great Spot Peckers, a
beautiful drake Goldeneye (with a strong purple sheen to its
head) and a bedraggled looking drake Goosander. Also some other
birders. Holy shit!
28th November
Today was my first free day for a while, so I
got up really excited and ready for some red hot action down at
Chorlton. I still hadn't seen the Scaup that has been around for
a week and hoped to get a few photos of it. And then what
happens? Miss Cole goes out for the day with both sets of
house/car keys. Fucking fuck! So I was trapped inside all day. I
spent it doing some house work and decided to clean out the
kitchen cupboards where I found a walnut, which actually turned
out to be a rotting potato. Topped off the day by watching
Emmerdale, Eastenders, Holby City, Ramsay's
Kitchen Nightmares, the last half hour of I'm a Celebrity
Get Me Out Of Here and finally 638 Ways to Kill Fidel
Castro. I also ate 20 Ritz crackers (I was so bored I
actually counted them) with brie and silver skin pickled onions.
Great day. Best bird was a Magpie feeding on a piece of meat in
the street discarded by the lower class vermin who eat at the
halal ratburger takeaway at the end of our street. Fuckers. I
bet the Scaup has gone tomorrow.
27th November
The Not John Peel Show
Hi again, pop music fans. Can't go
birding till tomorrow, but here's some more great* songs for your
listening and viewing pleasure.
* please note that the definition of great may not be accurate
in all/any cases.
First up at number five is the pride of Manchester, that's
right, kidz, it's The Happy Mondays and their
classic song Kinky Afro. Since someone decided to bomb
central Manchester in 1996 with a lorry packed with semtex and flatten it to a barren wasteland, and what with the gangland, murder
frenzy, drug capital of the world nightclub The Hacienda
having closed down and been turned into posh yuppy flats, very
little remains of the Manchester from its Madchester
heyday when The Happy Mondays were happily taking drugs
and getting shot at by psychotic, testosterone-fuelled, steroid
abusing bouncers. After the most disastrous attempt ever at
recording a second album surrounded by mountains of crack
cocaine, things didn't quite work out for the
Mondays, and
Shaun Ryder and Bez now live in Glossop wondering what exactly happened to all
of that money they should have had. If you
want to read the maddest rock biography of them all read Bez's
Freaky Dancin'. It makes Keith Moon look like Cardinal
Ratzinger. Brilliant song, appalling video.
Storming in at number four like a NATO fighter
pilot over the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, is this treat for
guitar nerds far and wide. You guessed it, it's Eddie Van Halen
playing Eruption. Legend has it that Eddie was one day
warming up in the studio before a recording session when the
producer heard his 'warm up' and asked him, "What the fuck is that?" He insisted
that Eddie record it on the album and the result was guitar nerds'
favourite Eruption. Many have imitated but few have
equalled and none have bettered. Just look at the fag burning
behind the nut of his guitar. Skills!
When I was at school I discovered that
the best way to score with chicks was to pretend to be
interested in what chicks do. So I decided to watch Grease
one Sunday afternoon and then went to school the next day and
told the chicks that my all time favourite film was Grease and
how hot John Travolta was and how much I wished I had a pair of
those tight trousers that Olivia Newton John wears at the end.
Instant chick scoring success. Ironically, I ended up playing
Danny in the school production in my last year. I was the best
Danny Zuko of all time. But in the prom night bit I tore a load
of muscles in my ribs when I had to catch a girl called Kelly
whilst hand jiving and then collapsed on stage. She was a bit
too big boned for my slender frame to handle. So there you go. I
was Born to Hand Jive.
There's only one sensible choice for
number two and that's of course Barrel's Round (the
apostrophe is correct) by
Mutley McLadd, Stez Styx and The Beater, better known as The
Macc Lads. Quite probably the worst band ever, their
greatest accomplishment was having legislation passed
effectively banning them from performing in every
city in Britain, this a result of them somehow managing to cause
full-scale, pitched battles at every gig they ever did. So,
ingeniously, they started doing secret gigs out of the back of
their Transit van until the police would catch up with them and
send in the Alsations. Interesting trivia: the band regularly
claimed that drummer Stez Styx was the hardest man in
Macclesfield, other than during the various times when he was locked up
for assault, then the hardest man in Macclesfield was their mate Johnny Mard.
Viz readers should recognise the Brown Bottle reference.
So, after all of that, what on Earth could
possibly take number one? What could actually actually
(actually) be better? Easy:
miserable bastard Chuck D and his warped sidekick Flava Flav.
Here it is, at long last what you've been waiting for,
it's Public Enemy and their call to war Fight The
Power. Just look at Flava's clock and mad eyes. Bad skills. Very very cool
video filmed by Spike Lee. Very very odd behaviour from Flava. Don't believe the
hype!
Yep, I know what you're thinking:
let's hope that's the last of this hit parade. I agree.
23rd November
The Hit Parade
No time for birding at the moment. But, as
I've got a spare couple of hours, here's my top five tunes of
the week starting with Scum by the great Napalm Death
from 1989. This was back when music was about having fun,
jumping on top of people and looking shit. Rock out.
Next in at number four is this belting techno
track from the early 90s by 2 Unlimited. At the time I
never realised how good looking the woman was. Enjoy.
This week's number three goes to
the
all round family entertainer and truly lovable cuddly GG
Allin and the Murder Junkies. GG was famous for his onstage
antics which included hitting audience members, smashing his
teeth out with the microphone and his big finale which involved
him taking all his clothes off, having a shit on stage and then
rolling about in it. GG's ambition was to commit suicide on
stage, but unfortunately for his hardcore following he decided
to have a heroin overdose and died in private. A loss to us all.
A few hours ago I did have a video of GG singing a cover of the
Cliff Richard classic Kill the Police. However, upon
reflection I decided that I'd best not be too closely associated
with that somewhat controversial video, so you'd best go check
YouTube for it yourselves! Instead here's some Maiden.
Straight in at number two is
Germaine Greer's favourite group, the spectacularly politically
incorrect and exceptionally talentless 2 Live Crew. This song, Me So Horny,
contains what is perhaps the all time greatest lyric:
I know he'll be disgusted when he
sees your pussy busted.
Genius. Unfortunately for the educated world,
2 Live Crew were tosuffer from widespread
condemnation and censorship (I wonder why?) and failed to repeat
the brilliance of their first album. Truly one of the all time
greats of Western music.
And now for this week's number one. This is
where it all began. Exploding out of Birmingham in the late 60s,
four utterly deranged cretins with a penchant for extreme
substance abuse and the occult. That's right pop music fans,
it's Ozzy and Black Sabbath with their self-titled song
and heavy metal masterpiece Black Sabbath. The most
influential song of all time. Without a doubt. This is to metal
what Beethoven's Eroica symphony was to orchestral music.
Only Sabbath weren't deaf like that prick. Pay tribute.
My favourite type of birding this morning, sat
in the car with
Slayer playing and
the heating on full blast whilst watching the feeding station by
the car park. Winner on all counts. I had testicle puncturing
good views of House Sparrows just a couple of feet away. That
may sound lame, only they don't seem to be all that common here
now so I thought I'd best make the most of them before they
become completely, totally and utterly extinct like Findus
Crispy Pancakes (you can't get them anywhere nowadays). But it's
a continual learning curve this birding thing, because I'd never
before noticed that adult males have yellow on their bill. I
thought they had all black bills. Turns out that the bill goes a
bit yellowy in winter. Did any of you know that? You did? Oh. So
it was just me? Really? Shit.
I had my all-time personal best record number of
Common Gulls this morning: 62. And I also thought that I'd
struck gold when I flushed something bulky and brown with white
outer tail feathers off Barlow Tip, momentarily wondering if it
was a Richard's Pipit. So I chased it about, repeatedly flushing
it until it finally flew up and shouted, "Ha! Charade you
are!* It's me, your old schoolyard nemesis the Skylark."
Nuff said. And also 'nough said.
* There's a signed pair of my Ethel
Austin underpants for the clever person who can tell me a) which
song is that lyric from; b) which cartoon, including the episode
title, once quoted that lyric. I'll even wash the undercrackers
for the lucky winner.
***
Adult Yellow-legged Gull at Audenshaw again
tonight. Strange that. Well not really. Not strange at all.
Scored big time with a drake Ring-necked Duck tonight. Here it
is with a drake Scaup:
And here's a Lesser Scaup:
And finally a beautiful drake
Goldeneye (note green sheen to head):
Wet and dull. Dull and wet. It doesn't matter
which way round you place the words, it still just says the same
thing. Same old story. Adult Yellow-legged Gull. But 3 Redshanks
were new in. I was the only person there tonight. Good job I
went. Imagine if those 3 Redshank were to be excluded from the
national bird record. Go on, just imagine. It would be
pandemonium. Chaos. Mania. The BTO would collapse, the RSPB
implode and.....
Hmmm, can’t say I expected today to turn out the way it did.
It all started so nicely as well. A gentle dudey stroll around
Chorlton with Miss Cole, winning us the Lotto Rollover prize of 4
Teal and a male Sparrowhawk, and then working out how we should
waste the day doing something pointless like going shopping, or
equally as inane like killing the bastard that keeps blocking
our driveway, before I planned to finish the day at Audenshaw in
the wind and rain pretending to look at gulls but really trying
to decipher the true meaning of life. All of this hopefully capped tonight
with a four litre bottle of White Lightning cider, a fight with
the scallys outside Topkapi Kebab House and a night in the cells
in Wythenshawe nick (I lied about the last bit. I think.
Although I’m not sure anymore. What? I don’t know. Forget this,
it’s going nowhere…)
And then at 9.09am the Birdnet pager went into mega-alert,
emergency-call, hyper-drive-override mode and beeped and went
all mad and stuff.
Oooh, exciting, I thought to myself, I wonder what
this could be? Blimey, a Long-billed Murrelet. That sounds a bit
raunchy. Think I’d best get us down to Dawlish.
With much haste we did turn the corner back to the car park
and bump into warden Pete - he took little persuading to join us
(and thankfully his boss took little persuading to let him have
the day off!), so with ease we already had a car of three. One
space left. Who’ll be after a lift? I know, that bloody lift
scrounging Pointon will be after a space. And he was. So the
Crewe was assembled. We were just like the Fellowship of the
Ring.
The new Yaris proved its worth as its 0.25 litre Flymo engine
whizzed down the M6 and M5, at times attaining stupid speeds
such as 65 miles per hour. Wow! From picking up Danny P in Stoke
we made the end of the M5 in just 11 minutes. And then something
a bit annoying happened.
Rolling down a Meryl hill (cockney rhyming slang - Meryl
Streep = steep) into Dawlish town, the car behind us began
flashing its lights and the passenger was frantically pointing
to the left. I’m not sure why but I just assumed that it was a
birder telling me I was going the wrong way and that I needed to
turn left. So I did. And they followed me. Cheers guys! I
thought, thankful for them kindly providing us with directions.
Again they flashed and pointed left. So left it was again,
although at this point I began to worry that we were heading
uphill and away from the sea. So I pulled over and before I
could get the window down I heard the woman passenger shouting
that our car was on fire.
On fire? Now I’m no mechanic, but even I know that’s not
good. We all quickly bailed out of the car as the woman was
telling us how our front left tyre was on fire and smoking. I
took a look. Oh shit. It was as well.
“Bring forth water!” I shouted, and poured a bottle of
Highland Spring over the smoking wheel, cursing the petrol
station that sold me the bottle for an extortionate £1.07. Well
what happened was that the hill was so Meryl that I couldn’t
really be bothered to keep the car in gear, so I just rolled
down with my foot gently on the brake. This then heated the
brake pads until they decided to set themselves on fire. All
good fun.
What was most galling was that we could sea the see but were
stuck waiting for the brakes to cool down. Fuck it, we were at
the bottom of the hill, we didn’t need brakes now.
Rolling into Dawlish, using my foot outside the
door to stop the car, the parking carnage was… err…carnage.
Dan’s solution to the parking problem was to shout, “Just
stop the fucking car! Stop the fucking car! Fuck the double
yellows! Why can’t this shit car have four doors? I’m fucking
trapped in the back and there’s a Murrelet just there! Fuck!”
Instead we parked outside a bakery called Gay’s Creamery,
which wasn’t very funny at all. Miss Cole and Daniel were to
later try a piece of cake from Gay’s Creamery. Which again
wasn’t very funny at all.
This is no exaggeration, there must have been a thousand
birderers on the seafront, flanked by almost as many bemused
locals. It was tricky to get a space to view, but once I had
just a glimpse for the birdspotting list I headed off to the
breakwater for an unhindered bit of twitchering. I suppose you
could say that watching it for an hour at times down to less
than 50 metres was pretty good. Pretty fucking good. Sure was.
Much credit to the Murrelet himself (herself?) for putting on
such a good show for all the lasses and lads. Fuck it, I’ll even
allow myself to use that vomit-inducing expression showed
obligingly to appear on this website for the one and only
time. Bblleeuurrgghh….
Here are some superb photos:
Here you can see how it looks just like a
Little Auk. An easy mistake to make. Or a Black Guillemot.
Or even just a Guillemot. Or possibly even just a plain old
bog standard boring Long-billed Murrelet. If I’d
found this bird I definitely would have known straight away
that it was a Long-billed Murrelet. And I would have taken
notes.
Here you can see the back of
the bird’s head. It’s good isn’t it. You can
see that there are some pale panels either side of the back
of its head. This allows it to breathe under water without
the need for scuba apparatus. Long-billed Murrelets nest
inland in trees. And that’s actually
true. Apparently there is a high rate of infant mortality
because they nest in trees and not by the sea like other
more sensible Murrelets. Go figure. Madness.
Who would have thought it? Another Murrelet in the
UK, and in Devon again to boot. Thank whichever deity you
believe in (Coleen & Bernadette Nolan are mine) for the digital
revolution, otherwise this bird would have been long gone.
Note taking? Yeah right. I’m really sure that this bird would
have been looked for and given the same amount of credence if
some notebook doodles and scribbles had been posted on the
intranet. There’s a good reason why nobody bothers doing that
anymore - it’s because it’s shit. So it was fucked up at first
and reported as a Little Auk? Give - A - Fuck. Fact: it was all
resolved and we all lived happily ever after with Long-billed
Murrelet on our birdspotting lists. So fuck off.
This was a great day out; no problems with parking, no
viewing or access difficulties, and good spirits did abound in
plentiful supplies. But the real highlight was found by Pete on
the other side of the road, a café serving the best all day breakfast I’ve
had for a very long time. Let’s face it, Long-billed Murrelets
are great but 2 sausages, 3 rashers of bacon, 2 fried eggs,
beans, tomato, 2 pieces of fried bread and 2 pieces of bread and
butter for £3.95 are much better.
44 Toughted Ducks, 2 redhead Goaldeneyes, 6 drake Potshard, 5
Breadwings, 3 redhead Goo Sanders and 70+ Canadian Gooses.
***
Lame. Totally lame. Thoroughly lame. I got absolutely soaked
through 3 layers of clothes and waterlogged all my optics. The
reward? Two Lesser Black-backed Gulls side by side which was
really interesting to see the difference in how pale or dark
they can be. (click to view the incredible variation if you can
be bothered. I don’t recommend it myself)
Yep, that was really really interesting. Where
are all the Yellow-legged Gulls now? Please come back. Quickly.
Thanks.
Need inspiration. Birding Diary flagging. Poor
entries recently. Need a good bird.
I know that many of you dream of one day visiting
Chorlton Water Park. Maybe one day you will - have faith, dreams
really can come true (although my recurring one about me, Moira
Stewart, Esther Rantzen and Deidre Barlow playing a game of
Clam Supper has yet to happen, but not for want of trying!).
But for now here is my own personalised tour of Chorlton Water
Park RSPB, incorporating today's sightings. Click on the
thumbnails for mega exciting views of the water park.
Upon your arrival at the water
park you should first check the feeding station. This
morning there was a Coal Tit here. It was very nice. After
that you should head down to the lake, where your trip list
will begin to grow with exciting water birds.
Heading clockwise, you should next
check the reedbed for reed birds such as Blue Tit, Great Tit
and lost footballs. Sometimes there are Reed Warblers and
Chiffchaffs. This morning there were no birds in the reedbed.
Make sure you check the trees by
the childrens' play area for exciting passerines such as
Treecreeper and Long-tailed Tits. There was a Firecrest here
once, but not this morning. There were no birds here this
morning.
Behind the play area is Radde's
Pond. There has never been a Radde's Warbler here. But
the Firecrest I mentioned above often commuted to here.
Thinking about it, Firecrest Pond might actually be a
better name.
By now, after all of the passerine
action, you should be ready for some water birds, so it is
wise to turn your attention to the lake. This morning there
were two Kingfishers, a drake Goldeneye, six Pochards and a
redhead Goosander. However, stay alert and keep your wits
about you at all times, such rarities as Gadwall and Wigeon
have been seen recently. But not this morning.
Canada Geese are found in good
numbers at Chorlton Water Park throughout the year. They are
a total pain in the arse. The only fun you can have with
Canada Geese is looking for their biggest shits. Here is a
huge shit I found this morning >>>>>>>>
I don't know what this is. I think it might
lead to a secret bunker where Rudolf Hess was kept after he
fled to Scotland and spent his insanely psychotic time
reminiscing about the good old days with Adolf and the gang
back in Berlin. This morning a Redpoll and 2 Skylarks flew
over here.
The River Mersey runs close by the
south side of Chorlton Water Park and is an excellent place
to observe common river birds such as Grey Wagtails, Mallard
Ducks, Goosander Ducks and Goldeneye Ducks. If you are lucky
there may be a Kingfisher or a Smew (yeah right!). Swifts
and hirundines often swoop low over the river and
scream and stuff. This morning there were only Mallard
Ducks.
The electricity sub-station is
located on the south side of the Mersey. There are often
large gatherings of Mistle Thrush here, but none this
morning. There is a CarryOn Crow flying over in the picture
(click to view). I also had a fucking Harrier sp. vanish
behind here a couple of weeks ago never to be seen again.
grrrrr
Barlow Tip is located at the far
west side of Chorlton Water Park and is where the advanced
birdwatcher will spend much of his or her time. Your identification
skills will have to be pretty refined to handle a morning of
heavy migration here. This morning I flushed a Meadow Pipit
and had flocks of 30 Redwing and 21 Woodpigeons all heading
south. Earlier this year there were 5 Tree Pipits and 2
Spotted Flycatchers here. It is also a good place to catch
up with Siskin and Redpoll. But not this morning.
This is Baillon's Swamp,
located in the centre of Barlow Tip. This is the place where
I threw my Parker pencil
into
that I told you about the other day. There has never been a
Baillon's Crake in here. Or any Crake. But there was once a
Green Woodpecker.
On Barlow Tip there is also a gas
sub-station. I don't really know what a sub-station is, but
there you go. Sometimes it makes a strange sound and shakes
a bit. It frightens me. There was a Tree Pipit near here
this spring. Today there was a Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Don't forget, never let your dog
take a shit and then walk away pretending it was one of the
fishermen. This could land you with a hefty fine and a few
months of forced non-consensual sodomy inside Strangeways.
Finally you will return to the car
park, full to brim with exciting birdspotting adventures,
maybe for you to write up in your own birdspotting blog.
I recently bought a
Samsung NV3 camera and seeing as the conditions were so
perfect today I decided to give it a whirl on some lice-ridden
gulls 3 miles away at dusk. But instead I got tied up taking
pictures of some rather pretty Whooper Swans (8 of them) on
reservoir 3. They were about 50 metres away and big floaty
static things, so hardly difficult to photograph, but I’m
still pretty pleased with what I managed hand held through my
worse-for-wear Kowa TS613. Click on the thumbnails for the full
whack:
Read
this and
this for a review of the camera by someone who really
knows the score.
Even Audenshaw looked nice tonight. That was
until I remembered that the picturesque hills dominating the
landscape are where sick fuck psychos Myra Hindley and Ian Brady
did some crazy shit a few decades ago. And in the right hand
side of the photo you can just about see where sick fuck psycho
Harold Shipman did his crazy shit. Kind of somewhat taints the
view.
So that’s summer gone then. Very cold this morning.
I had to wear my gloves. And a coat. And three pairs of
underpants. The birds were obviously as pissed off with the cold
as I was, seeing as you could hear a pin drop, albeit a really
loud pin to penetrate the ambient noise of the M60 and the gas
compound sounding as if it was about to do a Chernobyl. A
moment of light and humorous relief came when a Black-headed
Gull went to land on the glass calm water, saw its own
reflection and then shit itself and started attacking the water.
I wonder if BB would publish that in Notes?
A Rock Pipit on the causeway between reservoirs 1+2 was just
bloody lovely. I tell you, flipping lovely it was. But this wind
swinging around to the north could cause a chap to loose his
bearings with these kinds of temperatures. The small adult
Yellow-legged Gull was back and looking smug (that’s the best
way to ID them, by their smugness) and another Audenshawerer had
an intermedius Lesser B-b.Gull but I was shivering too
much by that point and couldn’t pick it up. 40 Golden Plovers
repeatedly circled reservoir 3 on the way back to the car as the
sun set behind the magic of central Manchester on a cold and
frosty Hallowe’en evensong.
Ouch! After years of using blunt pencils in my
birdspotting notebooks I’ve recently switched to a smart silver
Parker retractable pencil, so that my amazingly astute and
ornithologically vital field observations - as well as my
frighteningly life-like field sketches - can be easily read and
lusted over when they are bequeathed upon my death to some US
ornithology lab, where they can be used to instruct students in
how to properly document the sighting of birds, perhaps even
extinct ones. Wahey!
So, my new retractable lead pencil is proper swish and sexy;
if I was ten years younger I’d go so far as to say that my
pencil is da bomb. And this morning my fantastic super
hyper-power magic retractable Parker pencil was getting some
serious use, what with the skein of 80 Pinkfeet heading over
east (CWP year tick), a drake Gadwall (CWP year tick), a Coal
Tit in the car park and a mega flock of 16 Common Gulls.
With all the frantic avian activity I was very thankful for
having my mega retractable lead pencil, and I was wondering to
myself just how I ever managed to go birdspotting in the past
with a blunt pencil. Think about it: 21st century
birding with 20th century equipment. Ha! Got to move
with the times. It’s official: technology is the new God in our
now Godless society.
I admit with great shame that I was actually quite cocky with
all of my swanky high-tech gadgets, what with my Black n Red
ruled notebook, elasticated waist underpants and retractable
pencil. I felt just like the Chinese inventor kid in that movie The Goonies who has all those boxing gloves on springs and stuff
hidden in his coat.
But then I was to discover the folly of Mankind’s obsession with
all things technical.
A Great Spotted Woodpecker flew over
Barlow Tip calling and doing that up-down up-down
flap-and-plummet wing flying thing they do. I lunged into my
pocket for my birdspotting jotter and Parker retractable lead
mega pencil to document this sighting for posterity, and
ouch! No, not ouch, but aarrgghh!
Not even aargghh but fuck me aarrgghh
aarrghh fuck fuck fuck! The pointy lead went straight
under my fingernail and snapped off. It was only about a
millimetre long but it was stuck in firmly, like some kind of
thing from B & Q that makes sure things are stuck in to
something really firmly.
I sucked on my finger to try and get it out but the snapped
lead was clearly very happy in its new found home under my
finger nail and refused to move. I was becoming light headed
from massive blood loss and fell to the floor, cursing myself
for ever having bought a new mega silver swish sexy hyper-power
millennium mega retractable lead Parker pencil. This would never
have happened with my old faithful blunt yellow and black
striped Staedtler HB pencil, snapped in half for ease of
pocket-borne transportation on my birdspotting adventures.
Damn you, technology! I shouted as images of Jeremy Dyson,
Bill Gates and that bloke who invented the Rubik’s Cube – Donald Rumsfeld I think his name was – flashed through my blood-starved
brain, laughing at me and at the whole of society for our
foolish dependence on futuristic gadgets such as spoons, cars and
fruit bowls.
I lay looking up at the sky, Ravens circling above in
anticipation of my imminent demise (Ravens? Ha! I fucking wish). So
this is it is it? This is what it was all about? My life ended
by a Parker retractable lead pencil? I didn’t even get to finish
my memoirs titled The Magical Journey of Tom McKinney: I was
better than all of you but you just didn’t realise it because
you are all bastards.
But then it all became clear: like usual I was just being a
twat and only had to squeeze my finger and the lead would come
out. I mustered every bit of strength and fight that remained
within me to squeeze my finger tip and force the lead to shoot
up into the sky killing all the Ravens who had by now been
joined by a presumed escaped Griffon Vulture… who was also
killed by the lead.
I was saved. But I cast the pencil of pain away in a fit of
rage, throwing it into the marshy bit that would be full of rare
pipits and Lanceolated Warblers if it was 700 miles NNE of its
current location (in fact, Chorlton WP would be absolutely
fucking amazing if it was where Fair Isle is). Then I remembered
that it cost me a few quid and so I waded in to retrieve it.
I’ve learnt my lesson. I’ll never again be wowed by the false
promises of technology. No more Sinclair C5s, Commodore 64s,
Batman T-shirts or sex change operations for me. No way.
[postscript: "many thanks" for the quick email from Mr
Pedantic Twat, but the Jeremy Dyson gag is a deliberate and
extremely clever joke!]
Tonight I wore my new navy blue boiler suit to Audenshaw so
that I was already changed into my Hallowe’en costume for the
party tonight, and didn’t have to waste time pissing about later
on. Clever thinking! I was originally supposed to be going as
Corey from Slipknot, but the mask I bought stank of glue and
made my eyes water; instead I switched to Michael Myers from
Halloween, who also wears a boiler suit, but the mask I bought
was too small; so I finally decided to just wear a boiler suit and
say bollocks to whole dressing up load of shit. Turns out that
someone thought I was dressed as Hannibal Lecter who also wears
a boiler suit. Bloody versatile things those boiler suits.
An adult Great Black-backed Gull - phwoar, he was a big one.
The cute little adult Yellow-legged Gull – aw, how pretty. And
finally the sub-adult Yellow-legged Gull again that I told
you about from 24th October (see beeeeelooooow).
It’s a great looking bird, almost beautiful, no ugly, but ugly
in a beautiful way, kind of like Scarlett Johannson. Another
Audenshawerer had the same bird a few weeks ago in the morning
and saw brown on the tertials, so perhaps it’s an advanced 3rd
winter? Answers on a postcard please, but not to me because I
don’t care:
Bloody kids fishing. Interfering inquisitive little bastards.
They wanted to know what I was doing and were really interested
to know about the birds, one of them even asked me what the ones
with brown heads were that kept diving. “Goosanders,” said I,
and then told them to piss off and sniff glue in the park, which
is what kids of their age should be doing, not pissing about
catching fish and wanting to know about birds and nature.
Two adult Yellow-legs tonight, but no sign of the sub-adult
gull from 24th.
25th October,East Didsbury
Tesco
Was intending to go back to have another look at the gull
from last night again. Got to Tesco and realised it was cold and
rainy, so quit the idea of Audenshaw and headed inside to buy a
big multipack of Hula Hoops. Didn’t see any birds.
Enormous passage of Chaffinch over the car park this morning
with, ooh, let me see, about 15 million per minute flooding
overhead. A whopper of a Skylark passage with 1 heading south
over the car park. Also 2 Little Grebes on the lake, 11 Redwings
and my first Redpoll of the autumn.
***
“Are you doing birdwatching?” I was asked by some small kid
at Audenshaw pointing a fishing rod at me. Shit! I
thought to myself, I forgot it was bastarding half term
holidays.
“Why don’t you go looking for Owls instead?” his fat mate
asked me. Good question, and one that I can't answer. Sifting
through over ten thousand gulls in search of one or two with
slightly darker backs and striking white heads on a gale force
wind blown causeway amongst three huge concrete reservoirs, or
looking for attractive magical owls in a nice sheltered wood
somewhere in the country? It’s very weird, but I’d opt for the
skanky gulls every time.
Had a fright tonight though, when I stumbled upon one of
these slightly darker backed gulls with a striking white head.
From the poor light angle that I was viewing it I thought it was
the bigger adult Yellow-legged that has been around recently,
but then it spread its wing and flip me - it wasn’t an adult, so
surely a 4th winter? And then I thought to myself, Holy flip!
There was a flipping 3rd winter Caspian Gull here around this
time last year, which would be a flipping 4th winter now. Holy
flip, I'd best get a better look! So I walked around until
the sun wasn’t burning my retinas to a crisp and picked it up a
bit closer. In good light the big gonys was actually a black
sub-terminal band with only a wee dram of red in it. Flip!
Still looked like a Yellow-legged though. Flipping cold night as
well.
