Very bleak, but not all that low,
though 600m in the grand scheme of things is pretty low. I
mean it's hardly Mount McKinley (God I wish they'd called it
Mount McKinney). Still, none of that matters. What does
matter is that I was looking for a plane wreck with my
friend Alex. And we found it. It was great. Only it was
supposed to be all sad and stuff because loads of people
died when it crashed. But it wasn't very sad. I must have a
heart of stone. Birdy wise I managed to notch up no less
than 9 (nine!) Red Grouse, a (one [1!]) Wheatear and 3+
(more than three!) Meadow Pipits.
As I'm sure you all know, Balearic
Shearwaters are critically endangered, and could be extinct
by next week. The causes? Well, what do you think? That's
right, the problem is you, us, man (and woman), mankind (and
womankind), humans etc... We are always the problem on this
planet, never the solution. Balearic Shearwaters are facing
extinction, bees are declining, fish are no more (fish are
now completely extinct!) and AC/DC may never tour again. And
it's all YOUR fault. And mine as well, but mostly
YOURS. Though, to be fair, AC/DC's touring woes are
probably down to them and not you or I (me), but I'm still
pretty sure that YOU have something to do with it.
You bastards.
For a bit more info on Balearic Shearwaters
and the possible reasons for their decline, you should read
July 2007's
British Birds which tells you all about it, or you can
even read some more about it
HERE, though you'll need one of them fancy
big-swot-look-at-me-I'm-a-fucking-filthy-student/pervy-university-lecturer
Athens passwords to get in and read it. My Athens password
is no longer valid (fuck you Manchester University!), so I
don't know what it says, but I'm told it's worth reading if
you can read it, which I can't.
So to get some idea of how many Balearic
Shearwaters are in British waters after they foolishly leave
the gorgeous Mediterranean upon breeding to search for a
much colder climate, the
Seawatch-SW project has been devised to provide complete
daily coverage between July-October by people mad enough to
want to sit for 12 hours a day in the unrelenting baking
sun/unrelenting pouring rain on a headland at Porthgwarra in
Cornwall. Of course just getting an idea of Balearic
Shearwaters whilst disregarding what else is going offshore,
would be a complete waste of potential, so the project also
encompasses Basking Sharks, cetaceans (which is the posh
word for whales and dolphins and porpoises and stuff) and
any other birdy/wildlifey stuff going on out there.
Unfortunately, the weather for my week was
perhaps the worst it could possibly have been, with a tasty
force five NNE wind and beautiful sunshine pretty much
clearing out all of the birds. As a wee nipper (which means
when I was younger), we used to have our family summer
holiday at the distinctly middle-class sounding Peter's
Cottage in Porthgwarra with Julian, Dick, Anne, George (the
lezzer) and Timmy the dog. And after repeatedly refusing to
go on shit coastal walks, wander around St.Ives in the rain
or look for lost treasure, I was eventually just dumped by
my parents each day on Gwennap Head, where I spent all
day looking out to sea, often at pretty much nothing, though
I did get a few memorable mega days out of it, so I was well
aware of just how slow the "best month" can actually be if
the weather is gash (which means if the weather is not very
conducive to astounding seawatching). Still, I had a really
brilliant week, definitely worth doing and also with some
very decent birding/cetaceaning/sharking, and certainly not
forgetting the great company (thanks Russell, John and the
SAHFOS team).
Here is the week's log:
Sooty Shearwater -
10
Balearic Shearwater
- 29
Manx Shearwater -
945
European Storm-Petrel - 103
Bonxie - 7
Arctic Skua - 1
adult dark morph
Yellow-legged Gull
- one 1st-summer bird sat on the rocks (just in case anyone
suspects a stringy fly-by!)
Common Terns - 46
Peregrine - 2 (juvenile and
adult female usually around)
Whimbrel - 10
Green Sand - 1
Greenshank - 1
Basking Shark - biggest
single count 16, including one big bastard seen breaching
Risso's Dolphin - 3
Minke Whale - 2
...and other stuff, which you can see
in full detail
HERE.
19th August, Long
time ago in Bethlehem, so the Holy Bible say...
... so sang Boney M in their classic 1978
Christmas hit Mary's Boy Child, which was originally
sung by Harry Belafonte in 1956. Two things you now need
to know:
1) I reckon another of Boney M's hits
Brown Girl in the Ring sounds quite rude.
2) If you go to the Royal Northern College
of Music in Manchester, cuz like I'm sure you all regularly
do, have a look just to the right of the doors to the main
entrance and you'll see something written into the concrete.
One day I was with my great pal James, and upon seeing a
patch of freshly laid wet concrete he thought it would be a
great idea to write in it. And what did he write? Harry
Belafonte. I'm serious. So now people think that Harry
Belafonte opened the new building at the Royal Northern
College of Music, which I think is fucking hilarious. I hope
you do too.
Anyhooooooo, back to long time ago in
Bethlehem, and what I mean is that a long time ago I went to
Spurn to see the Roller, only I never got around to writing
it up, and now I have, so click HERE
and read it. Now I'm sure you're all thinking that all of
the above has been a pretty long-winded way to go about
telling you about what I was trying to tell you, and indeed
that this very sentence is already becoming pretty
long-winded. There you go. Sue me. (Please don't.)
I'm off to Cornwall now, so see
you all later. Or I'll be seein' y'all later as John
Wayne would have said. Or argh! argh! help! help! I'm on
fire! help! someone put me out! help! help! as Michael
Jackson would have said that time he blew himself up filming
that Pepsi advert.
Boney M
***
Harry Belafonte
17th August,
Hahahahaha...
Just seen a terrible joke on
Wilhelm Bowell's blog. Have a look at it.
It's really terrible. But it reminded me of two
terrible jokes I made up myself some time ago (about two
hours ago).
Me: What do you call an early 1990s rapper
who now spends all his time bombarding people's email
accounts with adverts for penis enlargement, viagra,
university degrees for sale, money making schemes etc...?
You: I don't know, what do you call an early 1990s rapper who now
spends all his time bombarding... etc...
Me: MC Spammer.
And another:
Me: What do you call an early 1990s
rapper who I like to buy from Gregg's the bakers and eat
after
my lunch?
You: I don't know, what do you call an early
1990s rapper who you like to buy from Gregg's the bakers and
eat after your lunch?
Me: Vanilla Slice.
16th August, Glossop
Birding
Okay, second things first (which
is always the most sensible way in which to do things), I
had an email query as to what the goddam hell the title of
my entry for 13th August actually meant. Seriously, do you
lot not watch macho 80s cop movies? It's a quote from 48
Hours starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. But, to be
fair, I have absolutely no idea what it's got to do with the
stuff about GOA either, but that's just the way it goes
around here. It's like cockerel-shaped egg timers and
weather vanes and stuff...
So now I've got all that wedding crap out of
the way, err, I mean got over the emotion of the best day of
my life... etc... well, like, I need a new local patch,
yeah? Sweet. But where? Well first of all it's got to be
local to be a local patch, now that's just
obvious. But what distance constitutes local? Who cares?
Certainly not me, but I'm just passing time. Water's always
a good thing for a local patch to have, and if you look on
the map to the north of Glossop, you'll see a line of
reservoirs running parallel along the Longdendale valley. So
they could potentially be good. Only at the moment there's
no water in them. That's right, the wettest summer ever, in
history, ever, like ever, and there's no water in the
reservoirs. Is that pretty weak (which is cool American high
school slang for "not very good")? Yes it is pretty weak
(which is cool American high...).
Just north of Glossop you can also see the
town of Hadfield, made famous by the Hadfield Bakery, oh,
and it's also the place where the fantastic BBC cult comedy
The League of Gentlemen was filmed. No idea about
birding there, but I just thought I'd throw it into the pot,
you'll thank me for it some day.
East of Glossop you can see that
there is absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nada. De nada. Nul.
Nil, etc... Just a big fuck off moor with nought but rusting
plane wrecks. It's true, the moors around Glossop are
riddled with plane wrecks, presumably because the pilots get
so bored flying over such a featureless landscape that they
just decide to bail out and kill the monotony. There's loads
of breeding waders and persecuted raptors up there as well,
but that's not going to be much use until next year now.
Still, maybe a wintering Rough-legged Buzzard up there in a
few months? Or some Snow Buntings? But more than likely
absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Now if you look at the map just above you
can see that just a short walk north from the town centre
there is Swineshaw reservoir. "Hmmm, now I wonder what
that's like?" I wondered to myself, and eventually I
wondered so much that I went for a quick look. But when I
got there I found that it was all closed off, and the red
dotted line that indicates a footpath has only been placed
on the map by the Ordnance Survey for the specific purpose
of pissing me off. But fuck rules, I aint going to be put
off by some petty bureaucrat (huh, more like Eurocrat
- bloody foreigners - long live
Richard Cunt-Face Littlejohn!), sat behind his desk
deciding what I can and cannot do in my own country.
Fascist! So I trespassed* - yeah, that's right, do you hear
me? I trespassed. As
Slipknot
once said: fuck you all; fuck this shit; fuck everything
that you stand for! I don't think I'll be trespassing
again though, not when the only thing to see was a single
Black-headed Gull.
Still, there's a tasty looking
conifer plantation which should be good for Crossbills and
roosting Long-eared Owls, but more than likely won't muster
up more than a few Goldcrests and a Coal Tit, and that's if
I'm lucky. And then just up from the reservoir there are a
couple of small disused quarries, one of which had a
roosting Little Owl in it, which was very nice. Very nice
indeed.
Glossop birding has the potential to rock
hard (which means it could be quite good, maybe).
* dear members of
the local constabulary, by trespassing I mean standing on a
fence** so that I could peer over, I didn't really trespass.
But just don't tell anyone that I didn't really trespass,
especially my great mates Micky "Flick-knife" Jones, Jack
"The Biscuit" McVities and Kenny "Haircut" Malone, otherwise
they'll never speak to me again.
** dear local landowners,
when I say "standing on a fence" I mean really carefully, so
as not to damage your fences, which I know are dead
important to you for keeping the real world well away from
you, and especially for keeping out them bloody
single-parent gay anti-war immigrants, which are coming over
here raping our women and living on massive state benefits
with sponsorship money from them fucking lentil-eating
Guardian-reading hippy bastards (long live Richard Fuck-Wank-Twat-Face
Littlejohn!).
13th August, There's
a new sheriff in town, and his name's Reggi Hammond...
The General Ornithologists Association
was recently formed to police the increasingly irresponsible
behaviour of twitchers. GOA may sound like that place
in India where your female companion will get felt up by the
local men who reckon all western women are cheap whores, but
it's not - GOA is the General Ornithologists Association, and
the General Ornithologists Association is GOA. Better than the
RSPB/BTO/BOU/BBRC/IRBC combined, GOA is the only general
ornithologists association that you ever need to join. For
membership enquiries (strictly no none general
ornithologists allowed), please visit their site:
And please note that any
potentially controversial material that may feature there in
the future has absolutely nothing to do with me. To make a
complaint about any offensive material, please write to:
Mr J.R Ewing JR
3 It'sonlyabitoffun Terrace
Cheerupyoucunts
FU1 2CK
2nd - 6th August,
Goodbye Miss Cole
Oh well, that's life. Sometimes things just
don't work out, and after ten years together Miss Cole is no more. Don't worry, she's not dead or anything, she
just won't be featuring on my "wonderful" website again.
C'est la vie, as they say somewhere in the world. Still,
we had some good times together, and you can't take that
away...
... oh God! Crikey O' Riley! Fucking hell! Aarrgghh!! Holy motherfuck, I got married.
I got married!
Still, the keen-eyed British
observers will notice in the last photo that we got married
on
Porthcressa beach on the Isles of Scilly, which was a
complete coincidence and had absolutely nothing to do with
going out on a pelagic to see Wilson's Petrels... maybe...
So it all began on Thursday
morning in Cornwall at
Pendeen, where we watched trillions
of Basking Sharks just offshore:
Sharkie and George (crime busters of the
sea)
Then came a very strange phone call from
Jason Atkinson who was on Scilly with the Cheshire
Yearlisting Collective 07:
"What's all this about a Melodious
Warbler in Manchester city centre?"
I didn't know, but I took a glance at my
pager only to see that there was indeed a message saying
that there was a reported Melodious Warbler in Manchester
city centre. (Note to self: in future, when pager makes
beeping sound, have a look to see what the message says.)
And thus began the increasingly insane saga which unfolded
throughout the day as I was sat in The Dolphin pub in
Penzance getting increasingly sloshed on lager, with phone
call after phone call relaying to me how this bird was
seeming to be more and more like an Olivaceous Warbler, or
possibly even Sykes's, and the overall conclusion to each
phone call was: "Tom - what a really stupid fucking day
to be 360 miles south-west of Manchester!"
I've not had chance yet to read
all 3,659 pages of discussion on
Birdforum, but there seems to be two very different
thoughts as to what the bird was: Eastern Olivaceous Warbler
or Reed Warbler. Personally I
couldn't give a shit, but I hope it does turn out to be an Olivaceous, even though I didn't see it - how nice a gesture
is that!
Friday was Scillonian day and a
pleasantly calm boat trip across to the Isles of Scilly, my
first visit since that mega brilliant
Ovenbird in October 2004. Up to 15 Storm Petrels and a few
Manx Shearwaters were all we could muster up off the side of
the boat, but the real mega surprise came as we approached St.Mary's and I noticed a group of vagabonds sat seawatching
on
Peninnis Head (or is it Penninis Head?), this
raggle-taggle collection of miscreants being none other than
Jason Atkinson, Malc Curtin, Al Orton, Dan Pointon, Mark
Powell and Phil Woollen. Strange welcomes were exchanged
between Peninnis and the boat, none stranger than two of the
seawatchers lowering trousers and showing bare arses, which
I believe is called mooning. I'm serious, that's not
made up, but I shall refrain from naming the two bare-arsed
culprits.
Then upon arrival on St.Mary's it
was time to hit The Mermaid and get sloshed. And then it was
time to meet up with the Cheshire brigade in the Bishop and
Wolf and get a bit more sloshed. And then back to the hotel
to get a little bit more sloshed. And then it was 5pm, and
I'd had five pints of fizzy lager, and now I had to go out
on a five hour pelagic on The Kingfisher. I'll be
dead honest with you, that's not the cleverest
thing I've done in my life.
Dan 'Lilo Lil'
Pointon on The Kingfisher - note look of homelessness
A bit of advice - don't drink five pints of
fizzy lager and then go out on a five hour pelagic, it's
neither big nor clever. And why? Well because you're
guaranteed to need a piss whilst you're out, that's why. And
what do they keep in the toilet? That's right, a few barrels
of dead fish alongside fish offal soaked sawdust to use
later for chumming - nice!
After ninety minutes of travelling
we reached the Poll Bank reef and the engines shut down. It
was time to chum:
Skipper Alec Hicks
mashing up rotting fish to put in an onion bag and tow
overboard in order to attract petrels and shearwaters - it's
a funny old game this birdspotting thing!
Tens of European Storm Petrels began to
approach really close to the stern of the boat, offering the
chance to see these unfeasibly tiny birds in a situation
that doesn't involve following a two mile distant black speck
behind huge waves, only to find out that you've actually
just been following a rain speck on your telescope lens. The
fishermen onboard also began to yank out some tasty looking
mackerel, though this became a bit less appetising when they
flapped about like bastards in the boxes:
After about an hour we moved a bit further
along the reef, and now the Storm Petrels started to fly in
from all sides of the boat - this was good. The light
began to drop as there was a sudden shout of "Wilson's" as a
mega shit-hot brilliant Wilson's Petrel fucked about in the
wake of the boat, then about 45 minutes later another
Wilson's cruised past so close down the side of the boat
that you didn't even need to use your binoculars to get a
good view, it was almost biblically brilliant, but in a sort
of atheistic kind of a way. Finally a Sooty
Shearwater put on a bit of a sing and dance and came so
close that it almost hit the back of the boat.
Wife-to-be wondering
just how many brides in history have been out on a five hour
pelagic reeking of dead fish on the night before their wedding?
I've only seen Wilson's Petrels
twice before from the now sadly defunct annual pelagics
which used to run out of Penzance on the Scillonian, and
although you certainly did get okay views on those trips,
it's nothing like the views you get from these pelagics out
of St.Mary's on The Kingfisher and The Sapphire. Very highly
recommended.
Of course on Saturday I got married, and I
couldn't really take my binoculars with me, but I think I
had an adult Med Gull on the beach as we were walking back
into town to get smashed on champagne.
Motherfuck - I got married!
***
In July and August, the skippers of both
The Kingfisher and The Sapphire run trips on an
almost nightly basis leaving at 5pm and returning 10pm, and
it's £20 per person. Trips are advertised on the boards by
the quay near the ticket kiosk. For more info on Scilly
pelagics click
HERE and boat contact details:
