Blyth's Reed Warbler and Blue-winged Teal,
those were our two target tick-fest birds for the day. Now
just stop and look at some hard facts, because all the good
birds in Britain at the moment start with the letter B,
seriously: Blyth's Reed Warbler, Blue-winged Teal,
Buff-bellied Pipits, Barred Warblers, Buff-breasted
Sandpipers, Bluethroats, Biberian Thrush, Baddyfield
Warbler, Ballas's Grasshopper Warbler. Even Britain begins
with the letter B.
Call me deeply suspicious if you
like, but I think there's something cryptically sinister
going on, kind of like The Da Vinci Code, or 9/11 (11/9 if
you're British) conspiracy theories. In fact, if you plot
the locations of all of Britain's rare birds that begin with
the letter B on a map and then join the dots up, you get a
perfect pencil line sketch of a syringe, and syringes are
used to inject opium, and opium comes from poppies grown in
Afghanistan, and who's Afghanistan's most famous resident?
Osama Bin Laden. But the plots thickens even
further - the words Osama+Bin+Laden comprise a total of
thirteen letters, as does Woodhorn Hedge, and Woodhorn Hedge
is exactly where the Blyth's Reed Warbler had
been seen.
Sure, you just all go ahead and
say it's purely down to coincidence, but how can you ignore
such incontrovertible evidence like all of the above? We
need Mulder and Scully back on TV to sort this out, which
begs another question - how come nobody gets abducted by
aliens since The X-Files finished? And how come
everyone stopped seeing ghosts after the 1980s ghost boom
associated with Poltergeist and Ghostbusters?
And one final question - what's happened to white dog shit?
You never see white dog shit anymore. It's a very messed up
world we live in.
I know some swear words ("curse
words" for our American friends) that begin with the letter
B, words such as bollocks, bloody, bastard, balls, Blair...
These swear words could be perfectly used to describe
today's birdspotting (see, B again!)
adventures in North-East England. For example:
Today we went to bloody Woodhorn church
and had a right bastard of a day. The bastard Blyth's Reed
Warbler was nowhere to be seen. What a load of bollocks that
was. Then later we went to Haverton Shithole and made a
right balls up of trying to see the Blue-winged Teal, the
little bastard was nowhere to be seen - I hope you're
fucking satisfied, Tony Blair!
Never mind, I always enjoy a day out
birdspotting, and finding a Yellow-browed Warbler at
Woodhorn church was some consolation, as was having my
tripod eaten by a horse - no shit, a horse bit the pan
handle (pan handle* - hilarious!) and then threw my scope
and tripod over in disgust (it was clearly not into Kowa).
And all the time I just stood by and let it happen, because
basically I'm a huge big massive coward and didn't dare to
intervene, though at the time I made up some excuse about
animal rights or something, you know, to make me all look
hard and cool like Steven Seagal.
Anyhow, after visiting family in Toon
(Newcastle), the day was concluded at Haverton Shithole,
which isn't really called Haverton Shithole but it really
should be, as it is a shit hole. No disrespect intended, but
I grew up in Stoke-on-Trent which was recently voted the
worst place to live in Britain, yet Stoke has absolutely
nothing on fuck holes like this place, I mean this was just
third-world desperation - no, that's even an insult to the
desperate third-world. I hadn't witnessed scenes of poverty like this place
since I went around the desperately poor districts of
Manchester in 1848 with my great mates Marx and Engels, and
later retired to a coffee shop in Paris to write The
Communist Manifesto. Personally, I wanted to call it
Inside My Ass, but those two overruled me, the miserable
bearded bastards.
And now for the final piece to the puzzle -
just as we were driving out of Haverton Shithole we saw a
sign for Sedgefield, and the significance of Sedgefield? Ha!
Sedgefield was, of course, the constituency of murdering bastard destroyer of the Labour party Emperor
Tony Blair, a man so evil that our new PM
Gordon Brown recently decided that it was a
better political strategy to align himself with Baroness
Thatcher than his predecessor, in order to make himself and the New-New Labour party look more humane - that's how evil!
Not that I'm political or anything.
So there you go, politics, the
letter B, conspiracy theory, no rare birds and a horse -
never ever say that you don't get value for money
here on skills-bills.co.uk.
The weather looked sweet as
jam-on-toast-with-a-milky-cup-of-tea for a good fall of
tasty migrants today, so the east coast beckoned, and the
headland of choice was Flamborough.
Arriving at 6.50am, the order of the day
began with a noisy, pishy, clicky, clappy stamp down Old
Fall hedge where I intended to flush no less than eleven
Lanceolated Warblers, but I had to be satisfied with two
Dunnocks and a Robin. A patient stalk of Old Fall plantation
failed to pull out the predicted Orphean Warbler, though it
did provide a heart-stopping fly-over Brambling and two
Redwing. Further tackling of Old Fall hedge down to the
cliffs should have knocked up a Long-tailed Shrike and
probably even something far less rare like a Pallas's
Grasshopper Warbler (also called Tetley-tea Tips), but sadly
it could give me nought more than a few panicked Redwing. A
slow walk back up Old Fall hedge seemed far less enjoyable,
now that I knew the mega predicted mega fall hadn't
happened. Yet a Lesser Whitethroat and a few knackered
looking Goldcrests gave me a burst of enthusiasm to tackle
the plantation again, to absolutely no avail whatsoever.
A nearby Buff-breasted Sandpiper on the golf
course seemed infinitely more enjoyable. And it was.
Turning around to look at the sea,
I decided to have a wee bit of a seawatch, and in an hour
managed to clock up a staggering 2 Sooty Shearwaters and 2
Bonxies. Nice views though:
So that was the first half of the
day. Would the next half be as good? Let's find out...
... no. No, it wasn't as good. I had a
mid-afternoon sleep in the car, and then woke up from
dreaming about psychotic weathergirl Sian Lloyd naked in a
wheelbarrow full of jelly beans, only to see the filthy murk
of an east coast shower had set in. But that's what
waterproofs are for, so I braved the filthy murk until
sundown in the hope that a wave of mega-megas had dropped in
during my pervy dreams. Other than two Chiffchaffs and a
drab Pied Flycatcher they hadn't, and I got soaked. Migrant
tally for the day:
Buff-breasted Sandpiper
Bonxie - 2
Sooty Shearwater - 2
Fieldfare - 2
Redwing - 51
Lesser Whitethroat - 1
Chiffchaff - 2
Goldcrest - 8+
Pied Fly - 1st win/fem
Brambling - 5
Lameness - 12
26th September, The
Isles of Scilly
My loyal and faithful readers who have been
with me on this journey from the start (way back in summer
2005), will remember that in December 2005 I went to
Lincolnshire to not see a Buff-bellied Pipit. I got quite
angry about not seeing this Buff-bellied Pipit and wrote a
diary entry titled Fields of Shit, which I thought
summed up the day quite nicely. For those of you that
haven't been with me on this journey from the start (way
back in summer 2005), you can read all about that diabolical
day HERE.
So last week, when a Buff-bellied Pipit
showed up on Fair Isle, although I wasn't going/able to
spend £6,543 trying to see it, it did give me a bit of hope
that there would be more to come in the not too distant
future. So I went to church for communion, confessed my
Catholic sins to Father Persuivant (such as having impure
thoughts about uncovered piano legs) and later that night
prayed for good birds, good health and a solid gold
futuristic jet-powered car with diamond seats and platinum
windscreen wipers. Then God, the almighty creator and giver
of life and all other great things (unless you're not a
believer in one of the three great religions - in which case
I'm afraid you're simply going to Hell, even you vegan
Buddhists), heard my prayers, and he decided that the
starving destitute people of the world praying for food and
shelter were not needy enough - no, he decided that the
pleas of me were far more needierer. And so God whipped up a
right good storm of locusts which went all the way to the
eastern seaboard of the USA to drag a kicking and screaming
Buff-bellied Pipit all the way over to the Isles of Scilly.
Thus today's diary entry is titled
Big Massive Hanging Fields of Joy. I hope you enjoy
it. If you don't enjoy it then that's just bad luck. I'm
sorry. What more can I say? Fucking hell, do you want blood?
Big Massive Hanging Fields of Joy a
story of love, loss and longing by T(h)om(as) McKinney FRS
There's only one way to go to the Isles of
Scilly to see a Buff-bellied Pipit, and that's to go down to
the Isles of Scilly and look at a Buff-bellied Pipit. You'd
think everyone would know that, but clearly they don't as
only four of us birdspotters showed up to catch the first
helicopter of the day from Penzance over to St.Mary's.
A helicopter. Note the
things that spin around really fast - they're the bits that
make it fly
Some people call helicopters choppers,
but chopper is also a word for penis, and a chopper was also
a type of bike. I call helicopters spinning rotor
machines, I call penises cocks and I call bikes
Ulrika Johnson (yes!).
My name is Tom and I live in a
shoe - admission is the first step to recovery. Welcome to
my world.
If, like me, you believe everything that
everyone ever tells you without questioning it, then you
probably believe quite a lot of things that aren't true. One
of the things I believe that probably isn't quite true - or
at least massively exaggerated - is that years ago there was
this place called the Isles of Scilly, and every autumn lots
of mad young men used to go there to watch birds, take drugs
and go mad. Some of them took more drugs than watched birds,
but essentially the whole of the Isles of Scilly was
completely insane in the autumn - imagine Ibiza but with wax
jackets and no women, because all sad loser birdwatchers are
normally men, and that's because women are better than men,
and one they will day rule the world with the iron fist of
Margaret Thatcher spliced with Anthea Turner - men, your
days are numbered.
But anyway, Scilly and drugs. So yeah, loads
of people took drugs and went mad. So mad that some of them
just went around smashing down walls and trespassing into
fields and killing islanders in their sleep. The islanders
became furious and told them to piss off back to whatever
holes they'd crawled out of, and then some bright spark
pointed out that in actual fact the birders were bringing
bags of income to islands, effectively extending the tourist
season, and that if the islanders played their cards right
then they could all be driving around in solid gold
futuristic jet-powered cars with diamond seats and platinum
windscreen wipers.
The islanders liked the sound of this, and
put up the prices of everything to make them all really rich
at our expense. So now, when you walk around the Isles of
Scilly, all you can is solid gold futuristic jet-powered
cars with diamond seats and platinum windscreen wipers
blocking the narrow lanes, and not a single birder, because
they've all been fucking out-priced. That's capitalism for
you - I hope you're fucking satisfied, Tony Blair!
So I went to Scilly with Jason Atkinson,
Malc Curtin and Gareth Stamp, and I saw an amazing bird. It
really was as simple as that. There it was, just dashing
about a field with another couple of Meadow Pipits.
Buff-bellied Pipit -
note all of the features that make it one, such as the
complete white eye-ring (which doesn't look quite complete
in this photo), the dark legs (which you can't see) and the
fine bill (which you also can't see properly because of the
angle).
After we watched the bird to death (just an
expression, we didn't kill it or anything) we went nearby
and tried to watch a Barred Warbler to death. It's very hard
to watch a Barred Warbler to death as they never ever show
themselves, especially this bird, and it took nineteen days
to eventually get a look at it, and even then it was a
nightmare to see.
But whilst waiting for it to show, we were
given ample opportunity to compare our packed lunches: I had
beef, salad and mustard sandwiches with two blueberry
Nutrigrain bars and a bag of Walkers Sensations crisps;
Gareth decided on pate salad sandwiches; Malc kept it real
with cheese and tomato; but Jason, the rebel of the group,
broke with all time-honoured packed lunch traditions and
brought only packed lunch accompaniments such as an apple
and crisps, but he forewent the sandwiches for a pasty later
in the day - animal!
The rest of the day was spent wandering
between the Pipit and the Barred Warbler, before time
constraints had us back up at the airport, where this bird
below momentarily scared the shit out of us:
It is of course a Wheatear, a Northern
Wheatear, but on the Isles of Scilly all birds are rare,
even the common ones, so it had to an Isabelline Wheatear.
But it wasn't. Shame. Real shame.
Having long forgotten how to think
for myself, I recently noticed loads and loads and loads of
photos of a Long-tailed Skua posted onto the UK rare birds
thing on
Surfbirds. I never knew that Long-tailed Skuas were
quite so rare, so I decided that I would have to go and see
it, seeing as it was so rare and all. I also heard that
there was a massive fight about to kick off between retarded
new wave DSLR photographers and upholders of morality and
good behaviour twitcherers, over a competition to see who
could get closest to the bird and kick the little fucker to
death. At the time of writing, the photographers were
apparently winning hands down.
Ex-Miss Cole and myself arrived late
morning, and we were horrified to see absolutely nobody
trying to get too close to the bird, nobody causing trouble
and nobody trying to have a big fight - shit! How boring.
Still, the bird did look exceptionally rare. Some brilliant
photos showing just how rare it is can be seen on the ever
excellent
Pewit blog.
There were three photographers
stood on the other side of the field on a proper public
right of way, and I really hoped that they would try and get
too close to spoil everyone's enjoyment and stamp the bird's
head in. But they didn't. They just kept to a sensible
distance and behaved themselves. Lame. Still, bags of
entertainment can be had on Birdforum, where sensible debate
about the ethics of photographers stamping rare birds heads
in never boils over into mindless repetitive inanity. Have a
read of it
here, it gets really good when someone starts using
loads of capital letters and exclamation marks. It always
gets good when someone starts using loads of capital letters
and exclamation marks.
I don't know what that bird is
above. Nor the one below.
This was a pretty neat bird,
though if you were to try and explain why a dog-shit brown
bird running around a field catching insects and probably
catching a few nasty diseases as well, made it pretty neat
then the average non-birder may struggle to be convinced.
Still, fuck 'em, they're all bastards.
Later that day, after a great trip
to Brantano shoe shop (is there such thing as a bad trip to
Brantano shoe shop?) and a coconut macaroon, I had a wander
about on the moors towards Bleaklow just off the A57. Back
in my days in the Scouts we were always told that we should
never tell our parents about being touched or photographed
with no clothes on as they wouldn't believe us, and we were
also told that the worst thing you can wear in wet weather
is jeans, so ever since then I've always worn jeans in wet
weather. Including tonight. It was shit. I got soaked.
Hope Wood Moor
I suppose I should have realised that I was
going to get soaked through, what with it raining and
everything as I was driving there. But it was definitely
worth it, seeing as I saw eighteen Meadow Pipits and seven
Red Grouse. Definitely worth it.
That photo above isn't Shire Hill. I don't
know what it's called. I like Shire Hill, I'm sure you all
would too. If I'd taken a photo of it then you could
appreciate it better, but I didn't, and so you can't. I
could try and describe it if you like? Best not though. The
photo below (through bins, even I'm not that shit, I think)
is of a Dipper. I don't know what it was called, so I'll
just pretend I do and say its name was Kevin.
I knew there had to be Dippers
here, largely because someone told me that there were. Other
than the Dipper, other niceness included three Stonechat(s),
a male Kestrel which caught something so pathetically small
that it then sat on a post and just looked down in shame at
his feeble bounty before flying off and leaving it behind,
two Sparrowhawk(s), a Red Grouse, a Skylark (yes!) and a
huge enormous flock of twenty Goldfinch(es).
Walking down the A57 on the way
back to Glossop, there were a few House Martins lurking
about over the houses - you know, as they do - and then one
swooped (swept?) down and vanished into the overhanging bit
of the roof. And then another one did. And then another.
Hang on? Surely they're not still breeding this late in the
year? So I hung about and watched as adult House Martins
kept on returning to three different nests, and presumably
they had kids in there, otherwise it would just be a bit
stupid. Suddenly thoughts of ornithological glory crossed my
mind - wow, just think of the sciencey type papers I could
write about this! The latest ever record of a breeding bird
in the world, ever. Surely this was actual concrete evidence
of global warming? Shit, I had just made the most important
discovery to Western civilisation since George Foreman's
Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. I was
definitely going to become a Fellow of the Royal Society for
this, no problems. This was like Derek Ratcliffe and the
whole DDT thing, and when I say DDT I don't mean the
WWF wrestling move that Jake the Snake Roberts used to do. I
was going to get serious kudos for this. If I died
tragically young then even Mark Cocker would have to write
an obituary for me in British Birds and The Times:
With the
untimely death of Tom McKinney, Britain - no, the whole
world, has lost the best person ever, even better than that
Mandela bloke... [go on to list all of my amazing
achievements]... he is survived by his fifty-seven deformed
children and a huge monument in Trafalgar Square.
Fuck yeah!
Then I got home and checked BWP 5, and found
out that in north-west Europe young House Martins will often
be in the nest until mid-October - pig's arseholes! Why
don't I know this stuff? So my birds aren't even
exceptional. Fucking BWP, what a load of shit. The pictures
are fucking wank. Bastards.
Classic WWF clip. Jake the Snake
Roberts vs Ravishing Rick Rude. Look out for the DDT thirty
seconds in. Now that's got to hurt:
***MEGA*** NORTHUMBERLAND WHITE-RUMPED
SWIFT CRESSWELL POND 9.10AM THEN FLEW SOUTH
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuucking
heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell," I said. A mad scramble to find
optical equipment followed, and then a mad scramble to find
car keys followed that. There was no fyacking way I was
missing this. Ex-Miss Cole drove to petroleum station, Yaris
was filled with petroleum, car was pointed north, roads were
driven on.
Logical thinking and calmness then filled
the car - the bird flew off south, so let's get somewhere
strategically placed should it be relocated further south
along the east coast. Due to the number of observers, the
clever money would be on Spurn, but being stuck out on a
limb at Spurn is no good should the little white-arsed twat
pop up at Filey, or maybe again at Cresswell. Being close by
the A1 (for foreigners: the A1 is a road) was definitely the
way forward. And it just so happened that Fairburn Ings RSPB
is just by the A1, and it's also not far from the M62 (for
foreigners: the M62 is a road, well actually it's a
motorway, which is a road. I think some of you foreigners
call it a highway, or a freeway, or something else. You say
tomayto, I say tomarto; you say Jim
Davidson, I say vile repugnant little cunt,
though not to his face as he'd probably deck me [for
foreigners: to "deck" someone means to beat someone up]).
Fairburn Ings RSPB, where two Night Herons
have been hanging out for a while. Fairburn Ings RSPB, the
site of what was probably the worst ever day's birdspotting
I've ever had. Ever. And I've had some bad days. Believe me.
Or don't believe me. It's entirely your choice. Who am I to
say what you can and cannot believe? Anyway, just believe
me...
It was 1991, and a January coach trip with
North Staffs RSPB group to Fairburn Ings RSPB reserve.
Possible birds to expect included Smew, Water Rail and other
birds which at the time seemed like huge great fun-bags of
excitement to a novice birdspotter such as myself. The
reality was that it rained all day, Ma McKinney forgot to
bring my winter coat (or "anorak" as she and my nan
embarrassingly called it out loud in BHS every August
when it was time to buy my annual winter school coat), two
of the hides were closed due to repairs and I got really
sick on the coach. We also failed to see either Smew or
Water Rail. Highlight of the day was finding Eric the coach
driver and begging him to let us shelter inside before I
died of pneumonia.
Today was a little bit better. But not
exactly brilliant. We didn't see either of the Night Herons,
though the wind meant they were more than likely tucked up
tightly in the trees. And the White-rumped Swift was never
relocated, but two swifts with white rumps were seen on the
Wirral, one of which was reliably believed to have been a
Pacific Swift. What with a possible Booted Eagle in Kent, it
was quite a day - pity nobody managed to nail any of these
birds down though.
We managed to satisfy ourselves with a
savoury salty Aldi buffet snack-pack selection of waders
such as Green Sandpiper, Greenshank and Black-tailed Godwit,
and then headed back to the visitor centre for Feast ice
lollies and digiscoping. I know that many of you have been
lamenting my lack of top quality photographs for a while,
well it was because we lost the battery charger to the
camera, only then we found it, and charged the camera, and
now here returneth the art of digi-blasting.
Coal Tit
Finch sp.
Willow Tit
(even though it didn't make a noise it is one, so don't
argue)
As is this one
And this one
Note wholly
dark bill lacking pale mark on cutting edge near the base of
the upper mandible
For some very authoratatatative
words on separating silent Willow and Marsh Tits, check out
these words of wisdom from Poecile on Birdforum,
someone who has handled hundreds of both species. In short,
features that were at one time thought to be kick ass for
identifying the two, such as the wing panel, bib size, cap
gloss, winter feeding habits etc... are all now looking as
though they are variable/bollocks. Rear cheek cleanliness, a
good look at the bill and flank buffiness are what counts.
So there.
This was a hardcore dawn-to-dusk
hardcore no-sleep-till-Brooklyn hardcore serious focussed
intense hardcore birding weekend to celebrate my top pal*
Lyndon's 30th birthday. And no sooner did I arrive in
Sherwood Forest and knock back a lukewarm bottle of
Kronenberg, than a group of 3 Mallards came wandering up to
the patio doors with a supporting cast of 2 Moorhens and a
singing Woodpigeon. Things were looking good. Another
lukewarm bottle of Kronenberg slipped down far too easily
before a walk to the sub-tropical paradise indoor waterpark
thing with slides and rapids and a wave machine, yielded
many Chaffinches, many more Mallards and Moorhens, and
fucking billions of Coal Tits, or Badgerheads as I like to
call them. Later that night after even more slightly less
lukewarm bottles of Kronenberg, a walk outside for a piss
(slash) paid off big time as a Tawny Owl did its late night
stuff. Why didn't I just take a slash (piss) in the toilet?
I'm sure you may very well be wondering. Well piss off and
mind your own business.
Saturday was a blur, but the Kroenberg were
a bit cooler. 2 Mute Swans under a tree were just fucking
great. The rugby was very blurry. Apparently England won. I
can't even remember who they were playing.
Sunday started sort of blurry, then bleary,
and then it got feisty, as we all went off and killed each
other with paintball guns. The walk to the paintball theatre
of death was worth it alone for the single Great Crested
Grebe on a pondy-lake thing. Wildlife of any description was
nowhere to be found in the theatre of death, though there
was some big fat cunt on the green team who didn't move much
(no doubt because he was a big fat cunt) and kept cheating,
and he may not necessarily have been human. The walk back
from the paintball theatre of death provided the birding
highlight of the weekend (and, let's face it, it was a
weekend positively drowning in birding glory) in the form of
no less than five Egyptian Geese of definite wild origin.
They were so good that I thought about phoning them in to
"the pager services" along with the spitefully annoying tag of
in an area with no general access, only then I realised
that a) Egyptian Geese are wank; and b) the expression "the
pager services" is a really shit expression - don't ask me
why, just take it from me that it is (a really shit
expression), so don't say it. Or write it. In fact, just
forget about it altogether. "Forget about what?" Excellent,
that's the spirit!
Sunday night bled into Monday
morning, and then my kidneys started to bleed from a bit too
much Kronenberg, which was thankfully a bit chilled at long
last. But I don't mean "chilled" as in intoxicated with
sedatives, but "chilled" as in cold, as in a cold
temperature, as in having been inside a fridge.
Monday started early. Too early. But the
hardcore dawn-dusk birder knows of no such feeble things as
sleep or fatigue, especially when you find out Center Parcs
kick you out of your chalet at 10am and you wake up still
pissed, only to find a chalet that looks pretty much like a
seriously vandalised, vomit-soaked, crumbling wasteground
before your very eyes. I played the I'm far too ill to
help tidy up card to great effect and fucked off out for
some fresh air and hardcore birding, this morning hitting
the big time with no less than four calling Nuthatches, a
Great Spotted Woodpecker and record breaking numbers of
Siskin.
You know what they say: you can
take a horse to water, but can't buy a cat sat on a mat unless you're
on heat.
PS I'm sure you'll all be glad to know that
I'm going birding by the seaside soon, so I might have some
pretty birdies to tell you about. But to tide you over till
then, have a read of the hugely entertaining
Punkbirders' seabird spotting trip report on the
oh-so-nearly-Ultimate Pelagic.
There's loads of hills around Glossop, and
the best of them all is Shire Hill, the best hill ever.
Shire Hill is so good that the local Glossopians once wanted
to gold plate it in honour of how good it is, only then they
changed their minds and built a communal DIY abattoir with
an attached Costa coffee shop instead. 2 croaky Ravens
rocked out alongside a sky filled with hirundines (15
Swallows), and then 2 Stonechats did stuff on a wall that
was indescribably brilliant, in an un-describable way, so I
shan't even try and describe it. 2 Grey
Herons were sat in a tree looking down in envy at 1 Grey
Heron sat by the fishing pools, the very same fishing pools
which happened to be holding a single eclipse drake Tufted
Duck and a staggering count of 10 Coot, well at least that's
what it says in my notebook, only I'm pretty sure that there
were actually only 2 Coot, so I must have been exaggerating,
like the time I said I could eat my own ears, and then
someone bet me I couldn't, and so I tried, and I couldn't do
it, and everyone laughed at me threw bricks at me and kicked
me in the nuts.
5th September, Glossop
Today I quite fancied a walk up a hill to
look over a valley that looks like it might knock up some
juicy raptor-festing (ie a Kestrel and possibly an outside
chance of a Sparrowhawk). Left the house and
it started raining. Went back inside the house. Later that
day I discovered an absolutely monster Jackdaw roost near
the railway viaduct. Must go back and count it.
Intrigued by the intriguing Peregrine (see
1st September), I decided to pay Woodhead Reservoir another
visit, just in case there were more Peregrines, or even lots
more Peregrines. There weren't. In fact, there was
shockingly little to see. And you know things are bad when
the highlight is 6 Tufted Ducks and a rather feeble
post-breeding flock of 12 Mistle Thrush.
Pissed it down all day. Just about managed
4+ Red Grouse out of the filthy murk. No Kinder Egg
shop at the top. And I had a real twat of a hangover as
well.
Still trying to suss out the lie
of the land, but those reservoirs in the Woodhead Valley do
look potentially fractionally interesting. Access seems to
be a bit of a slag though (ie you can't really get to them
that easily). On the way I stopped at a car park, looked up
and saw a Peregrine, I mean a PEREGRINE, because
you're supposed to get all excited about them. I did (get
all excited about it), so much so that I lost a kidney
in the process. Thankfully I found it under the front right
wheel. Three Redpolls were also around, but I couldn't see
them, largely because I was looking for my kidney.
