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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.
See, I told
you those spinning things make it fly
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