Lancashire

Great Grey Shrike

By my calculations I hadn't seen a Great Grey Shrike for 4 years, so I thought I'd go and see one, and I did (see one). To get there you need to go into Padiham town itself, take Moor Lane near to the church, then 1st right onto Guy Lane and then 3rd right onto Grove Lane. Follow Grove Lane for about a mile and then you'll come to Hollins Farm where the bird should be, though shrikes can often go missing for ages.

Great Grey Shrikes eat anything, absolutely anything. I once saw one eat a pair of trousers, and someone told me that they saw one in Norway trying to eat its own face. Whilst watching the shrike trying to eat a fencepost, I got chatting to a fellow birdspotter who asked me for a look at the photos I'd taken. To my surprise he said that the above photo was brilliant and asked whether I could email him a copy later that night. "Are you sure?" I asked, "I mean, it's a really shit photo." But no, he definitely wanted a copy, so I sent him the photo and then received the following reply:

Thanks Tom, Sorry but the shrike doesn't look as good on my computer as it did on your camera. Do you know if I can get a photo from anyone else?

I did warn him it was shit.

***

Slavonian (Horned) Grebe

Not far from the shrike at Barrow there is a little pond by a McDonald's, and on this little pond is a little Slavonian Grebe that sits on the water just in front of you. You don't even have to leave the car it comes so close. I was hoping that Birds Britannica would have a really good entry for Slavonian Grebe containing lots of cod history as to where the name came from and maybe a tale of how during the Cold War the Russians were using carrier grebes to smuggle Britain's nuclear blueprints back to the Slavic homelands. Unfortunately Birds Britannica has very little to say about Slavonian Grebes, and it would appear that even a Tudor King didn't eat one during a massive banquet, thus giving it the distinction of being the only species of bird on the British list to have escaped Henry VIII's legendary birthday all-you-can-eat buffets, in which he most famously served up Spoonbill satay and spicy Guillemot kebabs.

There were so many photographers blasting the poor creature that the repeated camera flashes would occasionally force it into an epileptic fit:

***

Pinkfeet (also known as Pink-footed Geese, Pig Geese and Sandi-Toksvig's-Lesbian-Trouser-Press Geese)

The most predictably boring thing you can say whilst walking around the pens at Martin Mere WWT is to wish out loud that all of the captive ducks and geese are wild: "wouldn't it be absolutely amazing if all these were actually wild!" you say as you pass a pen filled with Marbled Teal. Yawn... To be fair though, it would be amazing. Sadly the pens recently seem to have gone to pot, and a walk though Africa will now provide you with great views of not-exactly-African Hooded Mergansers and mental Cape Barren Geese (put your foot in their pool and just see what happens, but don't blame me if you lose a shin.)

Blackbird. How come I couldn't actually take a photo of it in which it actually looked black? Answers on a postcard please, just don't say that it's because I'm shit, even though that's the reason.

Martin Mere is famous for its Whooper Swans, and as each bird can be identified by the unique yellow pattern on the bill, they are all given individual names which can be used to track their movements. Wacky research scientists at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust name the swans after their favourite serial killers, and the bird in the photo below is Ted Bundy. I once sponsored Rose West, but sadly I received a letter from the WWT saying that she had been shot somewhere in Iceland after a perilous 24 hour journey over the north Atlantic.

Ted Bundy the Whooper Swan - note necrophilic tendencies and an interest in violent pornography.

23rd January

Another Day in Paradise

Note graffiti. Where? On the wall. I can hardly see it... read on...

Ah, back out on the old bike again. Old as in less than a month old. So not really very old. I must have driven past the place in the photo above at least... hmm, let me think... at least two times, yet I'd never noticed the graffiti until I passed by on the old/new bike. I wonder what it says?

Well it's not exactly easy to read, but I think it says:

BLAIR + BUSH THE SATANS

BLAME THE JUWES

I can't begin to describe just how stupid this is. This wall is in the middle of nowhere, by a tiny minor road leading from nowhere to nowhere. It must get less exposure than any other piece of political graffiti anywhere else on Earth. Even the Olympic shaped piss rings that Captain Scott made in the snow just before he died (a fact strangely left out of his official biography) have been seen by more people than this. There are many lessons to be learnt here, perhaps the most important being that if you do insist on being anti-Semitic, then a bit of background reading might help to refine a few spelling issues.

A few hours out in the rain (yes it's still raining) checking Moorfield's muddy fields for lost big pipits (without success) was not entirely without pleasure, with Buzzard, 2 Little Owls, 2 Ravens, 4 Goosanders and 2 Treecreepers all making it so worth the while. Chin up, it's nearly autumn again. But superstar bird of the day award went to a high flying Dipper at Hurst Reservoir, the highest flying Dipper I've ever seen, attaining an altitude of approximately twenty metres over the lake - wowzer!

Hurst Reservoir

19th January

Glaucous Gull

Is it just me, or has it been raining solid for over a week now? Obviously if you're not British then this doesn't really apply, though perhaps it's also been raining for a week everywhere in the world? Maybe. Doubt it though. I think Glossop has the highest levels of rainfall in the world. Obviously I don't really think that, that would just be stupid. One of them rainforests somewhere is bound to get more rain, it's implied in the name "rain" forest. I know what you're thinking, I'm bored too.

But you can't let the bad weather spoil your fun, even though it always does. When my eyes used to work properly I enjoyed going out in the rain, but now that I have to wear speccy four-eyes twat glasses I find coping with the rain really fucking annoying, and sometimes I'd just rather stay inside the house sat in a bath of my own bodily fluids, reading true crime paperbacks and then auto-erotically asphyxiating myself with a leather belt. No wonder my eyes don't work anymore. Still, grin and bear it, life could be a lot worse, but I don't quite know how. Birding by bike is also no fun in the pouring rain... Jesus this is miserable. I should probably stop moaning. New paragraph...

I love birding by bike in the rain. You get to experience so much more than you would if it wasn't raining, for example you get to chance your very existence every time one of the big lorries from the lime quarries gives you 30cm of space as they rocket past and douse you with a filthy spray of diesel layered shitty water. That's fun. You don't see many birds though. A Buzzard was soaring dangerously close to a private wood where, according to local birders, raptors tend to mysteriously vanish every March (raptors often tend to mysteriously vanish around here, no idea why, perhaps Richard Ingrams knows?), and the tiny pond opposite the entrance to Glossop Golf Club had 5 Goosanders on, which is pretty remarkable considering how small and filthy it is. A painful uphill slog (I'm still not good at going uphill on a bike - downhill I'm brilliant) eventually took me to Hurst Reservoir, the famed location of the legendary 1986 Hurst Reservoir famous legendary Hurst Reservoir Cattle Egret of Hurst Reservoir Cattle Egret fame. There was just a pair of Goosanders today.

But Man cannot live by bread and Goosanders alone. I wanted a new drug. One that wouldn't make me sick. One that wouldn't make me crash my car. Or make me feel three feet thick. What I wanted, no needed, was a great big white-winged dollop of ugly lice-ridden gull action injected straight into a major artery. And some late afternoon gulling at a private site in an undisclosed county in the British Isles did just the trick:

1st-winter Glaucous Gull

16th January

Islay (4th-7th January)

What better way is there to start a year than with a trip to Islay? Probably none... possibly one or two others... best to not dwell on it too much. But many of you will be relieved to know that Islay is now firmly OFF the trendy birder's radar. Up until a few years ago it was the winter destination in the UK for the trendy British birder, with the big-hitting trendy birding boys and girls heading up there in car load after car load, which resulted in inspiring articles written in birdy magazines. But now it's been abandoned by the elite, cast aside like a shitted pair of undercrackers thrown out of a car window onto the hard shoulder of the motorway. Indeed, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Islay has simply vanished off the face of the Earth, or is perhaps now even lying under 200m of Atlantic water. In our two winter visits we've bumped into a grand total of three other birders, which for a misanthropic hate-filled rat like myself is fantastic!

Loch Gruinart

However, it most certainly is still there and it still offers fantastic birding, only now less trendy folk like myself don't feel out of place. Let me put it like this: remember when Costa Coffee first came to Britain and it was strictly the preserve of only the wanky middleclass elite? And now just look what's happened - any old piece of shit like you and me can pop in for an overpriced Americano and a stale pastry. Well Islay is exactly the same... kind of. Of course there have been folk that have known about Islay for many a decade, then again there were those select few making coffee in those massive clunky percolators whilst the rest of us were guzzling down Nescafe and Maxwell House. What the fucking hell am I talking about?!

Barnacle Geese in snow. How do they cope with shit like that?

Islay holds about 45,000 Barnacle Geese from Greenland during winter, which by my reckoning has to be pretty much the entire Greenland population! They are literally everywhere on the island, and by covering as much area as possible you stand a good chance of picking up some vagrant Canada Geese, if that kind of thing floats your boat. This year we found three, last year two, and we didn't really have to try that hard. The only pain in the arse is that you pretty much always have to view the geese from your car, because at the slightest hint of a car door opening the flocks tend to either quickly waddle off over a dip and out of view, or just get up and piss off somewhere else altogether. Thankfully there are lots of other opportunities to get out of the car and cover some ground by foot - and let's face it, once you've seen one runt Canada Goose you've seen them all! Because they're so scrote-splittingly fantastic, here's a special bit about the Canada Geese HERE.

Local sightings from resident birders can be found on the Islay Birds blog:

http://islaybirds.blogspot.com/

Runt Canada Goose from across the Atlantic... maybe

We had such a good time last year that we had to come back, and we weren't disappointed the second time, in fact it was probably even better. You can read about last year's trip here: Islay 2007. This year we went for three nights and stayed in Bowmore, which I'd say is a better birding base than Port Ellen as you're pretty much in the middle of the island. If you're into whisky then this is liver failure Heaven. There was a live folk band in the Lochside Hotel on Saturday night which offered a perfect environment in which to sink way too many top quality local whiskies whilst listening to songs that positively encouraged a total disregard towards drinking sensibly! And because of the winter late starts you can be released from the police station, have your stomach pumped, shake off your hangover and still be out at first light... almost.

Machir Bay - wrap up warm!

It's the quantity of birds on Islay that make it so good. Stop at any coastal bay and you can be guaranteed five or six Great Northern Divers (Loons), a few Red-throated Divers, and countless numbers of Black Guillemots, Mergansers, Eider and Sperm Whales (last one might not be true). Inland you'll be unlucky not to pick up a Merlin, Hen Harrier or amoebic dysentery in a 180 degree scan of the horizon, and then there's just basic stuff like Song Thrushes, Buzzards, Ravens, Hooded Crows and flying Jeffrey Archers which are absolutely everywhere (don't ask the filthy lying criminal for an autograph though). But obviously it's the immense numbers of geese that take the top prize - fail to be impressed by that and you're a fucking damn cold-hearted bastard of a fool! There's good birding to be found pretty much all over the Island, but here are the places that have particularly tickled my nuts:

Loch Gruinart RSPB

The biggest concentrations of Barnacle Geese are here, so is most of the rest of the common wildfowl and waders, and we've also nailed two Canada Geese here. Hen Harriers can be picked up pretty easily, and there's been a young Golden Eagle hanging around for a while as well.

Geese, geese everywhere.. the little feathered fuckers were all over the place

Claggain Bay

Packed full of Red and Great Northern Divers plus wagon loads of Black Guillemots, Eider and Red-breasted Mergansers.

One of many attempts to photograph a Slavonian (Horned) Grebe. And when I finally managed a photo it was shit anyway!

Loch Indaal

A massive loch so lots of different places to view from. The head of the loch is pretty difficult to work as there are tight bends and not that many places to pull in safely. Viewing from just east of Bowmore got us brilliant close views of numerous Slavonian Grebes, time-stoppingly beautiful Long-tailed Ducks, hrota Brent Geese and plenty of other tasty treats. On the other side at Bruichladdich (don't even ask how to pronounce it) were a big raft of 1,000+ Scaup and 4 Purple Sandpipers on the rocks. It's also supposed to be excellent for Otter. Supposed to be. The head of the loch often has a few Whooper Swans that you can see on the small roadside pools.

Goldeneye and Slavonian Grebe. Can you believe how fucking small the grebes are?

Machir Bay

Chough everywhere, Merlin and a flock of about 40 Twite makes suffering the exposed beach well worth a visit.

Red-billed Chough

Loch Gorm

Not too much on the loch itself, but a complete drive around proved to hold the highest number of Greenland Whitefronts. There's also good numbers of gulls in the sheep fields, so this has the potential to kick you in the nuts with something nice, not that we had any much luck with gulls this time. There are Whooper Swans on the small lochs by the road, we had a small Canada Goose in 2007, a Golden Eagle distantly viewing towards Ardnave (probably the Loch Gruinart bird), and there are Merlins left, right and centre.

Wild Greylags and wild flesh-eating sheep. Give the sheep a wide berth, they're vicious bastards.

Ardnave Point

Chough central - big numbers here, including a pre-roost flock of 35. There's Twite, Snow Buntings, Hen Harriers, good numbers of Barnacle Geese and the best views over to Jura in the distance.

Dusk at Ardnave point

Neriby Farm

Canada Geese are regularly reported from here and nearby Mulindry, and seeing as it's a short distance from Bowmore, you can slip in a quick scan of the Barnacles on the way to somewhere else. This year we managed a Canada Goose with two hybrid Canada x Barnacles.

More geese

***

Last year I made some pathetic joke about Islay and its relevance to top Australian totty Isla Fisher, but further investigation has revealed that Isla Fisher was actually named after Islay - they just forgot the Y at the end. Wow! It's true, Wikipedia never lies. And so to finish, here are five other equally, if not even more, fascinating facts about Islay that you never knew:

1) Deranged cannibalistic loveable buffoon Idi Amin (of Ugandan genocide fame) owned two houses on Islay, including one in the pretty village of Bridgend. During his well earned holidays away from murdering a few hundred-thousand of his own people, Idi loved nothing more than to relax by a heavenly peat fire and sip his favourite Islay whisky Ardbeg.

2) Islay is the site of Britain's largest pothole. A popular tourist attraction, the immense crater can be found on the A846 just south of Bowmore. It measures an incredible 45 metres in circumference, is a staggering 79 metres deep at its deepest point and is believed to contain the wrecks of over 14 lost cars and motorcycles.

3) The popular English word tree is believed to have its origins amongst the earliest settlers on Islay. Tree is a modern day derivation of the ancient Gaelic expression t'raigh 'eaeigh, and its original strict definition was he who has no voice but whose many arms hold aloft the leaves.

4) The building of the new Renal Unit at Islay Hospital was funded by a generous donation from Sir Richard Branson. Smug cunt Branson drifted in by hot air balloon to open the new unit, and later remarked: "It was very windy. But the views across to the Isle of Jura and beyond were quite magnificent."

5) The controversial movie Taxi Driver was filmed on Islay. Criticised by moral campaigners for its alleged glorification of extreme violence and teenage prostitution (disturbingly portrayed by local Port Ellen girl Jodie Foster), the film's director and local resident Martin Scorsese later went on to create many more hit films inspired by and filmed on his home island. Other Scorsese movies including The Last Temptation of Christ, Gangs of New York and Cape Fear were all filmed on Islay using local actors and actresses.

There's always a few Eider hanging around to wave you off as you head back home

13th January

White-crowned Sparrow

The most famous driveway in birding history

Our story begins, like all great stories, in a car. But this is no ordinary car. This is a car fuelled by hatred and scorn. A car propelled by contempt and loathing, loathing for one thing in particular - the Cley White-crowned Sparrow. You see, dear readers, I've not been well for a while (I've almost died three times in the last six days [not entirely true]) and I've been feeling especially shit over the last two days, so I really didn't want to get up 3.50am (am!) and drive to Norfolk. And so I didn't. Instead I got up at 3.50am and let my regular female birdspotting companion do all the driving. Think that's unfair? Well this is millennium-2000-plus-eight and it's equal rights for all (except the poor, obviously).

Ah, but Norfolk! Norfolk, Norfolk, Norfolk! The smell of decaying turnips hits you light a lightning bolt from Hell just as soon as you trundle precariously over Sutton Bridge and gasp upon entering the incredible landscape of Norfolk, Nelson Mandela's county (it's true. It says so on the signs).

The beautiful village green of Cley-next-the-Sea (soon to be Cley-in-the-Sea when the flood defences crumble - see what that does to your fucking extortionate house prices!) had been churned up into a septic stagnant bog by twitchers' cars, a swamp filled with disease and misfortune. Rats scarpered from passing cars as a rain of blood fell from the darkened skies above. It was a place for neither man nor beast. A telephone box stood alone, tall and proud, the last great bastion of a once mighty empire (fuck you British Telecom!), and to its side amassed a legion of inter-continental birdspotting soldiers and warriors of fortune, warlords of the vast expanses of their homelands, armed with tripods, magnifying optical equipment and devices to capture images for future generations to gaze over in disbelief: "What a world of torturous pain and horror our forefathers lived in!" they will say to each other as they sip futuristic hot drinks from virtual-reality porcelain cups.

A phonebox and the White-crowned Sparrow twitch (notice how much fun everyone's having. Also notice rock-hard bloke at front wearing shorts - respect!)

Upon arrival, dear friends, we eschewed the usual convention of waiting around to see the bird, and instead headed immediately for the nearest hostelry, the Three Swallows public house. Inside we were warmed by a gentle fire, hot beverages and bread based snacks, but soon it was time to leave a home-from-home and tackle the mighty Sparrow of the Driveway. Unfortunately there was no chance to get a photo, so instead I had to go back to basics, and as the pen is allegedly mightier than the sword, I drew it with a pencil on some paper and then I wrote things about it on the side of the picture. Click on the thumbnail below to view the full picture:

As you can see, one hell of a bird!

Time is no lady of leisure (she's a slag!), so without further ado we were off to Salthouse to sate our ornithological appetites with Bunting jam:

Snow Buntings

More Snow Buntings

Two Lapland Buntings were to be found by careful ocular filtering of the 60+ Snow Buntings, and the gathered crowd were delighted by the high quality views. But soon it was time to leave and head west to Wells pitch and putt course to look at geese.

Spot the slightly different one

Black Brant (can I tick it? Yes you can... not!)

And from there it was a journey far, far inland, to a place of myth, magic and mystery, a place where we drove pointlessly around lots of minor roads looking for a Snow Goose. Pointlessly as it was nowhere to be found. As a wise man once said: "Fuck it!"

But now, oh dear and faithful readers, a point has been reached where our story must come to an end. And so, like all great stories, it ends at the RSPB reserve of Titchwell where a ringtail Hen Harrier was seen and a pair of gloves were bought (it's got a really interesting story attached to it, but sadly I can't be bo...).

11th January

Canada Geese on Islay - pure evil and strange bio-mechanical metal detecting machines. Your help would be much appreciated. If you haven't already clicked the underlined blue words then click on these underlined blue words. And one other thing, FIGHT THE POWER!

8th January

Welcome to the all new 2008 diary - isn't it completely different? No! The first proper entry will be with you shortly (have a little... patieeeeeence), but for now here's a blast from the past, the first ever entry about birding from my childhood diaries. Enjoy!

***

14th March 1989

Dear diary, today I did my first ever bit of birdwatching: I think I have at last found a real friend, though obviously it's not a real friend it's actually a hobby, but it's as good as a real friend if you think about it. Isn't it? What happened was that during school dinnertime I noticed two fourth years - Martin Jenkins and Laura Dalton - sneaking off behind the sports annex to do some French kissing. Those two are always up to that, the filthy rotters. So I sneaked into the rhododendron bushes and watched them French kissing each other - it was disgusting. Laura Dalton wears a brace and she always gets her hair stuck in it, and Martin Jenkins has big chunks of ear wax that always fall out onto the floor. Yuck! As I was watching them French kissing (eurgh!) I saw a beautiful bird just to my right, a lovely mix of pink and blues. So after I watched them finish their French kissing, I sneaked back out of the rhododendron bushes and went to the library to find a bird book. It didn't take me long to find the bird. It was a beautiful Jay. What a lovely bird!

I told my best friend David Grantham about the bird. He called me a gay and punched me in the stomach and then kicked me in my balls. We're always joshing about like that. There was one time when he tied me to the bus stop with the arms of my coat and then spat in my face and then kicked me in my balls. He's a right character!

But it's not all been good today, oh no, I've been quite upset, dear diary. Mrs Mulhoon announced that the principal role in our school play the Tailor of Gloucester, would be played by that fat tramp Andrew Baker. Andrew flipping Baker! Can you flipping well believe it? Andrew Baker is going to get his comeuppance, just you mark my words - he's a right flipping fat rotter and no messing. Everyone knows only too well that I should have been cast as the main role in the Tailor of Gloucester. I have much better diction than him, the fat stuttering git. But, dear diary, I have think I may have found a way in which I can get that fat flipping rotter Andrew Baker out of the way, and claim the principal role of the Tailor of Gloucester for myself. What I'm going to do is this: Libby Jenkins in the second year says that Andrew Baker's dad has a very weak heart, so I'm going to kill Andrew's pet dog with my uncle Sylvester's air rifle. This will traumatise Andrew Baker's dad so much that his weak heart will give in and he'll die. And then Andrew Baker will be so upset that he'll have to take lots of time off school and I'll rightfully be the Tailor of Gloucester!

You may think that's pretty drastic, dear diary, but you haven't met trampy Andrew Baker. He wears gypo trainers that his mum bought him from the market, and his dad smells of pork scratchings. Someone with that kind of parentage doesn't deserve a principal role in a theatrical production. And my mum also says that Andrew Baker's dad is a dole-dossing scumbag, and in a way he doesn't really deserve to live, so I think Jesus will forgive me and let me go to Heaven.

Not a lot else happened today, dear diary. I tried to look up Janet Killington's skirt under her desk, but she caught me and told on me to Mrs Mulhoon. Mrs Mulhoon sent me outside. I'll get my own back though. I'm going to do a big number two in Mrs Mulhoon's top drawer on her desk. And then I'm going to tell everyone that it was Janet Killington who did the number two. And then she'll be expelled. And then she'll drift into petty crime, prostitution and heroin addiction. I'll have the last laugh, dear diary, just you wait and see!

Anyhow, nighty night, sleep tight.