Guinness - worth waiting for. And
paying for. And then drinking. And then going for a
piss. And so forth...
The Bridges of Madison County is the best film
ever made. Starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep ("Dingo's
got my baby!"), it tells the story of a woman and a
man (played by an actress and an actor) and has bits
with people crying in it and lots of acting in it as
well. It was originally supposed to be called The
Bridges of Madison Square Garden, only that made no
sense, so then they called it The Bridges of Madison
County and the rest, as they say, is history. Film
history. Annals of film history. And Oscars too. Good
film. Nice to watch with a cup-a-soup and a pack of fig
rolls. It's wank really. I fucking hate Meryl Streep.
So, all of that stuff above has been leading to this...
... keep scrolling down ...
... wait for it ...
... almost there ...
... nearly ...
... wahey! You have arrived. Only now I can't remember
what it was all leading to. Something to do with Blue
Dragon 3 minute chicken and chilli noodles? No, that's
for later. Much later. Now is the time for this bit: the
Bridges of Madison Square Garden. No, that's
wrong, I mean:
The Bridges
of Ross
That's right, the Bridges of Ross. THE BRIDGES OF
ROSS. Think lighting and thunder, or even thunder
and lightning, think horses rising up on their back legs
in terror, creaking doors, think castles and sucking
blood, and all to the backdrop of a church organ playing
Bach's Toccata and Fugue. The Briiidddges of
Rossssssssss...
One of the less inclement moments of
weather at the Bridges of Madison Ross Square
The Bridges of Ross are widely regarded as one of
Europe's premier seawatching sites, which is odd seeing
as there's only one bridge, the Bridge of Ross, so there
you go. But whatever you do, and I really, really,
really mean this - I'm genuinely being serious here,
this is serious time, this is like really, really
serious, so no fucking about - whatever you do, never
ever, EVER, say that the Bridge(s) of Ross is (are)
Britain's premier seawatching site. NEVER! And if
you do decide to say that, then make sure there are no
Irish birders within earshot, because if there are, you
will most certainly not be leaving Ireland with as many
teeth as you came over with. The Bridge(s) of Ross is
(are) in Ireland, Eire, and that isn't Britain, or the
UK, or even England. I know, I was just as surprised
myself! It was like finding out about that woman in
Eurovision a few years ago who was really a man.
The only remaining Bridge of Ross. The
other two collapsed under the weight of discarded broken
fold-up camping chairs, umbrellas, wind breaks and
wrecked tripods
Seven full days of birding at one of Europe's
premier seawatching sites surely had to yield a monster
tally of sexually arousing maritime beasts? Definitely!
Indeed whilst we were there 2 Fea's Petrels and a Little
Shearwater came past. And do you know how many of them I
managed to see? Take a really wild guess. That's right,
all three of them!!! 2 Fea's Petrels and a Little
Shearwater - what a fucking week!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some parts of the above paragraph are not entirely true,
namely bits about seeing 2 Fea's Petrels and a Little
Shearwater.
The Maginot Line. I don't even know
what the Maginot Line is. Sounds good though
On our first night there 11 birders, sitting close
together, somehow managed to miss 2 Fea's Petrels (or
possibly one doing a loop?), in fact we missed them by
nearly 12 hours, not even finding out until the next
morning. That's quite some miss! What happened was a
classic case of Wank Biscuits, in which two
birders (shit hot birders as well - these were no
stringy Fea's) were sat by themselves out of view from
us, and they were blessed with 2 Fea's that swept by
just under our noses. Jesus Titty-fucking Christ!
And the Little Shearwater? Well Sarah and I were 6 miles
away eating a ton of fried swine when that fluttered
through. What happened there was also another classic
case of Wank Biscuits, and after the most
convoluted series of knotted Chinese Whispers and
rumours, I'm not even sure whether anybody saw it, or
whether I've even just made it up. The only details I do
know for certain was that a group of somewhere between
4-15 birders from either Belgium, Holland, Finland or
Wales, saw a Little Shearwater somewhere in Ireland at
some point over the last 7 days, though I may not have
got all of those details correct.
Night or day? It all just seemed to
blend into one.
Someone once said, I can't remember who it was, that
birds themselves are only a small part of the birding
experience. Well that's actually complete bollocks, I'd
say that birds tend to constitute a pretty fucking huge
part of the birding experience, unless you're one of
those bellends who stand around talking loudly on your
mobile all the time, selling heather and promising the
coming of the Apocalypse. Maybe you scrotal
protuberances really do think that birds themselves are
only a small part of the birding experience, I don't
know whether you do or don't, I don't even know who
"you" are. You could be lepers for all I know. But...
... someone once said, I can't remember who it was, that
birds themselves are only a small part of the birding
experience. And that's very true is that. The birding
over the last week wasn't really all that good, add to
that pretty horrendous weather, the sea often vanishing
behind a veil of damp that will probably shave a few
years off our life expectancy through respiratory
illnesses, and yet we had an absolutely brilliant time.
And that was, by and large, because of the people - our
fellow birdspotting comrades, united in their quest to
escape reality and sit on plastic chairs for over 10
hours a day, 9 of which were spent trying to keep dry
under broken wind-fucked umbrellas. I've done a lot of
laughing over the last week, a reasonable percentage of
it in Kilbaha's two excellent pubs with some great
people, and laughing is good, it helps to dull the pain.
Birders tend to get a bad name, the outside world look
upon us as a collection of socially inept loners and
miscreants with moderate learning difficulties, and
they're probably right. But the world needs socially
inept loners and miscreants with moderate learning
difficulties. Long live birdspotting! Only perhaps with
a few more birds to spot next time.
Cow with the most disproportionately
large head I've ever seen. You had to see it in the
flesh to really appreciate it. The word
disproportionately has a hell of a lot of letters in it.
Like 80 letters or something. Cow only has 3 (letters in
it).
14th August
I met this bloke the other day...
The Leicester Llama seems to have got himself a bit
wound up over a
twat he met at Rutland Water, and it made me realise
that from time to time the world of birdspotting really
does throw some exceptional wrecks of Human beings in
your direction. Here are some of my own personal
favourite lunatics I've met over the years:
1) "Martin"
Cornwall, 2001. Myself and the then Miss Cole are
walking around a reservoir when we are joined by a
non-birder who asked us what interesting birds are
around. Presuming that all birds would be of some
interest to him, I told him about the first bird I saw
just by the side of him, which was a lovely little Sedge
Warbler.
"Sedge Warbler?" the non-birder asked.
"There's a Sedge Warbler here?"
"Indeed there is, in fact there's quite a lot,"
said I, to which the non-birder took off his rucksack
and took out a pair of binoculars (still in their
leather case). Ah, so he IS interested in birds,
thought I to myself.
"Where was it?" asked he, now becoming a bit
excitable.
"Just there," said I pointing, when suddenly the
Sedge Warbler flew out of the top of a small bush.
"There it goes," said I, at which point the
non-birder ran like a maniac along the path to where the
bird landed. After pacing about and trying to peer into
the bush, he shouted back that he couldn't find it.
Sensing that socially uncomfortable times were fast
approaching, I took a deep breath and walked over to him
to explain that the best way to see the bird would
undoubtedly be to not try and climb into the bush. And
you'll never guess what happened next...
... go on, guess ...
... that's right! That all too annoyingly familiar sound
of a birdspotting pager went off, and the presumed
non-birder pulled a shiny new birdspotting pager out of
his pocket. So he was a birder? And then guess
what happened next...
... go on, guess...
... that's right! For some unknown reason, completely
out of the blue, he called me Martin.
"Martin," he began, "I've been here six times
looking for the Green Sandpiper. I keep reading about it
on my pager. Why hasn't there been any news about the
Sedge Warbler, Martin?"
I'm not entirely sure why, but I didn't quite have the
heart to tell him that my name wasn't Martin, and so I
just went along with it. "Well," said I,
"Sedge Warblers are too common to be broadcast on the
pager. If birds like Sedge Warblers were being reported
then your pager would never stop going off."
Logical!
To which he said: "I've never seen a Sedge Warbler,
Martin."
Now I know what you're thinking, but I swear this is all
true. It's as true and pure as Hilary Clinton after
showering herself in elderflower cordial. So I, Martin
McKinney, promised the maniac that I'd not only show him
a Sedge Warbler, but that I'd also show him a Green
Sandpiper, or four of them if he wanted. Delighted, he
shook my hand and then put his binoculars away into his
leather case and then back into his rucksack.
"You might want to keep them out," I advised him.
"It's okay, I'll take them out when we stop next,
Martin," he said.
7 metres further along the path I saw another Sedge
Warbler, so we stopped and the maniac took off his
rucksack, took out his binoculars and missed the bird by
about 35 seconds. Binoculars packed away again, advance
a further 15 metres, another Sedge Warbler, binoculars
taken back out, bird missed again, binoculars packed
away again.
By now there was absolutely no way out of my name being
Martin, so when Miss Cole picked up a Green Sandpiper,
she now had to address me as Martin, and then fell to
the floor in a slightly concerning fit of uncontrollable
laughter. I eventually pointed to where the Green
Sandpiper was and then we made a run for it. I've never
seen him since. Unfortunately. Not.
2) Sanderling Man
Many of you will have met Sanderling Man, he haunts one
of Britain's most famous reserves. I assume he lives
nearby, he may even live in a ditch on the reserve. In
the 3 times I've actually spoken to Sanderling Man, he's
never once correctly identified a Sanderling. The first
time he ever called me over was to show me a Temminck's
Stint - it was a Sanderling; he then showed me 3 Little
Stints - 3 Sanderlings; later that same morning on the
way back to the car he showed me the Temminck's Stint
again - it was a Sanderling.
The next time I met Sanderling Man was on the reserve's
beach looking for sea duck. There was a Purple Sandpiper
on the beach which he could see and nobody else could
find. "It's in with the Dunlin flock," he
shouted, becoming increasingly frustrated at everyone's
incompetence. Eventually I worked out what was going on
- the Dunlin flock were Sanderling. What makes
Sanderling Man so special is that he's actually not a
bad birder, whilst seawatching he was pretty sharp, but
he seems to have developed a curious mental block with
Sanderlings.
The third time I spoke to Sanderling Man was in the
middle of a field looking for a Ross's Goose. There were
no Sanderling present, but if there were he would
undoubtedly have mistaken them for something else.
3) Dead Rabbit Man
Dead Rabbit Man is actually a friend of mine, so I'll
shall attempt to preserve his anonymity as best I can.
However, despite being a thoroughly decent chap, Dead
Rabbit Man does have this peculiar habit of deliberately
driving over rabbits and then dumping them in his back
garden, which in turn brings in the Ravens. In huge
numbers. The last time I visited Dead Rabbit Man he was
attracting over 30 Ravens which were roosting on the
roof of his house each evening. Dead Rabbit Man once
gave myself and Mrs McKinney a lift in his car. Before
he set off he asked, "Are either of you squeamish?"
and then tear-arsed along the road before swerving off
into a ditch yelling, "Fucking hedgehog!"
Dead Rabbit Man lives in a very (very very) isolated
part of the British Isles, and the introduced hedgehogs
and rabbits are a menace to the ground nesting birds
there, though why he takes the corpses home with him to
dump in his garden is anyone's guess. There must be
local rivalry as to who can get the most Ravens on their
roof.
4) Eyeball Paul
It's unfair to mock Eyeball Paul (I don't know if his
name really is Paul), as God the almighty creator and
giver of the precious gift of life was clearly having a
bit of a laugh and joke the day he made Eyeball Paul.
Again, some of you may well have met Eyeball Paul, or at
least met his left eye, which has this peculiar tendency
to roll all over the fucking place whilst his right eye
remains completely motionless. But don't pity Eyeball
Paul, he's always out and about with friends, though
whether they're there just to laugh at him I'm not too
sure.
5) Dave Tourette
"The fucker's just by the yellow fucker. It's flying
over the yellow fucker now. Are you on it, you cunt?
It's fucking off like a right fucker of a bastard. The
fucker's going over the blue fucking thing. Fuck me it's
fucking off fucking fast. Are you on it yet, you fucker?
It definitely fucking was one. You saw the fucker, yeah?
The twat just wouldn't fucking sit still. What a
fucker!"
The above is a rough transcript of a standard Dave
Tourette oration, as if composed by The Bard's very own
hand. He is yet to form a sentence without at least one
profane word in it. He is my hero.
12th August
Excessive seawatching is bad for your health
The following extracts are from Tom McKinney's
birdspotting jotter found at Porthgwarra in Cornwall,
along with a Staedtler black and yellow HB pencil, a
copy of The Racing Post and a street map of
Carlisle.
Tom has not made contact with anyone since Saturday
afternoon. Police believe that 87 hours of seawatching
in 7 days may have finally have tipped TM over the edge.
He was seen by a number of birders on Saturday afternoon
at Porthgwarra, proclaiming that he was being attacked
by a wardrobe and threatening to leave for Denmark in
order to begin a horseshoe repair business. He was last
seen on CCTV in London boarding the Eurostar wearing an
I've been to Majorca T-shirt. He is now believed
to be somewhere in northern Germany scouring souvenir
shops and claiming to be Anthony Eden.
***
2nd August
Night in Leeds on JS's stag weekend. It
was supposed to have been just a quiet one. Got back to
hotel 3am. Threw up next morning. Oh well, I'd rather
stay young, go out and play! Had to drive to Cornwall
from Leeds with very bad hangover. Weather poor. At
least the birds should be good.
3rd August
Not a bad day. I kicked off at 6am and a
Cory's Shearwater came through 11.55am. I skipped lunch
hoping that the Cory's would be the first of many. It
wasn't. Finished 8pm. Walked back to B+B. Knackered.
Watched Kevin and Perry the movie and had a
chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle. Life don't get better
than this.
4th August
Great Shearwater came through 6.28am.
Should have been the start of big things to come. It
wasn't. Still, both the big Shearwaters for the year.
Nice. I swear the fisherman on the little white boat
keeps giving me funny looks.
5th August
Tried my best not to look at the
fisherman today, but he kept coming really close. I
think he may even have exposed himself to me. I'm
starting to worry that I might be invading his privacy.
Are there privacy laws regarding watching a fisherman
catch fish?
Note to self: check Wikipedia when
back home for privacy laws regarding fishermen.
6th August
There was a helicopter out all day today.
Someone told me it was a training exercise, but how did
they know for certain? And why did someone bother to
come and tell me that the helicopter was on a training
exercise? To divert me from the truth? No sign of the
fisherman today. Coincidence? A helicopter and no
fisherman? There's something going on. Can't get my head
around it. Need to sleep.
7th August
Spent seven hours behind a rock hiding
from the helicopter. I swear it's the RAF. Can you
believe that they train young men to drop fire on
people, but their commanders won't allow them to write
fuck on their aeroplane because it's obscene! Oh
Kurtz, why are the greatest always the maddest? There's
you, and then there's that bloke who wrote all that
bollocks about cats. It was a rhetorical question. I
think. I'm not even sure what a rhetorical question is.
The Germans call a dictionary a lexicon. Ha! No, you're
wrong. It's every Tuesday apparently. Other than in leap
years when it's usually on a Wednesday.
I read, much of the night, and go south
in the winter.
8th August
I'm cold. I need a crispy pancake. Or
some cheese. Anything. Cheese melts snow. There's a
wardrobe floating about on the water. I would suggest
that it got there by boat. If I had a boat I'd just go
out in it and float about and sometimes use the engine.
Or if it had a sail I'd just kill a load of people. I'd
call my boat the Celine Dion, and God bless all
who may sail in her! No, I'd call it the Happy Dead
Pig Warrior. No, I'd definitely call it the Fat
Dead Dog Chicken Fucking a Pig.
So cold.
Need sleep.
Happiness is only real ...
9th August
... when shared.
I swear I didn't do it. It was some
foreigner. Probably a rummy vagrant. Eyes too close
together. You know the type. They eat too much pork, you
see. Shhhhhh! Don't say it too loud! (You're not
supposed to mention their eyes.) [Something about
superstition.]
Good afternoon. Thank God (metaphorically speaking of
course, I don't want to offend any atheists or Satanists
- even though you're both going to Hell), the day has at
last arrived when this Spanish crap has come to an end.
So here you go: Spain, Extremadura, job done, only took
two months. "Enjoy."
***
29th March
The last day in Spain
Digi-binned (I don't know what that
means) Black Stork
It wasn't really our last day in Spain, but it was our
last day of birding before we went back to Madrid for a
few days, so you'll be overjoyed to know that this is
indeed the last entry in the most protracted trip report
in history - and my God (metaphorically) what a mediocre trip report it's been!
Let's think back and recount all of the many highs...
... ahem, we thought we'd finish up birding at Monfrague seeing as
the two other visits had been so good, and there was
also some unsettled Eagle business...
Booted Eagle (a pale one)
... no not that Eagle. So far we'd seen four species of
Eagle (Spanish Imperial, Golden, Short-toed and Booted)
but Bonelli's was playing hard to get. The Puente de Cardenal is supposedly a really good site for them, so
we went, and we waited... Alpine Swifts had
arrived in good numbers since our last visit, as had
Red-rumped Swallows, in fact I made this extremely
incisive observation in my birdspotting jotter:
rr swallow - common. recent influx
But nicht Bonelli's Eagle. Not to worry, it wasn't a
lifer and we'll see them again, just enjoy what's
around, because next week it'll be back to wandering
over the moors in the piss-pouring rain watching Red
Grouse and Meadow Pipits - if I'm lucky. And then two
raptors soared slowly over the ridge and out over the
middle of the reservoir...
...well ejaculate all over my decaying
great-grandmother's corpse! Two Bonelli's Eagles!
Truly marvellous and most fortuitous.
Bonelli's Eagle - note everything
you're supposed to note
Marvellous indeed! Time for some food, after all we must
have been out birding at least 30 minutes by now
(EXTREME!), so we feasted on kidney pie and oxtail,
washed down with punch and warm milk. The weather was
incredible, and there was nothing better to do than sit
in a shallow valley just before the Fuente de los
Tres Cano viewpoint and watch Vultures of all three
variety constantly pass over...
Egyptian Vulture
... and listen to Dartford and Sardinian
Warblers scratching away, mashing it up and mixing
it large - I am down with the kids, I mean kidz (three
cheers for iPods, knife crime and unprotected sex on
park benches!). But one bit of sylvia scratching
was unlike the other two, it was far too musical, even a
bit Blackbirdy... hmmm... then there were two birds
singing... but where the fuck were they? One seemed
slightly closer than the other, so we attacked either
side of a small group of trees in a classic pincer
movement taken straight from Rommel's diaries. And what
did we eventually manage to find? Orphean Warbler
- a nice big bastard of a male! Or, should I say,
Western Orphean Warbler. Should I say Western Orphean
Warbler? I've seen Eastern Orphean Warbler before, but
these Westerns were a first. Do I get a tick? I could
have a look in Shirihai's Sylvia Warblers, only
the last time I did that I opened it up, saw £60 written
on the inside jacket, and then threw the fucking thing
out the window in despair - sixty fucking quid? SIXTY
FUCKING QUID??? Jesus H.Christ! I could have bought a
six bedroom detached house for that. So two (Western)
Orphean Warblers, spectacular! The next viewpoint had a
couple of Spanish birders who spoke near perfect English
and put us onto a Black Vulture nest - excellent work!
And so I repaid them by showing them the Eagle Owls (in
not so perfect Spanish) at Portilla de Tietar,
where tonight an adult was getting grief from a pair of
very, very, very, very, very stupid Ravens:
The two Spanish birders were absolutely over the Moon
with seeing an adult, so much so that they began to tell
me exactly where to find bucket loads of awesome local
birds (some I didn't even know were in the area) include
Wallcreepers! Fucking Wallcreepers - and
typically we were pissing off back to Madrid the next
day! Why didn't we meet them the week before? Jesus
Titty-Fucking Christ!
Some neat graffiti - note the
internationally recognisable smoking spliff and
cock+balls motifs
Rock Bunting
Not to complain though (fucking WALLCREEPERS!!!), Eagle
Owls were a brilliant end to a brilliant week of Spanish
birdspotting. The final morning at the Finca Santa Marta
was memorable for all the right reasons - our bill
turned out to be a fair bit cheaper than we were
expecting. Hoorah! So there you go. That was Extremadura,
hope you enjoyed it, but don't really care if you
didn't. There's only one bird to finish with, and that's
WALLCREEPER, but unfortunately not in this trip
report. "Trip report?" Don't make me laugh.
Anyway, here's a Stork:
And here's what happens when you think drinking beer
before wine will make you feel fine:
And this illustrates what happens when you're born
retarded and think you're that bloke from Nazareth:
7th July
Scream for me Twickenham!
After five minutes of singing about a dead albatross,
there's a section in Maiden's preposterously epic song
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner where Steve
Harris plays a slow three note bass line along to a
pre-recorded sound of a creaking ship, when a voice
begins to quote a passage from the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
which inspired Maiden's longest song. On Saturday
they played the whole song at Twickenham, it was the
song I most wanted to see Maiden play above any other.
In the section I described above, just as the voice
began to speak of "four times fifty men (and I hear
nor sigh nor groan)", a blue mist began to rise from
the stage as Bruce Dickinson wandered around in a long
black cape, and then something struck me: I realised
more than ever, without any sense of bias and speaking
completely objectively, that Iron Maiden are the
greatest band ever, and every other band and their lame
fans are shit-eating bastards.
But the fact remains that being a Maiden fan will
neither win you friends nor influence people; a top
with Eddie on will not make you more attractive
to the opposite sex; nobody will give a shit if you tell
them that Adrian Smith's solo in Aces High is the
single greatest gift to Western civilisation. Even when
they were allegedly fashionable in the 1980s Maiden were
already a decade out of date: they rose to superstardom
in a music scene dominated by British bands like
Ultravox, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, whilst the US
market was selling out of albums by Michael Jackson and Madonna as fast as they were making them.
So why are they so big? This year alone they've played
to 1.5 million people in a tour that began in Mumbai and
will finish in Moscow after a circle of the globe that
takes in 31 countries. I see it like this, can you show
me one other band that can deal with Winston Churchill, the book of Revelations,
nuclear holocaust, the Crimean War, ancient Egyptian
mythology, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, murder of native
American Indians and clairvoyance within two hours, and
then for its lead singer to fly the band, its crew and all
the staging to the next gig in their very own Boeing
757? And that's why they're so big, because when you're assaulted
by a world in the grip of a credit crisis, negative
equity, bird flu, global warming, bio-fuel, religious
fundamentalist oil catastrophe, it's reassuring to know
that there are still people willing to spend tens of
thousands of pounds on an enormous Egyptian mummy with
movable limbs for the sole purpose of entertaining a stadium
filled with people raising their hands and saluting the
Devil. Laughable? Yes. Completely
ridiculous fantasy? Yep. On Saturday you're watching Iron Maiden sing
about aerial battles in WW2 and wondering what the
fucking hell Bruce Dickinson is doing waving a Union
Jack, on Monday you're back cleaning tramps' shit out of
public toilets and having Birdseye fishfingers and
McCain's curly fries for
tea - and that's if you're lucky.
Even with a combined age of
312, Maiden are relentless: after this tour they're back
in the studio to record their 15th album, another
world tour will follow shortly after its release.
Support on Saturday was provided by some useless
dickheads who are the current cock-sucking favourites in
Kerrang magazine, but the basic problem with any
band other than Iron Maiden is precisely that - they're
simply not Iron Maiden and therefore fucking shit.
Except perhaps AC/DC. And maybe
some others. Anyway, fuck off.
4th July
Shitting hell, tomorrow I'm off to London to see Iron
Maiden, and from looking at the set list that they've
been playing on this tour, it seems like a dead cert
that they'll be doing Rime of the Ancient Mariner
in all its 13 minutes of glory. I will probably never
again get the chance to see Maiden play Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, so this is big, this is epic. This
is like Moses and tablets of stone. Maiden. Fucking.
Rule.
Spain again. We're almost there, just stick with me. The
end is nigh...
***
28th March
The Penultimate Birding Day
Trujillo
The reason we'd failed
miserably with Sandgrouse was probably down to the
rather tardy starts to the birdspotting days. In fact, I
don't think we once made it out on the road before 10am.
Hardcore. So today was going to be an early start and
those bastard Sandgrouse were going to be nailed. And
then we started drinking this weird lemon brandy the
night before and... out on the road about 10am...
Those plains out by Santa
Marta de Magsasca are really good, like really good.
Today there were 35 Great Bustards, including a
foam bathing maniac:
This is
supposed to...
... make
gentlemen Great Bustards...
...look
hot to any nearby females.
11 Montagu's Harriers in one
field today, and an impressive flock of 100+ Cattle
Egrets, also the usual ridiculous numbers of
raptors, Calandra Larks, Great Spotted Cuckoos,
etc etc etc... A genuinely amazing place. And then
frustration. A Pin-tailed Sandgrouse was calling
not too far from us, only it was completely and utterly
invisible. It must have flown behind a small ridge, and
that was that. We later heard from local birder John
Muddeman that some friends of his were at that very spot
first thing in the morning and had reasonable numbers of
Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, so there you go, that's what
happens if you don't get your lazy arses out of bed and
out looking for birds. Bone idle pair of bastards that
we are.
Well there you have it, a salutary
lesson in how not to watch birds. Had to go back to
Trujillo for one final look at the Lesser Kestrels,
there were over twenty showing fantastically well over
the square, and then back to Finca Santa Marta to have a
wander around the vast olive groves. Azure-winged
Magpies were heading to roost in impressive numbers,
my first Cuckoo of 2008 cuckood away like a...
err... cuckoo clock (?), Short-toed Treecreepers
and Scops Owls were both out and about calling
close to dusk and there was a Black-winged Stilt
on a crappy little dirty puddle sharing space with two
Red-eared Terrapins:
There was also a Dachshund called
Brandi:
It liked to chew pine cones:
3rd July
The Moors
Mountain Hares are great. End of. (which "means end of
the story", as in there is nothing much else to say
about it). So are badgers. And both are even better when
they're just a short walk away from home. I am Cornholio.
Saw a Sparrowhawk catch a House Martin and then saw
another/the same Sparrowhawk catch a Red Grouse. The
Curlews were not amused. Neither were the two fly-over
Redpolls.
"Me? Go on a twitch? You must be joking. I'd never do
anything as decadent as that. Oh what's that? You'll
pick me up? And petrol is free? Well, how can I refuse
that!" And then an hour later I was sat outside the
pub with a lukewarm pint of Kronenberg, waiting for Mr
P.Woollen to arrive in his sturdy chariot with
passengers Messrs Curtin and Payne, before being whisked
off to Barnsley for the Little Swift. Thankfully
I saw the 2001 bird, and I sure was thankful for that,
because the Old Moor bird had vanished about an hour
before we got there. Still, Spoonbill, Green Sandpiper
and Little Ringed Plover were all ticks for my fanatical
yearlisting maniacal tendencies, so well worth it. Also
managed to year tick a certain
pie fanatic.
And just to quash a rumour that I heard tonight, no I
haven't quit either birding or twitching. I just can't
quite find the enthusiasm to update this blog as much as
I used to. I'm still out a few days every week,
traipsing over hills looking at Red Grouse(s) and Meadow
Pipit(s). I've been thinking of taking up archery. Or do
I mean fencing? Can't remember now.
30th June
It's less than a week until the greatest day ever. And I
mean the GREATEST day ever. Shit me I'm excited. Iron
Maiden, Twickenham Stadium, 52,000 sell out crowd,
Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. Fuck you Alicia
Keyes!
Here's (yet) another day from Spain. Don't worry,
there's only two more days left...
***
27th March
Judgement Day
Guadalupe Monastery (no I don't know why we went)
Way back in the last century when we took a birdspotting
trip to India, we kind of felt obliged to visit the Taj
Mahal, mainly because my cousin had said how good it was
and because Princess Diana had been there. And so,
reluctantly, we took a day off birding at the phenomenal
Keoladeo National Park (aka Bharatpur) and went to have
a look at the big stupid white building. Turns out that
it was absolutely fucking incredible, so good that we
made a second visit just before going back home. So ever
since then we've made an effort to visit these tourist
monstrosities, Guadalupe monastery being one of them.
Mistake. Big mistake. If you're thinking of going then
don't. Poor. It's a big stop off on the Catholic
pilgrim tour, but even if you're into the whole body
and blood of Christ thing, then I'd skip this place, it
might make you renounce your religion. Heresy and so
forth.
Still, clouds and silver lining, the drive there through
the Sierra de Villuercas was fantastic, plus
Hawfinches flying over the road and a couple of pale
Booted Eagles soaring over the monastery was
mildly entertaining. Time to move on...
On the way to Monfrague we pulled over by a big
reservoir with some reasonable looking Roman ruins. The
Romans are about the only thing I remember from history
lessons at school, mainly because our teacher at the
time was always drunk. Here is how the Roman ruins of
Extremadura would look in a classic school textbook
modified by generations of less than diligent pupils:
Moving on again, and a quick stop at the wetlands south
of Saucedilla conjured up two Little Bitterns
just by the roadside, at least two Purple Gallinules
and three Savi's Warblers, among other things,
but I live in fear of carpal tunnel syndrome should I
attempt to write them all out.
Savi's Warbler
Anyhow, the whole day was really treading water for the
main event, another go at a proper not-at-all-hidden
view of an adult Eagle Owl at Monfrague on the Portilla
de Tietar cliff face. The weather was perfect this
evening, and the very first bird I saw after leaving the
car was a Spanish Imperial Eagle, followed by a
Black Stork. Thankfully, being evening,
there were only a few people at the viewpoint, and I set
to scanning every square inch of the cliff face. Didn't
take too long to find this:
adult Eagle Owl - fuck yeah!
Using my fluent Spanish (which entailed shouting "Buho
Real! Buho Real! Buho Real!" and pointing a lot), I
told ("told" being a real stretch of the truth here) a
few birders who had there scopes trained on the nest,
which was some distance from where the adult was sat.
They seemed pretty pleased and one even hugged me.
Apparently in all of their regular trips out here they
had never once seen an adult. Well that's obviously why
we English beat the shit out of the Spanish Armada
all those years ago. Is that racist? Not too sure.
Potentially thorny subject even all these centuries on.
Let's leave it well alone.
So, excellent views, but still no real action. Until...
... for some reason the adult woke up and started giving
a pair of Griffon Vultures higher up the cliff a very,
very menacing look - remember Eagle Owls are as big as
bears and have talons the size of meat hooks like the
one in Texas Chainsaw Massacre that Leatherface sticks
that girl on. Not nice. So you really don't want to piss
off an Eagle Owl, even if you're as big as a Griffon
Vulture. But piss it off off they did, and, to all of
our most incredulous surprisement, the adult flew up the
cliff and began a mid air battle with one of the
vultures. Speechlessnessness overcame us all as the Buho
Real tried its very best to bring down the vulture, but
eventually it had to give up and went to check on its
young in the nest. This was all just amazing. And I mean
amazing. I know I talk a lot of shit, but this genuinely
sits very high up in my list of all time great birding
things. Even better than twitching American Coot on
Shetland.
A group of British birders then arrived, and one of them
(a gentleman) kissed me on each of my nipples after
joyously seeing the adult emptying its nest of shit and
puke as the two young chicks squabbled and begged for
food. The Spanish birders look at us in confusion as we
all kissed each other's exposed nipples, as is the
traditional way back home in Blighty. For those
of you planning on going, here's a little bit of
scribbling to help you find the nest:
A genuinely fantastic evening, and as a Rock Bunting
sang we watched the sun set on the undeniable best bird
of the day, a Red-legged Partridge:
That's real art
17th June
Link mania
Guess who was in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago?
That's right, me. This spectacular website was featured
in their
blog roll, and I didn't even know until I got a text
saying "have your hits gone up loads since yesterday?"
The Guardian is the best newspaper in the world,
especially when it has me in, and obviously I now take
back what I said about Simon Jenkins being a twat.
I suppose I'd better start updating more often.
Loads and loads and loads of links today. Loads. So lets
get started. Loads.
It's back! If you missed it the first time round then
don't be a stupid cunt and miss it again. The old
Leicester Llamas site was the greatest birding website
of all time, and the new one is shaping up to follow
suit. If you don't lose a lung laughing at
this post then, well, then you're just not right.
Being a country gent with a few thousand acres, the
ability to sniff out a good claret at five-hundred paces and far
too much time on my hands, my favourite monthly magazine
is The Field, the world's oldest magazine dedicated to
killing things. Obviously towny scum
like you just wouldn't understand it, but to try and
tempt sub-strata filth such as your good selves in from
the cold, this month's issue of The Field has a short piece designed to
appeal to the base needs of the disease-riddled working
man and woman who aren't expecting to inherit
Gloucestershire in the near future: fieldsport porn! The 2008
Women in Waders calendar, just as in previous years,
features wazzo birds with great jugs and heavily trimmed
clams, wearing nought but bikinis and waders whilst
looking a bit cold and baffled. Happy wanking! And if
that doesn't have your local Kleenex supplier completely
sold out of stock within minutes, then give this a try:
Beauty and the Bass.
And finally, two blogs to check out immediately (do it
now!) before the world ends from credit crisis disease
and global inflation of the rainforests: The
Yorkshire Wandering Tattler and
Worcestershire Source. Go to both now, go to both
regularly and tell others to go to both as well. Only if
we share the love can we guarantee that W.A.S.P. will
one day be back at the top of the Hit Parade where they
quite rightly belong.
9th June
"There's a bird in my garage," my non-birding pal James
said over the phone. Hmmm... It was obviously going to
be a Feral Pigeon, obviously, so it was quite a surprise
when he text me a photo of a Cuckoo! Not a bad bird for
central Manchester just five minutes away from United's
ground.
It transpired that the poor thing was on its last legs,
and despite attempts to give it some water and sit it up
in a tree, he eventually left it outside in a safe place
away from the local cats, and the RSPCA picked it up
yesterday evening. Head trauma from a foolish window
collision seems the most likely cause of injury,
probably sustained whilst zooming around like a lunatic
looking for a poor Dunnock's nest to massacre with its
own bastard offspring. Cuckoos are evil, but extremely
cool.
I can't think of anything amusing today. I've tried but
it's just not working. I was going to write
something about Simon King, Kate Humble, four ounces of
butcher's finest brisket and sticky belly flap cocks,
but I decided not to. Probably for the best. So instead
I'll just say that we (spouse and myself) went to
Northumberland to see the Lesser Grey Shrike. It was
just luvverly and even sang for us (Girl From Ipanema
and then my all time favourite song Bright Eyes from
Watership Down). Hats off to the
Newton Stringer for finding it.
The sparkle in your eyes, keeps me
alive
And the world and the world... the
world turns around
We also took a peek at the impressive tern colony on the
beach. It took me some time to realise that this
outstandingly beautiful Arctic Tern was less than two
metres away from me, in fact it was so close that I had
to move back a fair bit until my scope would focus.
Hole in the nose. A post-punk effect
of facial jewellery removal. I have no idea what I'm
talking about.
"Anyone see The Apprentice the other
night? Neither did I. I don't think this series is as
good as the others. I think I might watch it on BBC iPlayer
later. Mind you, it's Casualty tonight. I never
know what to watch on a Saturday night, it's a real
nightmare! I can't wait for the new series of
Strictly Come Dancing. It's a shame Kelly Brook had
to pull out of the last series, I reckon she had a good
chance of winning. And she's got great tits as well. I
saw a picture of them in The Sunday Mirror last year"
I suppose I should attempt to define my Glossop
recording area at some point, but that's a bit too anal
for me, and when I say anal ... I'm pretty sure Lees
Hill wouldn't fall into the Glossop recording area, in
fact it definitely wouldn't. For a start it's not even
in the same county; Lees Hill is in mighty Manchester,
whereas Glossop lies comfortably within dazzling
Derbyshire, the two counties often acknowledged as being
the greatest on the planet. I'm not wearing any trousers
as I write this.
There's been a Hobby at Lees Hill on and off for about a
week or so, and with a Red Kite having been seen in the
area it made the slog up there worthwhile. At least it
would have been worthwhile if either bird had been
there, which they weren't. No less then 7 other local
birders were there, and just as the evening seemed to
have drawn a blank, there was suddenly a shout for
Marsh Harrier as a female cruised along the edge of
Higher Swineshaw Reservoir, put on a decent show for ten
minutes and then vanished in a kind of northerly-ish
direction. Mambo! I am wearing (under)pants though.
Black-tailed Godwits - see below for
super patented foolproof hyperpower formula for identifying Bar- and Black-tailed.
I'm always amazed that people have difficulty separating
godwits, I mean it's not fucking brain science, you daft cunts. You
don't have to be one of those brainiacs like Michael
Portillo or those Red Army Faction lunatics to
understand it, for fucks sake! The easiest
way to identify godwits is to imagine writing their
names on the leg above the knee. The longer the name the
longer the leg, hence the longer name belongs to the
bird with the longer leg, therefore the longer name on
the longer leg correlates to the bird whose name has
more letters in it than the godwit with the shorter leg,
hence the shorter name. So imagine writing "bar" on the
upper legs of the birds in the photo above. Obviously
writing "bar" on those birds above would leave you with
loads of room, well that's unless you've got
massive, stupid, big, special needs handwriting and used to
chew your tie at school. I knew a lad at school who was
so stupid that he had to have his address tattooed on
his forehead so that people could help him get home. But
anyway... so write "bar" on the legs and you'll see that
it doesn't fit properly. But now write "black" on the
legs. Good? Excellent. So now you'll never balls them up
again. [Hudsonian Godwits don't count. And neither do
Marbled Godwits. Are there any others?]
Not a bad few days at Spurn, not bad at all, check out
the impressive totals
HERE. I went with
Menzie for the afternoon and had a decent few hours,
however, if I'd listened to him then we would have gone
for first light and had an incredible day. What
happened was this ...
... Menzie called me on Tuesday afternoon and said, "Do
you want to go Spurn tomorrow. It will be another dead
good day." To which I said, "Yes, that sounds like
a very good idea. I too agree that it will more than
likely be another dead good day." To which he said,
"Okay, we shall communicate later this evening and
finalise plans to go to Spurn together." To which I
said, "Yes, that sounds like a very good idea." Only
then I picked up TV Quick and noticed that not only were
there two episodes of Jeremy Kyle on back to back
tomorrow, but that Diagnosis Murder was also on. And so
I phoned Menzie back and told him that I would
unfortunately be unable to make it tomorrow due to
televisual commitments, and that I also had a family
pack of chicken Super Noodles that needed to be eaten.
Obviously he understood. Cut to Wednesday morning ...
... my pager had run out of battery and I was adrift in
a sea of no rare bird news. Anything could have turned
up and I would have been none the wiser, anything like
maybe a Thrush Nightingale at Spurn perhaps. So, some
three hours too late, when I eventually found out that
there had been a Thrush Nightingale at Spurn, the whole
stupidity of not going to Spurn for the day suddenly
crystallised into crystalline clarity. Thankfully Menzie
was still up for a trip over to the far east, albeit
after we'd missed the best part of a day. Oh well.
Menzie seemed less impressed than I was with the few
hours we managed to squeeze in, but 2 Icterine Warblers,
Marsh Warbler and Red-backed Shrike were some form of
compensation for a) not going to Spurn for the day; b)
not seeing/hearing/smelling the Thrush Nightingale, a
bird which I've now dipped over zero times, in fact this
was the first time I've ever attempted to see a Sprosser
(why are they called that?) over here, though I've seen
loads and loads and loads of them abroad (one [1] in
Cyprus ten [10] years ago).
And so what have I learned from the decisions I made
today? Absolutely nothing whatsoever. Will I do things
differently next time? Most definitely not.
26th May
***BREAKING NEWS*** (18:27)
White dog shit in South Yorkshire: further details can
be found at
Pieman Mark's blog. It seems as though Britain is
currently being blessed with somewhat of an influx of
albino dog eggs!
25th May
Glossop birding rocks!
It does, seriously. I've actually almost been
enjoying myself recently out on the windy moors and in
the moist woods. Almost, I mean let's not go too mad
here, let's not end up all Heather Mills-mad or Mohammed
Al Fayed-mental or anything. But in the last week I've
seen the following within a short walk of Glossop:
Merlin, Tawny Owl, Little Owl, Cuckoo, Tree Pipit, Ring
Ouzel, Garden Warbler, Wood Warbler, Spotted Flycatcher
and Pied Flycatcher. Obviously I can't say exactly where
some of them are as I know you cunts will go out and egg
the poor bastards. But I reckon that's not bad going at
all. Definite highlight though was stumbling upon a
Tawny Owl nest with some very entertaining chicks, but
don't expect any photos as I don't want my eyes ripping
out by one of the adults. Back to Spain...
***
26th March
Day 5 (five [v])
Warning, this contains photos of an even more terrible
standard than usual. Don't blame me, blame my financial
situation. If I was wedged up (trans: had bags of
cash) then I could buy a pricey DSLR and tell everyone
how amazing it is compared to shitty digiscoping. So
there you go.
Well on this particular day in Spain (remember that's
what this is about? Fuck me, I know this has been
dragging on for a bit, but the least you can do is to
try and remember what country I'm writing about here -
it's the one where people throw donkeys off churches and
stab bulls) we did more driving than birding, in fact we
covered no less than 67,000 miles in a single day! But
by day 5 our birdspotting trip list was now showing up a
huge gap, a massive gaping axe wound seeping
metaphorical juices of an unsavoury nature, and that
huge great big bucket-fanny of a gap was Sandgrouse. In
three attempts we'd fucked up with a 100% failure rate.
Surely the plains of Zorita had to have some? Yeah? Hmmm
...
... err ...
... wait for it ...
... oooooooooh ...
... no. Not one Sandgrouse of either species persuasion
on the plains of Zorita. 21 Great Bustards tried
to cheer us up, but sadly their noble efforts were to
yield no success, and we slumped off with disheartened
hearts to eat a massive pack of dulces tipicos
(cake with 3 tons of sugar in) and then throw up on each
other (but not like in those films you see with Thai
girls, well obviously I haven't seen them, but I've
heard all about them from my uncle Leonard. He likes
that kind of stuff).
"Enough plains!" said I. A landscape less
featureless was require
