So this is it. My closing post. Many thanks to all of you who have
regularly read this fucking shit over the last few
years. And to those of you that have just stumbled upon it
by Googling rugby players wanking, dogging
sites in Stafford or self-fisting helpline,
well thanks to all of you as well. Thanks for your emails, stuff
you've written in my guestbook, links from your own
blogs and of course our exchange of bodily fluids,
though not always with consent. It's
been great fun, especially the fluids bit. For those of
you thinking of starting your own blog, think no more
and get typing, it's the best and cheapest fun you can
have aside from auto-erotically asphyxiating yourself
whilst listening to an INXS album. Go for it. And never
forget the advice from Spinal Tap's Viv Savage:
"Have ... a ... good time ... all
the time"
I've been Tom McKinney, this
has been my birding diary, and you've been a great
audience.
Thank you and good night!
Tom
For Birds
For People
Foreskins
19th October
Tophill Low
No sign of the Amur Falcon. Now there's a surprise.
Since being sussed out on Saturday night, this first for
Britain managed to attract a staggering crowd of about
thirty people. I was told that when the bird used to be
a Red-footed Falcon it was a late riser, usually being
seen after midday, so we arrived after midday and spent
a few hours around the reserve. However, now that the
bird has become an Amur Falcon, it has changed its
habits and become invisible, or perhaps it's just pissed
off somewhere else altogether. Yesterday's strong wind
wasn't ideal for him to feed, but this is just clutching
at straws: let's face it, he's gone. And if not then
I'll eat my cat, or whatever the expression is.
Will there be another in Britain? Probably, there's
always another. It might be after we're all dead and
being sodomised in Hell by Satan, Hitler and Bambi's
mum, but there will be another. Will there be another
that will stay as long as this and be as easy to see?
Who knows, not me.
Having done a search through the amazing
BBi, there were 6 records of Amur Falcon from Italy
over the Straits of Messina between 1995-2000, then
there are some extra records listed on
Netfugl. BBi also pulled up the 1995 Red-footed
Falcon ID paper which has a brief but useful paragraph
towards the end about the possibility of Amur Falcon in
the Western Palearctic, a pretty neat prediction seeing
as the first one was seen in Italy that year.
But here's the problem. When this bird first turned up
at Tophill on 14th September (then vanished until it
returned on 19th) it had dark axillaries/underwng
coverts. By
2nd October it had developed a bit of Amur-ishness,
and by
8th October it was looking good for Amur Khan. So
that's a pretty narrow period of time in which it's
moulted - what if the next male of the same age that
turns up in early autumn doesn't stay as long? Will
anyone be claiming one from the other more subtle
features without the white underwing coverts? Obviously
I won't because I'll be sitting in my new kitchen
drinking tea, this outdoor birding thing's far too cold
for me - I only ever go where the pager tells me to go,
and even then there can't be too far to walk or too much
time required outside the car. And what if the next one
isn't a 2nd calendar year male or an adult male? How
easy are males in their first year, which seems to be
the age most birds turn up as vagrants in autumn? And
what about females? The Swedish and Hungarian records
were in July, and the Italian records are from the huge
spring raptor passage, so maybe the next one won't even
turn up in autumn? Why am I asking so many questions? I
don't even care. Or do I?
18th October
What? Amur Falcon? No fucking way!
My God. Things just got exciting. It would seem that the
long staying Red-footed Falcon at Tophill Low NR wasn't
one. Piccies
HERE. But is it still there? It was definitely still
around on Wednesday, but after that things seem a bit
uncertain. Looks like tomorrow's plans for a trip to
Caerlaverock for the tiny Canadian Goose may have to be
altered. See you there. I'll be the one selling biscuits
and wearing the Batman T-shirt. You can't miss me. Just
look for my distinctive shoes. And the tattoo of
Thatcher on my forehead.
Derbys 1w New Kitchen (pale morph) My House 10.55am
showing well. Please follow all onsite instructions and
mop up any spillages. £5 parking per car. New generation
DSLR users please photograph from a sensible distance.
Strictly no comments allowed about kitchen looking a bit
gay.
Total kitchen annihilation
We are the men, the men in the shed
Sex!
***MEGA-ALERT***
Gtr Man Tickets for AC/DC 21st April 2008 at
MEN Arena now on sale
Pity Bon Scott died choking on his
vomit
15th October
Tom McKinney's Kitchen Diary***4.30pm
update***
No sign Philadelphia Vireo, no sign cupboard doors, no
sign wall units, no sign dual-fuel cooker.
Looks like it's crisp sandwiches again
tonight (which is a good thing, because I LOVE crisp
sandwiches!)
Broken plug socket, but I still
decided to use it anyway. I know no limits -
TOTAL ANARCHY!
And now for some link action. Add these to your
favourites immediately, because if you don't then
I'll... I'll do absolutely nothing about it.
Philadelphia Vireo still present late afternoon, and now
we have a sink:
The walls have been raped!
I had a good chat with the men doing our kitchen about
men things, you know, football, footy, soccer, etc... We
talked about our favourite newspapers, I said mine was
the Sun, because you always get girls with big knockers
on page 3. Then I told them I was having chips for my
tea, because real men only ever eat chips. "And the
fuckin' wife's cookin' 'em!" I said. We all laughed
like proper men. I started
singing a man's song:
We are the men!
We are the men!
The men in the shed!
The men in the shed!
And then I stopped because it didn't make any sense.
Up-close
tap action. And in the background a lantern we
found behind the cupboards - just in
time for Halloween.
Tom McKinney's Kitchen Diary***1pm
update***
Especially for
Colin, because I know he's so interested:
There's an extractor fan. Did we ask for an extractor
fan? Too late now, there's a big fucking hole in the
wall. Hopefully it will be finished within 24 hours, the
Philadelphia Vireo is still at Kilbaha as I type, and
plans are now afoot to head over soonish to have a
squint at it - things are looking up! The word on the
street is that the Vireo is an incredibly rare bird.
13th October
Wake me up when October ends
Little Blue Heron - fluffy!
No, shoot me, put me in a lead box and dump me in the
North Sea. A Philadelphia Vireo in Co.Clare? I absolutely
fucking hate October. You wait all year for some decent
twitchy birds and then they all pour into Western
Europe in the space of three weeks - arse tits! I'm
afraid that this Vireo will have to wait a few weeks for
me to travel over to see it (do you think it will stay?), largely because some men
came into my house this morning and made my kitchen look
like this:
And when they leave tomorrow afternoon my bank balance
will look like this:
But hopefully when it's done the kitchen should, in
theory, look like this:
I can't really complain though - well
yes I can, but fuck it - having been to Ireland last
week to see the Little Blue Heron, which was an
absolutely brilliant bird. I mean it, you might think
it's just another white egret, but no, this was special,
real special, really special. So go and see it.
And as for not going because
it's in Ireland? Come on! There's a lot said about
imperialist British birders ticking Irish birds as if
they're our own, and opening up old wounds about our
historically wank treatment of the Irish, but I really
do think you're crediting a lot of British birders with
quite a bit more intelligence than they actually have.
Take a look at your average British twitcherer. I would
imagine that most Brits who have been over to see the
Heron can't even eat with a knife and fork or spell
their own names, so the whole Michael Collins thing
might go a wee bit over their heads, or more than likely
rocket past about 30,000 feet above their heads.
Bollocks to lists, these birds
are crossing whole oceans for fucks sake, so go and
behold the bewitching wonder that is the miracle of
trans-Atlantic avian vagrancy, and stick the numbers
game up your arse!
Pete Hines and myself flew
from Liverpool to Shannon early Wednesday morning and
got to the bird just after midday. It was so close that
in the end my scope wouldn't focus. The grotesque kink
in the neck is a bit worrying, but it seems perfectly
healthy and it has a great success rate when fishing.
Whilst we were watching it I
got a call to say that there was a facking Empidonax
flycatcher in Cornwall in Nanjizal Valley. Then came
another call saying it was either Alder or Willow. There
was only one thing to do. Drink. We searched around for
somewhere to stay, eventually finding the brilliant
Bard's Den in Letterfrack village, and then spent
the night piling down booze which made the thought of
getting back to Liverpool and heading straight down to
Cornwall seem far more enjoyable than it was probably
going to be.
The next day started with a
call saying that the flycatcher was still there. Opinion
was drifting towards Alder, but according to three
observatories in the States they won't even suggest a
definite identification in the hand, never mind
inaudible field observations. Back to have another look
at the heron and then further news that the flycatcher
had been trapped and was definitely an Alder, a first
for Britain and the rest of the world. "How do they
know it's Alder?" I asked. "I don't know," I
was told. Having got back and looked in my North
American birdspotting identification guides, I can't
even see how they narrowed it down in the field to just
Alder or Willow, why did Acadian not enter the mix?
Reading Kenn Kauffman's Advanced Birding he seems
to be holding his hands in the air and yelling "Fuck
'em! They're too hard!" All Tyrant flycatchers are
an abomination and an affront to the traditional customs
of polite, gentlemanly birdspotting.
Arriving back in Manchester early
evening on Thursday, we found out that the flycatcher
had still been showing up until dusk. Pete decided to
go straight down to Cornwall, I couldn't face it and
decided to wait on news and head down if it was seen
again the next morning. I had a terrible suspicion that
it would do an overnight bunk. Got back to Glossop and
suddenly felt absolutely shit. Now that I hadn't gone
the flycatcher was definitely going to be there, but
thankfully my long suffering wife took me out for
something to eat and then plied me with alcohol in an
attempt to get me to talk about something other than fly,
catchers, Cornwall and dark concepts of regret.
The flycatcher did do an
overnight bunk. Gutted. And now I see that there's a
possible Yellow-rumped Warbler on Scilly. October is
fucking brilliant!!!
I've already been emailed about prints
(seriously!) so if anyone would like any/all of the
above piccies for their own private viewing,
email me
and I'll let you have the full size ones to do with as
you please. And for free as well. How's that for
anti-capitalism? Smash the state!
7th October
A ticky dilemma
Have a look at these:
And please take a moment of your time to study the
better photos
HERE and
HERE.
It's a gull. It's also most definitely a juvenile large
white-headed gull or juv LWHG. Nice. But here's the
ticky dilemma. That bird above was video'd (yeah I know
they're shit) in March 2004 in Stornoway harbour when
the female Harlequin Duck was on Lewis. The bird was
reported as an American Herring Gull (now upgraded by
BTOURC as a big proper bird that you can properly tick
on your birdspotting list) but I had my doubts about it.
I thought that whilst it certainly could have been one,
it wasn't exactly a classic (big ball of shit with a
white head) and so probably not safe to add to my list.
Its absence in the BBRC report for 2004 suggested I'd
been wise to be so cautious, although it hadn't been
rejected either. And then the latest British Birds came
last week with the BBRC's 2007 report, and there in
plain English language right before my eyes, it said
this:
American Herring Gull Larus
smithsonianus (0, 14, 2)
2004 Outer Hebrides
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, juvenile, 6th March to 17th
April
Well fuck me! You may remember (I doubt it though) that
last year in Stornoway I saw another bird that I thought
looked better than the bird above but still didn't fully
meet my own high standards of acceptance (big ball of
shit with a white head), so what to do? The BBRC is
composed of ten of the wisest birdspotting men (all men, no
women, never any women - shameful!), some of whom have been
studying the dark arts of birdspotting identification
techniques since the dawn of civilisation - they are
trained in dimly lit cellars deep underground with only a copy of Svensson
and the New Approach for sustenance, endlessly chanting
the mystical incantation "emargination equal to tip
of P7, emargination equal to tip of P7" - and they thought
that the 2004 bird met the grade and banged it into the official
stats.
Now you see my dilemma, and what a dilemma! So now it's
up to you. You have to help me, please. I can't
sleep. I can't eat. I can't even face watching Holby
City, and you know things are bad when you can no longer
stomach an hour of the BBC's top medical drama:
2nd October
Leach's Petrels on the Wirral
Mega action, captured fantastically in
these shots (prints available £7.50)
Well it wasn't quite the legendary passage I was hoping
for, in fact on paper it may even come across as a bit
of a damp squib (what's a squib?) It wasn't bad though,
it was actually rather enjoyablous. Here's the log:
2/10/08,
North Wirral Country Park,
1015-1745
Leach's Petrel - 27 (a cautious count
attempting to kick out duplication from ones just
loafing about)
Manx Shearwater - 2
Med Gull - 2 adults
Common Scoter - 6
Arctic Tern - 1
Sandwich Tern - 4
Black Tern - 1 probable but c45 miles out
Guillemot - 2
Great Crested Grebe - 1
So not exactly life changing, but
Menzie and I had some splendidly close
Leach's action, and all in all a decent day sat in the car
for 9.5 hours looking
out at at a filthy brown sloppy sea.
Sand action - sex!
Kite action - sex!
adult Med Gull - sex!
Unfortunately none of us at our vantage point managed to
pick up the Sabine's Gull, Long-tailed Skua or Pom Skua
that came past, but I think a few of us did see this:
Yawn, the most cliched crappy
birdspotting joke in history
Just a few miles west from where we were positioned at
Leasowe is Hilbre Island, and Hilbre managed a nice
total of 120 Leach's yesterday. Hilbre always gets the
biggest totals, as does the Point of Ayr just over the
border in Wales, and I have a theory as to why:
Analysis: the three big messy black arrow things show
all of the Leach's being pushed by strong NW winds into
Liverpool Bay. Presumably most of them just fuck about
offshore and get massacred by Great Black-backed Gulls,
but some of them are foolish enough to venture inshore
and get massacred by kite surfers, wind turbines,
Peregrines and Great Black-backed Gulls. They also get
seen by birdspotters off Formby point. I reckon that
these inshore birds travel down the coast past Formby,
then get to Crosby and Seaforth (roughly the area of
Bootle on the map). Now at Crosby and Seaforth most of
them must be saying to each other:
"what the fuck? where the fuck am I? I liked that bit
up at Formby with the nice dunes, the Red Squirrels and
the rich football players, but this place is a fucking
disaster! What the fuck is all this shit? Why are there
enormous mountains of scrap metal everywhere? We've got
to get out of here like really, really quickly. Look
over there, what's that place? That looks nice. It's got
mountains and castles and the Welsh Mountain Zoo. And
there's beaches and a cable car up to the top of the
Great Orme. I think it's Wales? Let's go there. Now!"
And so, as the map shows fantastically well, I reckon a
lot of them just zoom straight across to Wales passing
Hilbre (the first big red square) and then Point of Ayr
(the second big red square) and get into Wales and then
get massacred by Great Black-backed Gulls. But you'll
notice on the map that there's a curved line from Bootle
to the big red square of Hilbre, and that's because
there are pretty big sand banks out there, and, as is
stated quite clearly in BWP1, most Leach's Petrels hate
flying over sand, as do most Oceanodroma, because
they absolutely hate getting sand in their vaginas.
But there are also some rebel Leach's Petrels, the ones
that say to the others:
"Fuck you all! I'm going to have look at Liverpool
and then fly close along the north Wirral shore past
Leasowe and have a look at the kite surfers. And I don't
care if I get sand in my vagina. So fuck you all!"
And then one of the other older and wiser Petrels says:
"He is young and foolish. But he will learn fast.
Hopefully not with his life or by getting sand in his
vagina. Because once you get sand in your vagina you can
never get it out and it itches like fuck."
But then there are others that are just curious. Like
the conversation between two Leach's Petrels (let's call
them Princess Michael of Kent and King Richard the
Third) which the
Sound Approach team recently recorded for their
Petrels Night and Day book:
King Richard the Third:"Come on, guys, let's
go into Liverpool. It's the European Capital of
Culture!"
Princess Michael of Kent:"No. We are not
going to Liverpool. And that's final."
King Richard the Third:"Oh come on. Stop
being so boring. You only live once."
Princess Michael of Kent:"No."
King Richard the Third:"Pleeeeaaaaasssseee.
They've got a Le Corbusier exhibition in the new
cathedral. It's supposed to be really good."
Princess Michael of Kent:"Who?"
King Richard the Third:"Le Corbusier."
Princess Michael of Kent:"Who's that?"
King Richard the Third:"You don't know? Le
Corbusier, or Charles-Edouard Jeanneret? You've never
heard of him?"
Princess Michael of Kent:"No."
King Richard the Third:"Wow! You really are
pretty shallow. He was like only the most important
architect of the twentieth century. He only like totally
changed the way buildings look. So kind of important
yeah? I'd have thought that most people would knew who
Le Corbusier was. Jesus!"
Princess Michael of Kent:"Were you listening
to Front Row on Radio 4 last night?"
King Richard the Third:"No!"
Princess Michael of Kent:"You were weren't
you."
King Richard the Third:"Maybe."
Princess Michael of Kent:"You fucking twat!
You'd never even heard of Le Corbusier before last night
had you?"
King Richard the Third:"Well fuck you all
then! I'm going to Liverpool! I'm sick of spending all
my life dodging huge waves and eating bits of shit off
the water. Look at me, I'm four years old and I've never
even visited a big city. How can you all live like this?
Fuck you all!"
King Richard the Third was later picked up inland at
Audenshaw Reservoir, completely and lost trying to get a
load of sand out of his vagina.
Etcetera
25th September
Good bird, shit views
Brown Shrike. Possibly
Currently one of many colossal eastern vagrants to
invade the northeast of Britain (retarded BNP-voting
cunts have no fear, this is about birdspotting, not
Bangladeshi immigrants), the Flamborough Brown Shrike
(as it shall now be known because it was at Flamborough
and a Brown Shrike) attracted a number of keen nature
lovers with a particular penchant for rare avian
visitors to Britain (excluding Eire/Isle of Man/Channel
Islands):
Silly people in a field at dawn
After an extremely tense two minute wait at Old Fall
hedge, someone came along and said we had to go and
stand on the road to see it. Cue an exceptionally tense
thirty second walk to the road. Then cue a phenomenally
fraught one minute wait to try and see the bird. Job
done by 7.15am.
Terrible views were enjoyed all round from the road, as
the selfish fuckers at the front sat tight for as long
they could and blocked everyone else's view, and then
moaned if you dared to ask whether you could please have
a look at the lovely bird. Pretty please! Eventually
some bright spark said we could go into the field we
originally weren't supposed to go into but were now
allowed into, and so we took heed of the wise sage's
advice and went to have a look in the other field. There
it was, sat about three miles away sunning itself, and
then it fucked off and never came back to Old Fall for
the rest of the day.
Cue a visit to Old Fall plantation, where a Red-breasted
Flycatcher played rotten-sod and refused to sit still,
accompanied by a chorus of at least 3 Yellow-browed
Warblers. Then cue a trip to the cafe for a heart-buster
fried breakfast followed by another stab at the Shrike.
Only now there were two Shrikes - crikey! A Brown Shrike
and a Red-backed Shrike only a short distance apart, and
everyone was able to see just how more rare the Brown
one was. The views were incredible as it sat about six
miles away in the heat haze, and the views were made
even better by most people not even being able to see
over the hedge by the roadside.
Eventually it was time to leave, and I can honestly say
that considering it involved viewing over a six hour
period, I've never seen a bird quite so badly in all of
my birdspotting adventures. But at least it was a tick
for my British tick list and, at the end of the day,
that's all that matters.
Silly people blocking a road
Amusing moments of the day in no particular order:
1) the bloke who got hit by a van and had to be
airlifted to Leeds
2) the bloke who shouted "Booted Eagle" when a Curlew
came over
3) the pregnant woman being sick and the cat that came
along and lapped her sick up
4) the fight between the one-legged dog walker who was
walking two three-legged dogs and the giant birder
wearing a studded leather jacket and carrying a copy of
Thatcher: The Downing Street Years
5) none of the above happened because it was all
extremely civilised
See you at the next mainland "biggie" that is less than
£30 worth of petrol away. Maybe.
24th September
An adult Brown Shirke at Flamborough Head this evening -
phwoar! And double-phwoar because we'll be there at
dawn. I have bad memories of the last one on Whalsay in
2004. We set off for Scotland and after no sign of the
bird all day we thought fuck it, boarded the ferry at
Aberdeen, got off at Orkney and went to North Ronaldsay
for a week, eschewing the bollocks that is twitching in
favour of old skool obs-based birdspotting. The bird
turned up on Whalsay again the next day - tit bollocks!
Whilst on North Ronaldsay we saw a Bluethroat,
Yellow-browed Warbler, two Lapland Buntings and a couple
of Grey Phalaropes, but elsewhere in the UK there was a
Cream-coloured Courser on Scilly, Western Sandpiper on
Brownsea Island, a probable American Kestrel in Suffolk
and that fucking Curlew at Minsmere (yeah yeah, I
thought it was a Slender-billed - fuck you all!)
Thankfully the then Miss Cole and myself eventually managed to pick
up the Courser and Western Sandpiper, the Kestrel was just a brief fly-over
and that Curlew can suck my nut sack.
So see you all in the morning, bright and early - no
waiting on news, you lazy fuckers.
22nd September
So who'd be stupid enough to go out in that? But you've got
to be in it to win it, I'm not going to find this Snowy
Owl sat on my arse watching Bergerac repeats on
UK Gold. At dusk on your own it's really spooky up on
the moors, add some thick mist and it's shit-your-pants
scary. It was even more spooky than usual last night.
There was a small orange light flashing in the distance,
and considering there's absolutely fuck all for miles
and miles and miles up here, I worried that it might
have been some poor fuck who'd snapped their ankle, so I
went cross country but couldn't find anyone, and then I
got lost myself, eventually working out where I was when
I stumbled upon one of the plane wrecks:
I thought I'd better push on, just in case this Snowy
Owl was waiting for me at the summit, and a fucking good
job I did as well, or else I'd never have seen the 29
Red Grouse, 8 Meadow Pipits, Skylark, 2 Wrens, 3
Mountain Hares (one I almost stood on) and a small wader
sp. Small wader sp? It didn't call, and I hope you'll
forgive me for being unable to ID it when you see what
kind of viewing conditions I ended up with:
An odd night, and it got even more odderer. At home I
read a bit of Ben Okri's Famished Road (great
book) and a bit where all the people living in the
village are vomiting everywhere and even being sick on
each other: it turns out that the powdered milk the
villagers have been given is contaminated. And then
after reading that I watched Amazon on BB2, and
presenter Bruce Parry decided to take some mad
hallucinogenic drug and started throwing up everywhere,
alongside about another twenty puking people in some
weird Peruvian vomit party. And then I watched the news
and saw that 13,000 people are in hospital in China from
drinking tainted milk. Weird. I don't know why told you
any of that.
Yes I do. What a bird - Cretzschmar's Bunting, now we're
talking! And what a place for one. North Ronaldsay has
to be my all time most favouritest birdspotting place in
Britain (after Swindon), about as isolated as you can
get in our part of the world. Our last visit there
finished with a night out in the bar/post office with
the islanders singing Christmas carols (it was
September), drinking cans of Blackthorn cider and then
five of us swigging wine from shared bottles at the
north end under the beams of the lighthouse at 4am. Birding
all day, pub all night - that's how life should be.
I can't recommend staying at the observatory enough. An
island full of birds practically for yourself, demented
seaweed-eating sheep and the potential of annoying 2,753
keen rare bird enthusiasts when the Oriental Plover
turns up at Dennis Head and the weather's so bad that
nobody can get there!
So what actually happened yesterday with this fucking
Great Snipe? Well I don't really care. For a start I have no interest in having my birdspotting
activities marshalled and controlled like living in some
weird kind of totalitarian, pre-glasnost, Stasi
police state. Obviously I'm not being at all hypocritical, like the
time I went to see the Solitary Sand at Rye Meads (wank
queues), or the organised flush of the Bobolink on Hengistbury Head (at least that was free), or last
year's Pacific Diver in Yorkshire (10 quid per fucking
car? You fucking robbing bastards!) - no, that's not
hypocritical, because let's face it, most of you stupid cunts* reading this won't even know what hypocritical
means, or even how you got here, or where you left your
kidneys the last time you took them out for cleaning.
My intention from earlier in the week was always to go
over to the east coast and soak up all this drift
migrant bounty, thus enriching my life and providing me
with the life giving elixir (see Elkins, N., Weather
and Bird Behaviour and How to Live Forever Without
Drinking Your Own Piss, Chapter 2). I reliably heard
(from Jacob who spends all day sat in Glossop square
feeding the Jackdaws) that Thursday could be a
potentially amazing birdspotting day, and that Spurn was
definitely the place to be. And so I decided I'd avoid
the panicked, flailing "where's the Wryneck? It's
just come on the pager, it was supposed to be sat on top
of Post 68. Why haven't they put out that it's gone?"
millions, and go to Flamborough, where you never see
more than a handful of people, unless of course there's
an ADULT Brown Flycatcher there (ha ha ha!
- wild? yeah right - wild my silky, shorn nut bag). Hang
on just one minute...
...
...
... sorry about that, had to tell the prick next door to
shut the fuck up. Shit knows what he's doing, he's
probably got a load of hitch hikers tied up in his
basement. So, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Flamborough...
... (I love this dot dot dot thing, it compensates for
my complete lack of understanding and correct
application of punctuation [see Birdforum for a
masterclass in its usage]).
...
...
... so Flamborough. At Old Fall there was a moderate
selection of typical migranty stuff - Little Egret,
Marsh Harrier, largish Owl sp, 2 Swifts, 7 Whinchats, 3+Redstarts,
Wheatear, Blackcap, 2 Whitethroats, 4 Willow Warblers, Chiffchaff,
Yellow-browed Warbler, Firecrest, Pied Fly, Spotted Fly.
It was nice and sunny and it was a day to be grateful
for the small things in life, like cows and lettuce and
Kanye West and herpes and An Equal Music by
Vikram Seth which is my favourite book ever and Mean
Girls starring Lindsay Lohan which is my all time
favourite film and other things. And then as a bonus,
the birdspotting world was informed that should the Speeton Great Snipe be found
in a search at 11am, then there would be access for all early in
the afternoon - hooray!
But all Hell was to break loose. It was just like the day
Adam opened the gates of the Garden of Sodom and
unleashed the wild Apple Serpent upon the world, leaving
us shameful and living in sin and stuck with Madonna in
the Hit Parade for eternity. So here are the EXACT
events of what happened at yesterday's Great Snipe in Speeton:
Some people entered a field and flushed a bird and the
bird flew off and the farmer killed someone, and because
it was private land the farmer didn't have insurance and
so the dead person's family can't claim any life
insurance and spend it all on scratch cards, but the
farmer won't be sent to prison because he's a landowner
and Tory scum landowners have the courts in their
pockets which is yet another example of the hypocrisy of Nu-Labour and the two tier society they have created,
and everyone is really pissed off and going mental on
Birdforum and Dan Pointon is getting all the grief and
being blamed for everything wrong in the world like the
Russia/Georgia war and Lehman Brothers going tits up,
which isn't true because as far as I know Dan has never
even been to Georgia, and remember that everyone
makes mistakes, only in the past it wasn't recorded for
posterity on the fucking intranet, but now there'll
never be another Great Snipe ever again because HBOS has
merged with LloydsTSB and Tom Cruise definitely isn't
gay, and birding is for geeks and nerds and that's a
fact because someone once shouted "you're a fucking
sad bastard!" at me, but that was my uncle Leonard
and he has suffered with intellectual complications
ever since he got hit on the head by machinery at work
and for a while he thought he was Frankie Dettori, but
now he has to take these red pills and he's a lot
better.
There you go. So forget your bullshit speculation and
rumours because I WAS THERE, and I saw all of it happen
first hand.
* beloved readers and birdspotting brethren
18th September
Anyone hear about problems at a Great Snipe twitch in
Yorkshire today? Thank Christ I don't take this birding
bollocks at all seriously, or else I might have gotten
all teary-eyed and upset at not being able to see the
bird after the fields were closed off behind police
crime scene tape, in order for the Birding World
forensic team to do all taxidermy and tests and stuff.
When the bomb drops I know exactly where I'll be, that's
right, I'll be hiding in Charlize Theron's underpants
drawer. No I won't, I'll be trespassing and kicking down
stone walls.
In future, for anyone unsure about whether you can enter
a private field prior to an official window of entry,
perhaps the great Mr Lemmy Kilminster from the RSPB's
Metal & Intoxicants department can provide you with
some advice:
I can tell, seen before,
I know the way, I know the law.
You can't agree, you can't obey,
I can't agree with all the things I hear
you say.
Oh no, don't ask me why,
I can't go on with all these filthy
white lies.
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
Don't you know, all the time,
You got your bird but I didn't get mine.
Grab your bins, don't let go,
Don't let them rob you of the bird you
came to see.
Oh no, fuck everyone else,
You've got the right to see the birds all
for yourself?
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
So you see, the only proof,
Of what you are is in the way you read
your pager.
Don't be scared, live to win,
Although they're always gonna tell you
it's a sin.
In the end you're on your own,
And there is no-one that can stop you
going in.
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
STAY OUT!
***
But - and this is a big but (not to be
confused with J-Lo's) - remember that birdspotting is
all about anarchy! ANARCHY! Smash down the walls,
trample the crops, peer into people's back yards,
defecate on their lawns, wank through their letterboxes.
Spread the word:
BIRDING IS CHAOS / CHAOS IS BIRDING
And for those of you that have no idea
what any of this is about, good on you! Because it's gay
gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay ...
11th September
Forsman, Garner, Lewington, Mullarney, Shirihai,
Vinicombe et al...
Whenever there's a dodgy bird knocking about in Britain
you can always guarantee that the above names will be
consulted to sort it out, the bird ID A-Team. But my
name is never featured in that list ("why?"),
well this is EXACTLY why ("why?"):
The moors south of Glossop, early afternoon. Nice
weather, a gentle walk upon the purple moors, a carefree
stride through the heather, flushing Red Grouse(s),
flushing Meadow Pipit(s). Then something catches my eye.
Large. Well largish. Sat on the rocks. Sun making things
tricky, but definitely a raptor. Probably a Buzzard, but
you never know, best to double check. I knew that if I
flushed it it would drop straight down the hill out of
view and never be seen again, so I crouched down, walked
to the stone wall and then crawled along the base of the
wall to a gap by the gate. Light better from here, and
now it had a bluish hue to it. Fucking hell - a male Hen
Harrier! It had to be. Hen Harrier is a shit hot decent
bird around here after the gamekeepers have their annual
raptor massacring party, and then violate the still warm
and twitching corpses of Harriers, Goshawks, Buzzards,
Crows, Ravens, Black-headed Gulls...
So a male Hen Harrier - awesome! Definitely had to get a
better view though - male Hen Harriers are beautiful -
so I crawled even further along the base of the wall to
the stile, and took another look. Shit - the Hen Harrier
had now stood up and revealed itself to be a 6 foot man
in a dark blue waterproof jacket, and he was coming
straight for me, so I made a dash for it down the
hillside and vanished into the valley like a flying
squirrel in the night.
And finally, someone (I guess they'll want to remain
anonymous) sent me this:
Photographed on 12th August in Tenerife. A phenomenal
specimen!
9th September
Two (2) new (not knew) links
How have these passed me by? Phil "Radar Ears" Woollen
has a blog about his birding on the Wirral and beyond.
And so does Archie. And in reading it I discovered that
Archie has been banned from Birdforum. Why don't I ever
know about anything important like this? I only found
out the other day that Stalin was dead.
You know the drill by know: visit them, visit them
regularly, add them to your favourites, fight the power
etc...
If the Isle of Jura was in South America it would
probably be known as La Isla de la Jura (pron: la
eesla day la hoora), but it isn't. I don't have
anything else to say.
I'd better think of something though...
... it's very beautiful. A paradise, if you will, and
I'm sure you would. This wasn't a birdy trip, but
instead a chance to finally coincide a visit when our
Juranian friend Owen was at home. If you haven't been to
Jura then go. Right now. It's amazing. For a start
there's a fantastic looking sycamore copse that must
have had at least 17 firsts for the Western Palearctic
in it over the years. At least.
Swallow (note smudge behind bird's eye
and on collar from filthy optics, thus ruining a
potentially nice piccy)
The wee bit of birdspotting we managed was on Islay,
but it was pretty quiet, with only a Green Sandpiper at
Loch Gruinart fractionally out of the ordinary. The
ferry crossing was on flat calm water each way, and the
only wildlifery were 2 Arctic Skuas massacring a
Kittiwake and 3 Common Dolphins. Of course there was the
usual Islay wonderfulness - a 20+ flock of Twite at
Sanaigmore Bay, scatterings of Chough, smatterings of
Hen Harriers, ???tterings of Merlins and ???tterings of Germans
and Swiss on whisky tours. Having made three trips to
Islay, I'm afraid to say that I'm starting to
become a whisky nerd; I'm beginning to think that I can
taste a subtle hint of creme de menthe in a 15 year old
single malt that leaves a slow warm finish reminiscent
of eating nuts by a fire on Christmas Eve. Have you ever
read the shit that these whisky piss heads write? It's
almost as pathetic as this crap. Almost.
Solitary Brotheeeeeer
28th August
Black Stork
Twitched a Black Stork in Yorkshire, great bird, but I
pretty much hated every second of it. The reason? All
that great stuff in south-west Ireland that turned up
just as we left. Pig sick. And at the moment I'm as
broke as Richard Blackwood ("who da bankrupt man?").
Whimsical verse shall suffice:
The valiant Black Stork south of York,
Made the ladies observing all talk.
For whilst dressed in fine fettle,
He showed them his mettle,
And released his vast manhood of pork.
19th-26th August
The Bridges
of Madison County
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 Wh
