You’ve Been Papped 2 – World Exclusive Celebrity Pics!!

So there I was in Lapwing hide at Rutland Water this afternoon (overlooking the south arm, for anyone who doesn’t know the reserve), when I noticed what appeared to be a film crew on the far bank. A quick peer through my scope revealed the unmistakable figure of Bill Bailey, presumably filming for that new birdwatching series he’s doing for Sky1 (to be called Bill Bailey’s Big Bird Watch according to my secret showbiz sources).

Bear in mind, by the way, that all these were taken from about 600 yards away, which is a bit far even for my long Llama-lens. But I suppose that just adds to the authentic ‘papped’ feel.

Bill Bailey looking through binoculars

Bill Bailey not looking through binoculars

How exciting, I thought. But then I’m afraid things started to get slightly naughty. First of all the cameraman climbed over the fence and started walking towards the bund, flushing some ducks in the process:

Never mind, they're only Mallards (actually I think there are a couple of Gadwall in there as well)

Then the rest of them followed. Bill does look a bit guilty on this one:


Eventually they all disappeared through a gap in the bushes, heading towards the back of Lagoon 3:


So what happened next?

Er, um, (quickly consults libel lawyers) oh yes, I know – did a Marsh Harrier fly over and flush EVERYTHING off Lagoon 3? (this is only about a fifth of the flock by the way)

Now, I’m a big fan of Bill Bailey, but if he’s going to do the ‘celebrity birder’ thing, he (or to be fair, his birding ‘advisers’, of which there appeared to be two or three with him in addition to the film crew) ought to be aware of a few generally accepted rules, one of which is that you don’t go traipsing around the back of nature reserve lagoons in case you flush everything. And also that, especially somewhere like Rutland Water, the chances are that someone will be watching. And that someone may well have a long lens. And a blog.

Hrumph...

... would be a polite way of putting it. ‘Arse’, ‘bollocks’ or possibly ‘fuck’ would be more appropriate to the usual tone of this blog, but people might complain if I used words like that in the title. I know it appears on a few other blogs with the time it was last updated. It’s probably called a ‘feed’ or something technical like that.

Anyway, why arse, bollocks and fuck? Well, due to a combination of the recession (and therefore being skint), not booking earlier in the year when prices were cheaper, and those bastards at flybe pricing themselves out of the market (not that it actually is a market as such – ‘monopoly’ would be a more accurate term) I can’t afford to go to Shetland this autumn. Which means that it will no doubt be a fantastic October for those who are going. Which as far as I can tell is just Mark ‘Pieman’ Reeder (who sensibly booked his flights in January and got a return from Birmingham for about £150. It’s now over £300 for the dates I wanted to go, plus another £75 for parking).

I shall therefore be having a ‘staycation’, a horrible non-word which should be banned, except that it describes perfectly what I shall be doing, i.e. literally staying at home. In bed, with the duvet pulled over my head, my phone turned off and the computer disconnected so I can’t look at Birdguides and the Shetland latest bird sightings website to see what I’m missing.

Looking on the bright side though (why not, just for once?) I certainly shan’t miss hanging around airports for hours on end, all that pointless checking-in and ‘security’ bollocks (“Did you pack this bag yourself, Sir?” “No, this complete stranger kindly offered to do it for me, what did he say his name was, Al something...”), taking your shoes off, putting everything through the scanner etc, et-fucking-c. And perhaps we’ll get some nice easterlies here instead and I can go to the east coast for the day and see a Yellow-browed Warbler. Or maybe I’ll go out and string a fly-over Richard’s Pipit or Lapland Bunting for my county list. See, it’s not all bad. I won’t miss Shetland at all really.

Board silly

Hands up how many Leicestershire birders noticed the new interpretation board at Burrough Hill Country Park whilst twitching the Montagu’s Harrier this week? Just in case you missed it in your haste for a county tick, I took this photo of the ‘points of interest’ section:

This is how I imagine the meeting of the County Council Parks Department went when they discussed this:

“Right, none of us knows anything about birds, so we have two options for this new board. Either we could contact a local bird club, or perhaps the RSPB and see what they suggest we put on it – I’m sure they’d be happy to help out, and they’d probably have some relevant photos we could use, OR we could use this random photo of a bird which I think might be a falcon (or possibly a hawk), crop out the falconer’s gauntlet it’s perching on, and bung that on. No, you’re right, the second option would be much quicker. I’m sure no-one will ever notice.”

And then there are the classic ‘information’ boards at Watermead Country Park South, which look like someone’s traced some of Thomas Bewick’s engravings and coloured them in. They include helpful species such as Eider and Bean Goose (actually there was an Eider there once), but very few of the species people are actually likely to see around the park. And even if the bird you’re looking at is shown on the boards you wouldn’t be able to identify it from the grotesque parodies of living birds they’ve used for illustrations.

I’ve lost the photo I had, but the best example of this sort of thing I ever saw was in Ireland a few years ago. It was advertising boat trips off County Galway, and had photos of Galapagos Cormorant and Sea Otter on it (or it might have been a sea lion, I can’t remember). Impressed, we went on the boat trip, but sadly didn’t manage to add either species to the Western Palearctic list...

Two posts in one day!

Just a quick one - this headline on the Grauniad website amused me:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/23/civil-service-criticise-labour

Oh yes, and the recession is 'at an end' according to the same site. Funny - I'm sure the BBC were saying it was 'worse than previously feared' only last week...

Birdfair Ramblings

I never used to be a great fan of the Rutland Water Birdfair – we satirised it on the original Llamas site as ‘the usual sad old mix of over-priced optics, splinter groups, bird seed, wax jackets and special birding breaks in Shropshire.’ (click here to see the original ‘Birdspotting fair’ advert)

These days, there’s not quite as much bird seed in evidence (anyone remember the enormous Trill stand?!), the waxed jackets have been replaced by even more expensive breathable fabrics, and bird tour companies (yawn) now make up well over half the stands in the main five marquees. The optics, it goes without saying, are even more over-priced than ever. Four and a half grand for a Zeiss scope with built-in camera anyone?

But I’ve gradually realised over the years that it’s more about the people than the actual ‘attractions’ of the fair – catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. In the former category I was especially pleased to see two ex-LROS Committee members I hadn’t seen since they left Leicestershire: Chris Measures and Mark Holling, neither of whom seemed to have changed at all in 20-odd years!

Sadly, I was unable to see most of Alex Horne’s ‘Birdwatchingwatching’ show on Friday due to badly-timed book signing duties on the LROS stand, but I caught the last ten minutes of it and it was good to meet Alex and have a beer with him afterwards, in the company of John Hague and Dave Gray (and Dave’s Dad of course!). Another new face was Alan ‘Dusty Bins’ Tilmouth, who has posted his own thoughts on the Birdfair on his blog.

Alex on stage in the Events Marquee

The Beast was spotted prowling around, but I was unable to get any incriminating photos of him. Maybe I should have dressed up like this to avoid him seeing me:

Johnny Kingdom (the theme park the Vatican tried to ban?) hopes no-one will spot him in his camouflage gear as he tries to sneak into the ‘Wildlife Film-making for Beginners’ talk in the hope of picking up some tips

But most of the day was spent on the LROS stand, signing books and posing for silly photos like this:

Rob studies his contract carefully, claiming that appearing in the line-up might infringe his image rights

Summer

Has it really been a month since I updated this load of crap? Where does the time go these days, I don’t know, seems like only yesterday, still, mustn’t grumble, you’re as old as you feel, at least I’ve got my health, that’s the main thing....

So, what have I been up to in the last month? Not a lot really, although I did have the following salutary experience recently:

I had to go to Norfolk to pick up some paintings from the Picturecraft Gallery in Holt, so I thought as I was passing I’d have a quick look for the Black-winged Pratincole which had been hanging around just south of Thornham for a couple of weeks. Obviously this wasn’t real “fucking hell – I NEED it, let’s go NOW!!!” twitching, but still near enough twitching to remind me of one of the reasons why I don’t do it any more, i.e. not seeing the bird and thus wasting time that could be spent doing some proper birding.

Fortunately, since the bird had been present for weeks, I wasn’t reminded of the other reason I hate twitching (crowds of utter wankers talking bollocks and comparing the size of their cocks lists). On the contrary, there was only one other bloke looking at the pratincole-less field when I arrived, and he kindly informed me that it had been seen first thing at Titchwell, but not since, in stark contrast to every fucking day for the previous two weeks, when it had been sat in that field most of the time.

So I went to Titchwell (which I was going to do anyway, so that’s not really twitching either). I saw two distant Spoonbills (which were predictably asleep), plus the usual Titchwell fodder – Little Gulls, Bearded Tits, Cetti’s Warbler, Marsh Harriers and scores of incompetent dudes misidentifying everything in sight – “What’s that?” “Dunno – it’s got a curved beak like an Avocet, but it’s brown. I think it might be some sort of sandpiper” (it was a Black-tailed Godwit); “Did anyone else see that falcon? Was it a Merlin or a Peregrine?” (it was a Hobby); “Apparently there was a pratincole here this morning” “What’s a pratincole – a type of seabird?” etc, etc. But no pratincole.

As I walked back to the car I recalled that in my twitching days I was cursed with a pratincole jinx, having missed both the 2nd and 3rd British Orientals (the Norfolk one twice), and dipped on Collared and Black-winged two or three times each before I finally saw them. And when I did eventually see a Black-winged it was an unsatisfactory distant speck buggering off over the horizon with some Lapwings. Which is why I would quite like to have seen this one.

To cap things off perfectly, when I got home I looked on Birdguides, and of course it was seen at Titchwell about half an hour after I left, and then showed well for the rest of the afternoon. In fact it must have appeared while I was eating my lunch back at the car. Fuck knows who spotted it, as I didn’t see anyone at Titchwell other than the aforementioned dudes, none of whom would have recognised a pratincole if it landed on their shoulder, turned to the page of pratincoles in their spotter’s guide and said “That’s me! I’m a pratincole, you blind cunt!”, whilst pointing to the picture of the Black-winged Pratincole.

Twitching? You can stick it up your arse.