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.

Bastard!

Until recently, if you Googled ‘Andrew Mackay’, my website (the sensible one, not this one) was usually second, after that of the Tory MP for Bracknell with whom I unfortunately share a name. It was top for a while, but he obviously pulled strings to get it relegated to second place.

But now, since that weird-eyed, slimy piece of shit (is that libellous or just satirical?) fiddled his expenses to the tune of some £140,000 (allegedly, he added quickly), my website has slipped to a poor fourth on Google. At least it’s still on the first page though, which I suppose is something given that the MPs’ expenses scandal is the top news story at the moment and that Andrew Mackay MP is one of the chief offenders.

But how many journalists have clicked on the link for my website, wondering if it’s the same person, doing a bit of moonlighting in addition to his MP’ing and expense-fiddling? And what would they think if they found this load of nonsense whilst digging for dirt on Andrew Mackay?

Oh well, perhaps I'll get some pet portrait commissions from journalists...

The Day The Birding Died

It was "in or around 1999" according to LGRE (click here to see what I'm talking about!)

With apologies to any Don McLean fans...

A long long time ago
I can still remember how that murrelet used to make me smile
And if I said I’d been to Hoy
Then I could claim I’d seen ‘the boy’
And maybe I’d be happy for a while
But February brought no year ticks
My Vectra went through fourteen gear sticks
Bad news on the pager
The bustard’s gone, I’ll wager
I can't remember if I cried
When I heard about the crowded hide
But something touched me deep inside
The day the birding died

So, bye-bye, missed Acadian Fly
Drove at least ten million miles
With no word of a lie
And them good old boys were tickin’ Whiskered at Cley
Singin' this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

Did you write BWP
And can you tell a Western from a Semi-P
If Lars Jonsson shows you how
Do you believe I saw that swift
I’m off to Cornwall, do you want a lift
And can you teach me how to age a crow
Well, I know that I’ve seen more than you
'Cause I’m always first in every queue
You can kick that off your list
Man, I saw all the ones that you missed
I was a lonely, teenage twitchin' fool
With my suit and loafers, I was pretty cool
As I scoped that cuckoo at the pool
The day the birding died
I started singin'

Bye, bye etc

I met a guy who’d seen a rare
And I asked him if he’d tell me where
But he just smiled and turned away
I went down to the optics store
Where I'd bought my Leicas years before
But the man there said the insurance wouldn't pay
And on the down called Wingletang
A plover called, then someone rang
But not a word was spoken
My mobile phone was broken
And the birders who admire me most
Svensson and Heard (that’s not a boast)
They claimed a Steller’s off the coast
The day the birding died
But they were stringin'

Bye-bye, missed Acadian Fly
Drove at least ten million miles
With only one eye
And them good old boys were tickin’ Whiskered at Cley
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die