Boomshanka

Hello, and good evensong. 
I went and had a look at the Olive Backed Pipit that was at Spurn last week.  After a half hour wait, Messrs' (alas) Smith and Jones had a walk over to see where it was hiding.  They called us over as it was on view from where they were.  Good views, with sun to our backs, it was a nice bird.  Better than "nice".  Nice is just a shite description really but I'm not going to use adjectives like "lovely" or "beautiful" as they're far too crawly bumlick.  Tell it like it is, put facist bully-boy!

Darling Facist bully boy,

 

Give me some money.  You bastard.

 

May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman,

 

Neil.

 

 

If that doesn't work, I don't know what will.

I got sidetracked.  I then did some hardcore birding dawn til dusk stomping, KICKING nettles,  THRASHING dykes, WALKING through fields, and PISSING on bushes.  Well, I did canal hedge and churchyard for an hour.  But it was an enjoyable hour, with a Firecrest c/o Mr Whitehead in canal hedge with a couple of Chiffs and 3 Goldcrests, then 3 Chiffs together in Churchyard with a Brambling.  These meagre totals are nothing compared to the last couple of days, but on that particular day, it was enjoyable.  Simple as that.  We get spoilt at Spurn when conditions are right but on a day of westerlies and sun like this, just finding these small smatterings is what it's all about. 
Or summat.
I was talking with Mr Roadhouse at churchyard as I was about to leave when the radio crackled into life:

 

"We've caught the fucking Pipit you set of bastards".

Honestly that's what they said.  Sort of.

So we all went down to the Obs and waited, and whilst I waited I had a quick look on the estuary off the Warren.  A "nice" male Ring Ouzel alighted from the saltmarsh and flew past us (I was talking to an old dear who was complaining that her husband had had the OBP right in a full frame shot when everyone rushed it to net the poor bastard thus losing the photo opportunity).  In the hand views later, after Mr Collins had offered those at the back (me) a better opportunity to view, and I was off on my way home.  Glory.

I've name-dropped a lot haven't I?  Wait until I tell you about the time I saw GEOFF fucking DRUETT at Notlob Abbey.  Beat that.

I'll tell you all about the weekend next time.
Oh I bet you can't wait!
Ha.

I cannot think of a caption.

Just think that an Olive-Backed Pipit doesn't even know that it is called an Olive-Backed Pipit or has the latin name Anthus hodgsoni.   Just like a chicken doesn't know that it's flesh is white(ish) when cooked and delicious.  I find it....
..............sort of interesting.  I'm pissed up.
Goodnight.





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Man U / Great Snipe

Mancs.
Fucking Mancs.
Manc jokes:

After 11 years of trying, David Moyes has finally got Everton above Man U.

With Liverpool fans naming Suarez And Sturridge "SAS" Man U fans have come up with their own catchy acronym: Welbeck Anderson Nani Kagawa.

Or my cockerney take on it: Ferdinand Anderson Cleverly Kagawa Ince Nani Carrick Anderson Nani Tevez Smalling.

That was a good joke.

What's the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead Man U fan?
You'd see skid marks in front of the dog.

That was a good joke.

What's the difference between a Man U fan and a vibrator?
The Man U fan is a proper cock.

That was a good joke.

Erm.....How many Man U fans does it take to change a lightbulb?
1,550,001.  1 to change the bulb, 50, 000 to say they've been changing it for years, 500,000 to jump on the lightbulb bandwagon and 1,000,000 to buy the replica shirt.

As a few of you know, Hull City are now to be known as Hull Tiger-feet or summat.  "That's neat" I hear you cry?  Well, some of the fans are against this, as am I, and they've put together a sort of protest against said matters.  Yesterday, before our "thrilling" 0-0 drubbing of Villa, they were handing out leaflets drumming up support for said protest.  Here is an account of one of our fans handing leaflets out:

On getting a leaflet  this bloke says "Nah mate I'm not bovvered, anyway we don't want AFC we are not a AMATEUR football club! Cos that's what AFC stands for"

When his mate corrects him "that's not it it's Association football club" and he is getting laughed at he then adds "Anyway I'm Man U so I don't give a fuck about the name".

 

Hmmmm.

 

 

Good job he wasn't near me.

If I were ANYWHERE near this "person" I promise you I would've dotted him on the spot.
Dotted the twat.
Gobbed.
Chinned.
Fucked.
Pinged.
It's just so wrong on so many levels, although not surprising.
I shall say no more on the matter except that if you know a Man U fan, simply disown him, delete his number from your phone, ignore him in pub and make sure everyone else ignores him, and even....EVEN....dare I say it.....delete him as a friend on Facebook!!!!!!  Jesus, No!!!!!!!



Spurn.  The Great Snipe was so called as it was, indeed, "Great".  It showed great, it was a great bird, in great surroundings and it was great right until the point it was partially eaten by Tiddles.  There's a moral tale here and I was going to go deep into it until I realised I'd just go right around the houses to come up with the fact that no one or thing did anything wrong.  Shall I expand?  Okay then.

I'll keep it in summary.

• In hindsight (a wonderful thing) maybe the birding authorities should have moved the bird to somewhere more suitable.
• They did this with a Bluetail that was underweight so it could feed up.
• They DIDN'T do this with another Bluetail found the same day that weighed even less than the first!
• Why?  Because it was already in an ideal area for not being disturbed (i.e. Point Dunes) I'm not sure "i.e." should be in parentheses?  Surely bad grammar?  Anyway, this shows an understanding of a bird's welfare including whether it is in a natural environment, and a healthy state, and whether it's in a natural state.
• The Great Snipe was feeding very well.
• It was in a natural state albeit in a strange (to us) environment.
• It looked and seemed healthy apart from the strange location choice.
• Why interfere with nature, David Attenburgh, lions hunting, interfering, Jimmy Savile, interfering, let nature take it's course, etc...
• But cats aren't native.
• Neither are lots of things but human nature has chosen to domesticate cats.
• Just like cows.
• But you wouldn't morally blame a farmer if a cow had trampled the Snipe would you?
• A lot of vagrant birds are genetically fucked up.
• Reverse passage migration.
• What influences these mites to go the wrong way?
• Rare pied variant form of Varied Thrush, Baillon's Crake in a kid's park, frigatebird on a boating lake in Scunthorpe, Pacific Diver in a puddle....Great Snipe running over a bloke's foot.....
• Indeed this Snipe may not have even seen a human being before.  Certainly not the ugly, motley crew that stood before it on that day.
• So, we could deduce that the Snipe believed it had migrated (it had, although a bit....erm....wrongly)
• We could also deduce that the Snipe thought that this actually WAS it's wintering grounds, it'd never been there before!  How would it know?!
• With me so far?
• The bird was a bit fucked up.
• A cat got it due to it's strange tendency to habit a garden.
• Cat eats Snipe's head.
• Natural selection at work.
• A genetically fucked up Great Snipe's genes should not be passed onto future generations......
• .....hence, natural selction.
• So the decision (if there even was one) not to move this bird was morally sound. 
• There.
• Next.

 Bullet point points.

 

Coming next week, OBP shenanigans.

 

 

Well hi there.

 

 

 

 

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Notlob

Sometimes I wonder about things.  Like why I titled the last post "Purple Bell Ends"?  I wonder what I was thinking.  Drinking heavily before/during the composition of a post is vital, I find, to not having a clue actually what you've published to the whole world until you log on sometime the following day.

A while ago I told you all about Nicola brushing her teeth with hair removal cream and me finding it fucking hilarious having great sympathy.  It reminded me of the Veet hair removal cream reviews on Amazon which went viral, which included the excellent review "Do NOT put on knob and bollocks - Being a loose cannon who does not play by the rules the first thing I did was ignore the warning and smear this all over my knob and bollocks". 
It is good.
Hang on, I'll find you a link, that's how nice I am...........


......buffering......



...... Veet Reviews.......

There.

Some other interesting reviews came to my attention the other week.  A bloke my brother knows is an alcoholic which is fine.  His family have always had money, proper money, and to try and help him, and give him something to focus on, they gave him a guest house to run in the pleasant and affluent town of Beverley, some 10 miles from me, Minster Garth, a lovely Tudor building near the minster.  Maybe knowing him makes it a bit funnier but I thought I'd share the Trip Advisor reviews with you.  There's a lot of boring reviews to trawl through but you come across the odd gem like:

When i arrived the owner was standing in the main sitting room shouting

obscenities at anyone who passed the window...

....having banged on our door 9.30 in the morning to insist we come

down to breakfast and we politely explained we were heading

into town instead, we were told to ‘f*** off and not come back’...

 

....As he continued to scream at the elder man, telling him to "

Be an F#$%#ing Man" simply for wearing sneakers he left

out the front, ran into traffic, smashed his glass on

 the sidewalk and proceeded to chase cows.

Just read page 4 and 5 of the reviews.  Brillog.

Link:   Loono.

Jesus fucking Christ.  I've got PGA Golf's shot tracker on on another tab and Hunter Mahan (whom I've backed) has just triple bogeyed.  A bogey is the most gutting feeling in the world ever but a TRIPLE bastard?  Fuck you all.  And fuck Hunter Mahan. 


Oh and Facebook users, that blurred bit that's just off the edge of your screen is called "real life"......





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Purple Bell Ends.

The road to Spurn is now a right bastard.  They changed the speed limits some time ago to include places that are now 40 but used to be 60, plus loads of places where the limit is now 30 and used to be.....erm......40.  Or summat.  Interesting eh?  It is now not a great drive.  It used to be, especially through that chicane near Haverfield Haven where you could floor it and see for miles and drift it round the corner.  When I had the old Vectra I could reach speeds of upto a THOUSAND miles an hour on that stretch.  But only in that dear old Vectra.  That same Vectra took us (Sats, Killer, Myself and Edward Dixon) to Forest away when they were unbeaten in three thousand games and we won one fucking nil.  That Vectra is now departed and I now own a fine Vauxhall Astra specimen.  It's blue.  You know motorbiker-types?  When motorbiker-types pass another motorbiker-type in the opposite direction they "nod" at each other in a sort of limp appreciation of one another.  What in god's name is that all about?  I had an ex-bitch of mine that was an ex-motorbiker-type-bitch and she used to do "the nod" at motorbiker-types when in a car!  Fucking loono.  Well, I've decided to do "the nod" at other Astra drivers in appreciation of what they're driving and how they drive the machine, man.  Astra drivers are now encouraged to nod at all other Astra drivers and pull in as close to the kerb as they can whenever another Astra is overtaking you thus giving him/her far too much comfortable room to complete the manoeuvre .  The overtaking Astra driver is also encouraged to hold a horizontal, casual and relaxed hand out in appreciation of you pulling in to let his/her Astra pass.  Them there motorbiker-types may not even like each other!  What are they waving at each other for?  For instance, a racialist man might not even like white people, but on a bike he gives "the nod" to a white guy!  Or vice versa of course.  Live and let live.  Even criminals are just normal people, just like you and me.  They've just got much darker skin.

My garden/house is better than Spurn.  I have no idea what is going on.  My house is in a cul-de-sac in the heart of vibrant Hessle.  The best bird I've seen in other gardens I've lived in, in Hessle, is maybe a treecreeper (April 19th 1986, Pulcroft Rd) or summat.  As I've told you before, this house has seen a Hobby in May then a PURPLE HERON which has no chance of being accepted as I was pissed when I submitted it and even swore in the description and drew a comedy penis on the sketch was all pretty amazing.  Not any more.  At Spurn, or anywhere really, a Purple Heron is pretty fucking good.  And maybe a Wheatear isn't that good?  Well, here in suburbia a Wheatear IS far better than a Purple Heron!  Honest.  Have a look at this:

Little one, Olivia asked "What's that noise?"
I thought, jesus, what is it?  It's a chat!  Never.  What?  I jumped up.
Livvy said "Is that birdy making the noise Dad?" and there on our front wall was a Wheatear!
What is going on?
I got the bins and the coverts had pale centres....don't even go there....they really did.....all in all a young Northern Wheat was in our road!  It perched up on the roof of the houses opposite then ended up perched up on the rooves at the back of the house

It's there.  On next door's bin.

Unreal shit mamma.
Then after all that shenanigans, another Hobby flew through yesterday, this time a juvenile and interestingly took almost exactly the same route that the adult had in May but I wasn't even going to mention that as I think you may not believe all these crazy records and you think I sound like Martin Stansfield.

If any birders would like to book accommodation at my brilliant house, B&B is only £25 per night outside migration periods and just £85 B&B during May and Autumn.  This includes a full English breakfast and a topless hand shandy off the missus, and only £95 WITHOUT the topless hand shandy off the missus.  Fuck me, it's worth the extra tenner believe me.





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Guest Entry From No Neck Ted off Benedict

Monday 22nd

With reports of a mass movement of Two Barred Crossbills on the continent, a Bridled Tern and a Lesser Sand Plover to the north, today I decided, with rather fanciful hope, to go to Spurn with my good pal Kobayashi.  He's Russian so knows all about Two Barred Crossbills. 

I bird Easington a lot more than I used to.  I think it's since the official boundary of the recording area changed to include Easington too.  I also think it's because I know Spurn has been pretty much covered by the time I get there thus giving me less hope of finding something.  I limped around the area carefully saying "bowling green" in the deepest voice I could muster.  "Bowwwwling greeeeen."

I did Easington, to no avail.  Four Yellowhammers.  Not even the village shop was willing to join my new protection racket so I left with some coconut macaroons.  I'll show them what real will is.  A Red Backed Shrike was reported north of Easington lagoon and I was only a few minutes away so I thought I'd check it out.  Maybe some crazy day visitor had fucked up an Izzy or a Brown.  I got there to find no one around.  No Shrike.  Nothing.  It made me wonder if there really was a Red Backed Shrike that day but it's hard being a single observer when a decent record is found.
When I submitted that Alpine Swift over Gower Road the BBRC laughed at the submission as I'd done a load of childish scribble all over the paper and even drawn a comedy penis on my sketch of the bird.  I was hit with a rejection.  'Not proven' they came back with.  Who the fuck was they kidding?  Okay, I'd scribbled a bit on the description but they didn't complain back in Skokie Illinois when I scribbled on my description of a mother fucking Warbling Vireo. 
Gantlett came to us with the job, Millington got the vans, and Steve Palmer off Tilbury Road supplied the hardware, I came through with how to do it so no one got killed, but Evans... Evans put on the finishing touch. A little 'fuck you' from the five of us to the BBRC.  It was his idea to hit the BBRC Taxi Service. 

As I went back to the car near Easington Lagoon the local anti-terrorism police questioned me.  They asked me things I didn't know.  Things like why I was there and what time did I get there, I'd already told the DA everything I knew.
"Morning Sir, everything okay?" said the rozzer.
I said "Where's your head, PC Kujan? Where do you think the pressure's coming from? No Neck Ted off Benedict - or whatever you want to call him - he knows where I am right now. He's got the front burner under your ass to let me go so he can scoop me up ten minutes later outside Neppy. Immunity was just a deal with you assholes. I got a whole new problem when I post bail."
He said "So why play into his hands? We can protect you."
So I said to the rozzer "Oh, gee, thanks, Dave. Bang-up job so far. Rejections, suppression. You'll pardon me if I ask you to kiss my pucker. The same fuckers that rounded us up and sank us into this mess are gonna bail me out? Fuck you. You think you can catch No Neck Ted off Benedict? You think a guy like that comes this close to getting caught and sticks his head out? If he comes up for anything, it will be to get rid of me. After that... my guess is you'll never hear from him again even if the Bridled Tern moves south and gets relocated at Beacon Ponds."

Luckily PC Kujan ran some checks on my car and let me go.  I limped down towards the obs and noticed some guys viz-migging up on Clubleys but what the cops never figured out, and what I know now, was that these men would never break, never lie down, never.  They stay up there all day watching visible migration, they say one guy stayed up there for 14 days solid with no food apart from a packet of Golden Grahams, only coming down to run a hijacking job on a lorry load of steel just outside Queens.

At around 5pm I left the Spurn area and drove west.  The police who had stopped me earlier drove past me in their pesky range rover in the opposite direction and gave a polite wave as I went.

Fucking cops.






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Guest entry from George Michael the popstar (you know where this is going)

George.

 

 

When news broke on Wednesday of a drake Surf Scoter at Filey, my overwhelming urge to twitch it got the better of me and I made the journey just three days later on Saturday.  I contacted a minority Bird Information Service and they said that the bird was still there!  I rang a few people on site who told me the Surf Scoter was swimming back and forth on the sea, occasionally utilising neighbouring hillocks to gain speed and drift.

Crackers

It spent ages doing suchlike, in fact over two hours or more, quite often swimming to within four hundred metres of observers, Chris Birding obtaining the remarkable image below - the best image I have ever seen of the species.

Awesome.

At around 1220 hours, the RAF on training exercises flew low over Filey, spooking the Scoter and it dived strongly to the south. Some 45 minutes later, I and 437 others arrived from Arndale, after enduring a near 15 minute journey across from Brid Harbour in NE Yorkshire - and the mood went from exultation to despondency. Was it to be a repeat of the Spurn Icterine Warbler where both MJDRBD and I missed that mega by the same time period after trying to twitch 'on the cheap'?. Although I had seen two Surf Scoters before in Britain (both in the Northern Isles), I had resorted myself to a classic dip and was in depressive overload. A number of us split up and explored different areas but after four seconds of doing this, I eventually became so depressed (particularly after hearing of some blokes life-thrilling experiences) that I decided to wander back to town and commit suicide.

 

 

Nuts

 

 

Just as I was about to jump off the cliff, a middle aged man relocated it in Filey Bay, where it had been all morning, an astonishing 20 metres south of where it had last been seen.  Pandemonium set in as we all lifted our bins to our eyeballs.  This seemed to take a lifetime but finally my bins were actually at my eyeballs.  I looked through them and there it was!  A drake Surf Scoter!  That's 178 for the year.

 

 

Cuckoo

 

 

At last it felt good to be alive, although sleep deprivation over the past 2 hours was having some serious affect. Also, the ice cream van beckoned at 1600 hours, and reluctant as it was, we had to pull ourselves away and leave this clown-billed perspicillata for others to enjoy.

 

 

Menthol

 

 

Thanks for that cracking read.

So yes, a drake Surf.  A cracking bird that shows really well for a seaduck if you know what I mean.

I 'needed' Surf for Yorkshire.  A bit tarty I know, but I was trying to think of other records.  Not that many for a no-longer-a-BBRC-rarity I believe.  Scarborough a few years ago.  Not many though.

 

 

 

Similarities to living people used on this web shite are merely coincidental and the authors take no responsibility if George Michael is upset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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nnnnnnnnnnnnnnya

A swift flew at a windmill, the twitchers said Damn,
The windmill was winning it's hardly suprisin'
The twitcher who missed it said, "How unlucky I am,
Those fucking windmills should go down the pan"


I saw a Swift!
Rare?
Dead and ultra rare!
Where's the ultra rare?
Right there!
A needletail with his clogs popped
Well I declare!
Going flip-flappety-flap ultra rare
Oh yeah
Right there
Oh yeah...


It's been an amazing couple of weeks on the garden listing front.  About three weeks ago I was barneying on the phone with fatty my darling when a Hobby flew past only twenty yards away!  Jesus Christ!  An adult, red trousers, I interrupted fatty shouting at me on the phone, "Hobby!  Fuck me!"
She said "What?"
"Hobby! Fuck me!"
She said "What?"
"Hobby! Fuck me!"
It was like Crazy Chris Rea when he's trying to tell his bitch all about Texas and she hasn't got a fucking clue what he's on about.

I said Texas.  She said what?
I said Texas.  She said what?
I said Texas.  She said what?
I said Texas.  She said what?

At this point, if I were Chris Rea, I'd have lost it with her.  What the fuck does she not understand?  He's only telling her about Texas. 

Crazy them women.

 

Nuts

Fast forward three weeks after the Hobby shenanigans and there I am, alone, with a three litre bottle of White Lightning, a Tesco's own lasagne warming in the microwave, piss stains on the tea towel, no kids cos they now live with their mam and "Derek", Babestation on the black and white portable, a birds eye potato waffle still floating in the sink, and a strange call from over my shoulder.  "Crayk"  I said "What?" It said "Crayk"  I said "Erm...what?". It said "Texas" I said "What?".  It said "Texas"..... I was skywatching, as I always do.  It was a Purple Heron!  Shit me!  Quite low.  Erm..... shit!  I watched it until out of view then wrote a description down on my phone:

Streaking on the breast down the full front (what?!) rufous on breast.  stripey fucker along neck and head.  distinct yet subtle.  neat maybe better description.  call "crayk" repeated four times.  maybe crek.  short.  underwing uniformly dark.  flight quicker than Grey.  slim.  looked like it was going down near the new flood area til mobbed by 2 herring gull which looked only 10-20% smaller when together.  the bird took rapid evasive action with head and neck strangely out, neck almost anhinga like.  that's how I would describe I but i'm a touch mental.

That's what I wrote.  And that's what my official description is going to be when submitted. 

Best I've had at Spurn just lately was one of many Red Backed Shrikes.   And an Eider Ducky.  Left.
Not North.  Just "Left".


Nicola is out tonight.  Earlier, I had a quick tidy of the bathroom cabinet.  I found something that looked just like toothpaste.  I picked it up thinking that we've got more toothpaste than I thought.  Same lid and that.  Same tube and that.  I stood it up like a toothpaste-type-thing.  Several hours later and she comes out of the bathroom shrieking that she'd just cleaned her teeth with hair removal cream!!! ha ha ha ha ha ha at least her minge will smell minty ha ha ha ha ha ha ha  and she won't have hairy teeth anymore.








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