Birdwatchingwatching
Page 36
Horne’s birdwatching euphemism bingo
We thumbed breathlessly, here
A huge eighteen inches, here
Duncton’s Dangling Coconuts, here
All swinging temptingly in the breeze, here
Buzzing round the nuts, here
Every gig was now an opportunity to grab more birds, here
Caught me with my binocs out, here
This was just me and my woodpecker, here
I had got a very hard woodpecker, here
Let me have a go on his telescope, here
Comparing equipment, here
I notched up my … first shag of the year, here
Duncton and I both got our first woodcocks of the year, here
Gesturing … at his yard-long prize item, here
Squirrels wouldn’t even get a sniff of your nuts, here
A jealous birder had been eyeing up my Deltas, here
I had trouble concentrating on the road with foreign birds flashing all around me, here
I remember in particular two nuggets, each about the size of a golfball, that were incredibly heavy (not happy about this though – it’s Grandpa!), here
The jizz of his familiar bearded face (when I told this story in Edinburgh I appointed an ‘innuendo (wo)man’ who was supposed to ‘bash his bell’ whenever he spotted one. The word ‘jizz’ always received mixed responses. Half the audience couldn’t believe it was a birdwatching term, the other half didn’t understand why it was funny that it should be. It seems to be quite a modern innuendo. If you’re in that second half of my audience, try to find someone from the first half to explain what it means, I don’t think it’s really my place), here
A really rather delicious bap (getting desperate now), here
Famous gardeners that I could name off the top of my head in thirty seconds
Alan Titchmarsh
Monty Don
Bob Flowerdew – perhaps the best example of nominative determinism there is
Charlie Dimmock
Kim Wilde
Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown
Martha Stewart
Don Burke, host of Burke’s Backyard and producer of Backyard Blitz
Prime Ministers that I could name off the top of my head in thirty seconds
Tony Blair
Margaret Thatcher
Winston Churchill
John Major
Gordon Brown
Harold Macmillan
Ted Heath
Birdy names
Tony Duckett
Nancy Gull
Mark Cocker
Bob Martin
Matthew Weaver
BILL Oddie
My final top ten birds of the year
starling
secretary bird
penguin
puffin
robin
blue-helmeted guineafowl
Harry the woodpigeon
bee-eater
East Indian wandering whistling duck
lapwing
Duncton’s pedantic quibbles after reading the hardback edition
Here The jackdaws have the white eye-rings, not the rooks.
Here People tend to think of Woolworths as the home of pic’n’mix – or nick’n’mix. (This is a wonderful joke from Duncton. After doing a modicum of research, however, I was gratified to discover that WHSmiths has also been known to sell pic’n’mix. A.H‥)
Here Ali is a bird conservation journal, produced by LIPU (Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli), which I support with a small annual sub. See also footnote here.
Here The Fair Isle boat – it’s not a ferry – continues to be The Good Shepherd, as far as I know, but I don’t know if it’s the same boat – it may be a different one and have a new number, i.e. IV or V.
Here Alternatively, the idea is that the hankies mimic the white wing-spots of nightjars, and the birds come to have a look.
Here House sparrows tend not to nibble on worms. Being finches, they’re more partial to seeds, grain etc. but may eat small insects (I think!).
Here Monk parakeets visiting a nest in December??? But you may be right, if they’re still working to a southern hemisphere timescale (unlike the lesser spotted woodpecker, I am sure I’m right this time, Duncton).
Here In fact Midhurst had two stations – for the north-south and the east-west lines respectively.
Here A little about my surveys: the breeding bird survey covers the same 1km square every year (mine is between Redford and Milland, i.e. farmland – fields and woods); the Atlas (of winter and breeding birds) is the current BIG project, covering the whole of both the UK and Ireland and is conducted every twenty years and takes four years to complete. I’m allocated a different 2km square on the Ordnance Survey map every year; last year it was mainly Petworth Park, this year it involves the countryside around Lodsworth. Peter usually helps me, so two pairs of dodgy eyes and ears (see p.364). The Farm Survey is part of the ‘Volunteer and Farm Alliance’ project, run nationwide by the RSPB in response to individual farmers’ requests for info as to what birds are on their land and how they can help with their conservation. I think the farm’s a lot bigger than 1 square mile and the survey involves walking round the periphery of every (huge!) field four times during the summer; hard work and very time-consuming, hence a three-year timescale.
For the complete list of birds seen by me and Duncton in 2006, visit www.alexhorne.com
Select Bibliography
The Birdwatcher’s Yearbook and Diary 2006, Buckingham Press, 2006
Barnes, Simon, How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, Short Books, 2004
Cocker, Mark, Birders: Tales of a Tribe, Grove Press, 2002
Cocker, Mark and Richard Mabey, Birds Britannica, Chatto and Windus, 2005
Cottridge, David and Richard Porter, A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Israel and the Middle East, New Holland Publishers Ltd, 2000
Freddi, Chris, Pelican Blood, HarperPerennial, 2006
Fry, Stephen, Paperweight, Arrow Books Ltd, 2004
Grose, Francis, A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Papermac, 1981
Horne, J E T and Sir Kingsley Dunham, Towards the Twenty-first Century. A Discussion Organized Jointly for the Royal Society and the Mineralogical Society, Royal Society, new edition published 2007
Hosking, Eric and Frank Lane, An Eye for a Bird, Arrow Books, 1973
Kaufman, Kenn, Kingbird Highway, Houghton Mifflin, 2001
Marren, Peter, The New Naturalists, Collins, 2005
McGrath, Rory, Bearded Tit, Ebury Press, 2008
Mullarney, Killian, Lars Svensson, Dan Zetterström and Peter J. Grant, Collins Bird Guide, Collins, 2001
Obmascik, Mark, The Big Year, Bantam Books, 2005
Oddie, Bill, Gripping Yarns: Tales of Birds and Birding, Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd, 2000
Peterson, Roger, Guy Mountford and P A D Hollom, Collins – A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (4th edition), Collins, 1983
Riley, Adrian M, Arrivals and Rivals: A Birding Oddity, Brambleby Books, 2004
Wakefield, John, The Strange World of Birds, Iliffe, 1963
Acknowledgements
I already gave thanks to some of the people who helped me watch birds for a year in the unashamedly soppy epilogue but that won’t stop me offering more to Tim and David, both of whom were great birding companions, and to all my other friends (in London and Midhurst) with whom I’ve been lucky enough to grow up. Thanks also to Bill Oddie and Lee G R Evans who didn’t know it was them being watched this time, and to anyone I know or met in a hide or a pub in 2006 who showed me a bird or told me a story and let me scribble it down. And apologies if I wrote up anything wrongly – I inherited my handwriting from a doctor.
James, Becky and all at Avalon and Ed, Davina, Sophia and everyone at Virgin have all been amazingly (almost suspiciously) encouraging throughout, as were Jonathan, Suzanne and everyone else at the RSPB during Edinburgh 2007. Thank you. My friend Owen also gave me h
is time, great notes and much needed praise when I called on him. Very much appreciated. Hello and thanks too to Margaret, my first ever copy editor. We’ve never actually met but I think you’re brilliant. This book would have been twice as difficult (and time-consuming) to read if it wasn’t for your judicious eye and tactful suggestions.
Finally, thanks to my family – both here in England and over in Ireland. Again, you’ve all supported me tremendously. Apart from everything else, I really appreciate you allowing me to write about you without once asking to read a word before publication. You’re very trusting and I hope you won’t have cause to regret anything you said or that I’ve written.
So particular thanks to Terry and Anne for letting me write in your study in Lisnaskea and then eat so well in your kitchen; to Mat, Morri and Chip for watching and not watching birds with me so entertainingly; to Mum, for being so patient and honest (in the traditional sense) throughout, for finding and keeping scrapbooks and boxes, going to museums and libraries with and without me and just for being a brilliant mum – the next one’s for you; to Dad, for being Duncton; and to Rachel, for everything. I can’t wait for the next chapter.
Copyright Acknowledgements
The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from the following sources:
Birders: Tales of a Tribe by Mark Cocker, published by Vintage, 2002, © Bernard MacLaverty. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN; Paperweight by Stephen Fry, published by Hutchinson, 1993; Arrivals and Rivals: A Birding Oddity by Adrian M Riley, published by Brambleby Books, 2004; ‘Mute v whooper swans’ by Matthew Weaver in the Guardian, copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2006.
Photograph here © Jaimie Gramston
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