Fuck knows what the title should be....

Ya know that feeling ya get, ya know when you are half way to work and you suddenly realise you may have left the iron on, or you're sat gassing on the phone and it dawns on you that you may have left the bath running for a little too long? Well, earlier whilst perusing some lesser quality blogs, I had one of those moments! I ain't updated this fucker since the first weekend of January! Holy smoke!
So, where do I begin. To start with I ain't gonna bore you with precise details on where I've been and every bird I've seen, too many cunts do that already and frankly, it's fucking pathetic. Who cares if I went to Cromford and spotted an Hawfinch, snared some Red Grouse on Beeley Moor, bagged 5 Waxwings at Kirk Hallam or year ticked an Iceland Gull at Hoveringham (they were all on the 7th January by the way!). There ya go, concise yet to the point! No waffling! Get it?!
The next day, Sunday 8th January, I joined Mikipedia and Lord Archer on a lovely excursion to Hampshire where we all collected a proper Dark eyed Junco. Nearly every blog I've read has droned on about this bird and the accompanying shit down south so I wont bother repeating what the other numpties have scribed apart from mentioning two or three highlights. After a rather piss poor audience  with the worst McDonalds in England (Cadnam, Hants) we made our way to Weymouth where we jammed in on a Richards pipit, were sent into a cosmic fizzgog with the volume of Med Gulls on The Fleet and almost magically connected with a Hume's YBW; the latter was especially memorable due to this - Prior to reaching Weymouth, whilst sat staring at a chicklettes camel toe in THAT McDonalds, I received info from a young student prophet called Daniel Nostradamus Pointon. He informed us that that the HYBW would appear at c3pm. So it came as no surprise that whilst scouring the sallows near post 13 that at 2.58pm the characteristic call of the target bird announced it's arrival! Fucking legend! I ended that trip with my 2012 total on a rather shite 103.

Monday 9th January was punctuated by the news of a Spanish Sparrow loitering around some council houses in the very county I had exited less than 20hrs previously! Due to being the cool, calm collected kind of guy (and due to the fact it had apparently been shagging the arse of every lady Muck Sparrow for the last year or so) I decided to wait until the weekend (14th) and do it like a dude. Saturday cam quickly and our new team consisting of me, Mikipedia, Rich 'The Giant' Challands

...and Rich 'Baa Weeps craa naaa Weeps Ninibong' Collis (His middle name roughly translates from Yorkshire to English as ''Can you understand a word I'm saying'')....

Well, we spotted the Sparra, had another look at the Junky and (the highlight for me) buzzed some Dartford Wblrs in the New Forest!

A Cattle Egret near a church near some fields with cows in was also nice! This trip took my year-list to 111. Still wank compared to some of the other liars on that Bubo website!

The next day I once again dipped the Shrike on Beeley Moor (3rd time this year) but consolation came with a LINNET on the moors and a well known Tawny Owl checking me out near Pleasley.

The 18th Jan saw me fortuitously taking my obligatory lunch break in the car park of Rufford CP, where luckily some Lesser 'peckers had been showing well. Needless to say, whilst munching on my Ploughmans Sausage Roll I added LSW & Marsh Tit to the year list! Easy innit!

So, we've almost caught up. Have a slurp of ya wine & have a fag and we'll continue in a minute......

60 seconds later....

Ok, ya ready? Good.
Right then, the weekend just gone. Saturday 21st January witnessed us (me, Mikipedia & Archer) arriving in deepest darkest web-footed bastard county. N*rfolk! This county is my kryptonite. Ok, it gets some class birds and the scenery can blow ya mind but it's the bell-ends that I/we habitually see/meet/try to avoid that ruins this county for me! Personally I blame the silly monthly Birdwatching magazines for this, ya know, advocating that North coast as THE place to go birding! ''Grab ya mittens, stupid fucking hat, sco-pac and grandma and head to East Anglia  - Bitterns, Bearded Tits, Marsh Harriers and rare American peeps await you!''
Anyhow, I digress....We eventually connected with a very distant LWFG (and some other geese that I had to add to the year-list) at Cuntley Marshes, got extremely fucked off by some cunts at some Great Broad site where we didn't see a Creosote coloured Duck and then at the Dead Marshes NR clapped eyes on that now infamous Sandpiper (that appeared to have a wanky leg). After creaming over some Snow Bunts at Salthouse..............

....we ended the day nonchalantly counting Hen Harriers coming into roost at Warham Greens.

This trip boosted my 2012 tally to 130 with still a shed load of easy bollox obvious in their absence!
Sunday morning (22nd January) caught me up on Beeley Moor, D*rbys, AGAIN, hoping to add a shrike to the list. An initial scour of the smallest Quarry in the world resulted in fuck all. In fact, up on them moors, not a creature was stirring, not even a grouse. I sacked it in and headed down the delightfully named 'Bent Lane' in search of Bramblings and perhaps daytime doggers but to no avail. I decided to do one and fuck off home for some toast but something told me to check the Quarry again. I tried to resist but the force was strong (and so was the fucking wind, Force 4 million I reckon). I ploughed the front end of the Vectra once again onto the verge and casually wandered back into the depths of the rocky hole. I lost my hat due to the wind! I had a lie down in some heather due to the wind. My lighter decided not to work due to the wind. But then it subsided, a brief moment of stillness enrobed the quarry and almost as if it had been waiting for that moment, the Shrike appeared, like a gleaming silver and white thing on top of a tree, I fiddled with my phone and rammed it against my binocular eyepiece. Three piss poor images kinda proved I'd seen it.

The wind then came steaming back in and as quickly as it had appeared, the Lanius vanished! It had taken me four attempts, well five if you count my two attempts on this day. I didn't see another birder during my visit which is always sweet.
My year list currently stand at 131 and somewhere on those dark, desolate, bleak moors, there's a sheep wearing my bestist woolly hat!  Touché I suppose!

2012.........so it begins

............And the Devil sat back and said ''This year I shall admire Dunny's work''

So, here we are, 2012, the year where we're gonna perish cos them Mayans said so (nothing to do with the fact they ran out of room on their circular calendar of course!). The year that England are gonna win the Euros and I'm gonna get married and quit being a cunt (and stop sinking copious amounts of Red Wine). Well, there may be a bit of truth in all that, but I ain't gonna please the ball and chain by slamming it on here! I'm sure when it happens I'll post some snazzy images of some equally snazzy birds I saw whilst doing aforementioned deed!

Anyway, yeh, it's 2012, and that's good innit! Means that all us birdy types have been out already and been concentrating dead hard on seeing Yellowhammer, Treecreeper, Goosander and some ducks (It's the 2nd of Jan as I write this ya see).
So, when I woke up, yesterday, I had some coffee (too much if my volume of piss-breaks had owt to do with it later in the day), loaded the car with my shit and sat in it waiting for it to get light! I waited about 13 minutes before I plucked up the courage (WTF) to pull off the drive and head towards my first destination unknown!
Well without going into all that shite in-depth detail about what I did etc, I'll just tell ya that I very briefly stared at some fields in Notts before foolishly entering the nasty, evil, old & depressing county of D*rbyshite, where I spent a fair few hours traversing various lanes and muddy tracks attempting to add a myriad of species to my NYD list. I will now stridently declare that birding in D*rbyshite is a birding bag of wank!!! The 'nailed on' Mandarins at Bradley Dam had fucked off, the Shrike at Beeley had gone into hibernation and the Great northern Diver at Carsington bummed me out of £2.50! The only positive of the day was discovering a flock of 40+ 'Blings near Beeley and some tight arsed blonde bit in a pair of skin coloured jodhpurs walking her stallion casually down a back lane near Riber Castle! I finished the day with a meagre total of 62 species beneath my belt, well short of the 80+ I'd come to expect when doing a Notts NYD fuck around!

I was gonna add some pictures but I really can't be arsed fannying about. The images from these two days are on my FaceBook page so if you're a FB saddo, check them there. I'm also 2/3's thru a bottle of Rouge Juice which always helps!

Day Two or 2nd January if you're a bit dumb.
Me and Mikipedia stupidly went to Attenborough NATURE RESERVE. Arriving early morning, all was well. Not many twats knocking around, nice blue skies and abit of cheery enthusiasm. It didn't last long! We bagged a few year ticks, a Scaup and a gorgeous Mrs Smew were the highlights,

But our birding activities soon caved in with the increasing arrival of non-birding riff-raff! Ya know, them sort who wake up in a morning, sink a couple of posh filter coffee things & croissants and then for some fucked up reason announce to their suffering other half and fat child ''Today, I shall take you out on an adventure, for this morn, I will take you for a lovely stroll around one of south Nottinghamshires premier birding reserves, where we will skip merrily along the various pathways, splash in mud, shout gayly about our festive delights that we did behold and scare every fucking bird within earshot to the other side of the river! Oh what fun we will have!!''
Cunts!
So, after a few hours dodging these fools, we returned to 'The Black Lark'' where we were mightily puzzled by what was occurring! The car park has become a seething mess of mis-parked motors, the mini roundabout that is usually so gentle had become a mental fuck-up of carnage and the entrance/exit road had developed into a mish mash of double parked shit brained losers! Attenborough NR, as it's name declares, IS a Nature Reserve yet due to its close proximity to the scourge which is Nottingham, has now, due to various pro-joe public amenities, become a very close cousin to that other shit-hole they call Disney World! Every fucking scruffy (and well booted) family within 5 miles of the pits obviously think that a day in the country equals a few hours traipsing around a few old ponds on the outskirts of their beloved smoke! Now I wouldn't mind a few random nobodies having a casual stroll but when they bring their obese fucked up offspring with them, who insist on ramming slices of stale Warburtons down the throat of every unwitting Canada Goose, who then think it's acceptable to yell stupid childish comments when 'their goose'' eats their crust followed by cramp inducing pathetic silly jumps of joy, then it gets too much! Personally I'd advise locking them things in the tumble dryer if you fancy a walk around a site designated for wildlife, then we'd all be happy!

After rolling out of the hell hole, and after a sumptuous meal of McDonalds snap, we stared at a 100% pure classic Tristis at Netherfield! Seriously, this one looks the dogs nads!
We also had a mooch around the reserve itself but saw relatively fuck all and went home. I finished day two with a 2012 total of just 78 species. There's probably a few other bits I wanted to talk about, well tell you about, but it's half eight and I've got some rouge juice to polish off so, yeah, peace out! xx