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

Arise Lord Vader.....

So, I'm pondering....What happened at this time of year before someone published that little book of lies (ya know, that one that makes out a tart was hanging around some bike shed and mysteriously dropped a sprog even tho' she were making out she was a virgin....and who's silly idea was it to call it bleedin' Jesus! What a pathetic name, I mean, if I'd have wrote that fairytale, I'd have at least given the brat a cool name like Darth Vader or something!).

Oh, and in a recent post, I moaned about a certain type of toilet tissue that wondrously appeared before my eyes as I sat on the thrown...Well, blow me down and call me a unfestive scrooge like bastard (Well I'd prefer it if you didn't, even if it is true) but it appears the plucky Reindeer and Snowflake design has now been exchanged for this -

Icey softness for those post Christmas Dinner moments

So, Birding.... it's kinda taken a back seat this month but last weekend (18th December) I and Mikipedia traipsed over to Gedling Pit Top, Notts, and did some staring at a pretty decent Rough legged Buzzard. I'd never visited said site before and was quite impressed with the place. I'm also slightly surprised that it doesn't turn up more quality birds but I ain't a clue how well it's watched. A fly-thru Pergrine was cool has it bombed towards the city of Nottingham, no doubt off to collect it's latest filthy pigeon fix.

Anyway, here's a photo of that RLB, it's shite I know, but I was planning on wapping it onto some editing site and scrawling some festive bollox onto it, ya know to show I'm cool with Christmas and stuff but I couldn't be arsed.

Stay warm.......or if your poor and can't afford double glazing and central heating, Stay Cool!



Sitting here in silence...

As I sit here, about to begin typing, I’ve just realised that those who read this in order to satisfy some bloodthirsty birding pang, may be left pretty dry mouthed. I had this thought about writing this about 10 minutes ago as I sat on the throne indulging in a ‘post’ work coffee & fag ‘post’ shit.

Now there’s one person who lives in my house, in fact it’s the only other person who lives in my house (apart from Miss Bo Jangles but she’s an Hamster, not a person so she doesn’t count) who feels the need to fritter away money on certain items that I really cannot understand. Again this began, now about 13 minutes ago when as I was sat doing the aforementioned on the throne, I casually glanced over to the loo roll holder thing on the wall to my left. Now normally, I wouldn’t take such an interest in it but a gold sparkling pattern had spiked my peripheral vision and upon closer inspection I was pretty sickened to see fucking Rudolph smiling back at me from within the double velvet two ply! But not just bleedin Rudolph but some Snowflakes, and a Christmas tree! All delicately imposed upon a lovely soft white tissue! Now I ain’t bothered that toilet tissue has patterns on it, whatever floats ya boat, but to have festive characters on a roll of stuff that you use to wipe the remnants of your last curry off your arse cheeks with is pretty ironic considering the whole Christmas bollox is a load of shit anyway!

Anyhow, as I was pondering this issue, I thought about what other things you could have on the toilet roll, what other designs or characters. Personally, and I think a fair few others would agree, I’d like the faces of the moderator of a certain Birding chit chat forum, the leader of a certain fantasy birding organisation and Bob Geldoff just because he’s a scruffy cunt! I’d get so much pleasure from knowing they were getting all pooey and stuff every time I went for a number two!

Anyway, I digress, back to something else which I ponder, why on earth can I not find Mince Pies in any supermarket before the middle of November? Is it cos I’m not looking hard enough? Erm, Noo!, I’ve looked everywhere for them, in the Spring, Summer and early Autumn but they’re nowhere to be found! They’re like the cake version of a bloke who fakes his own death in January but mysteriously reappears in November after spending 10 months with his buxom latino 17 year old fuck puppet in some seedy motel in Benidorm... But this character does it every bleedin year!  Does Mr Kipling & the cake factory get to November and after nearly a year of banging out Bakewell tarts, jam tarts, little apple pies and stuff, all of a sudden strides into his empire of pastry & sugar and announce ‘’Right, my devoted Umpa Plumpers (yeh I did say Plumpers there, I find it more appropriate than Lumpers with it being cake and all) put down the jam filling, stop fiddling with icing and small halves of glacier cherries for it is time, time to begin making those most British of festive treats, the Mince Pie!’’ He probably doesn’t actually.

I have also in recent weeks been pondering (infact it’s been years but it always peaks around this time of year) why some folk consider it a necessity to adorn their houses with such ghastly displays of eccentric Christmassy bullshit. Driving through many local housing estate in recent days (due to work related missions) has seen my eyes being poisoned by an all mighty manner of vile and disturbing visions of yuletide attention seeking. Now I came from a council estate and thus have the relevant background knowledge and permission to comment here that I feel that it’s pretty ironic that the families who reside within such places often are malnourished and dirty, their children patter off to school wearing carpet slippers and hand me downs and their homes inside resemble Steptoe’s parlour BUT around this time they can spend a small fortune in electricity making their homes visible from space!  For what reason? That I am yet to discover...

Right, I’ve got that out my system, I’m off to post this to the world and perhaps get some angry replies, in fact that’s inevitable I guess.
Oh, just for the bird nerds who may be still reading, I saw a Merlin & some Red Grouse yesterday near Glossop. Intriguing hey!

It's been an eventful few weeks

With it being all 'orrible and murky outside this morning, hence preventing me from getting out birding locally, I was perusing various birding blogs on t'net when I came across this blog called 'Half the bird away' - A great read but it hadn't been updated since early October... Then I realised it was MY blog and I'd been a lazy c*nt! So, with a mug of coffee and a couple of pre-rolled fags, I decided to write a small piece, primarily in order to get my recent adventures out of mind and onto 'paper' but also to satisfy my loyal fans who obviously must have been suffering greatly for the last month without some cool wordage embellishing their retinas!

There's a few episodes I need to 'write-up' but to save time I'll bang them all in one post. So, where do I start. After the already published Rufous-tailed Robin incident, I think the next adventure involved a snazzy lickle heron in Nottinghamshire (I say 'think' because even though I habitually carry a notebook, I never can be arsed to scribble anything in it).

It started on Friday 28th October with a text mid-afternoon from Phil Locker asking 'Do you need that for Notts?' - A frantic search ensued for the pager and after reading the message put me on a downer for the rest of the day! There was no way I could get away from work there & then and getting to Attenborough after work was almost impossible! I spent the evening at home in a somewhat stressed mood. The next morning, saw me on 'The Bridge' at Attenborough before it was light and within seconds, out of the gloom a small heron shape flew out from beneath the bridge and away! Yep, that was it but did I see it in Notts or Derbys! My fears were soon washed away however as the star of the show soon reappeared and gave it some proper mincing in amongst some reedy weed stuff on the right side of the border. A short while later, a couple of fishy men arrived and despite being politely asked to fish elsewhere, completely ignored us & the presence of the bird and deliberately flushed it! Yep, they were cunts alright! Anyhow, a few minutes later during the ensuing verbal battle between the birders & gnomes, the Squacco (that's the first time I've mentioned its ID I think) was picked up flying high to our right, over the main reserve (in Notts) and away down the river. Wanting some more time with it, we headed off in an attempt to relocate it. Twenty or so minutes later, with the group of birders now spread out all over the place, I received a call from Alan Clewes. He was in hysterics and demanded that we come back to 'The Bridge' pronto! Initially thinking that the bird had relocated back there, it soon transpired that something even more eventful had just occurred. Allegedly a couple of late coming birders had arrived at 'The Bridge' and after hearing of the 'Fishing Gnomes' selfishness, had confronted him, gave him a bit of the old Alex Ferguson stylee 'hair dryer treatment' and then proceeded to launch his fishing trolley into the drink! Class! Sadly, the ruckus had halted when we got on scene and the only evidence of said events were a shifty looking bloke shuffling away and the lovely red wheels of aforementioned trolley bobbing up & down in the stream -

Terrible innit!
With more and more Squacco spotters arriving on scene, we decided to have another attempt at locating the bird, and following a brief in-flight view by Dan Martin, I relocated it grubbing about on the edge of a channel behind the sailing club, much to the pleasure of the many rapidly turning sour faces, although viewing here wasn't the most comfortable -

The Squacco Heron constituted my 247th species in Notts, following the proper rules, making up for missing the last one in the late 90's.
I did manage a pic of the creature but it was pretty shite so I've been kindly given permission by Rich Collis to use his image below -

Right then, what was next...
I'm struggling to recall the next event although I know I had this shortly after the Squacco

Ah, I remember now, the next event was a trip to Spurn, East Yorks, for a very obliging Isabelline Wheatear on Saturday 5th November. Unfortunately, there weren't any controversial incidents and all in all was a rather mundane episode. I can't recall any other interesting birds here other than the Izzy and a single Snow Bunting. Once again I managed to rattle off a few shots of the bird but only one came out worthy of even considering looking at

Below, Lord Archer comes face to chest with the tallest birder in the world, Martin 'Thuglife' Smyth

Snapping ASBO, ASBOette, ASBO & Thuglife ASBO

The next installment was a trek North East for a Greater Yellowlegs in Northumberland on Sunday 13th November. With Mikipedia being the designated driver, we set of with some trepidation but thankfully we arrived unscathed at Hauxley NR and made our way to the hide. Rather expectantly it was crammed full of geriatrics and a bloke from Cumbria and despite trying to wiggle wiggle wiggle to the front, it was impossible to see the bird. We evacuated and luckily found another much smaller hide, where we were greeted by a pair of lovely pensioners who ushered us inside and took immense pleasure in pointing out the Greater Yellowlegs and it's Grey Phalarope escort just yards from the flaps!
Below, Rob Capewell got this cracking IPhone shot of the pair -

And my not so cracking HTC phone image of the 'Legs' -

For a few minutes, us four midlanders had the birds to ourselves and soaked up the serene scene but as expected, we were soon suffocated by the loser's from the other hide and I made a quick exit. As regular readers know, I get as much pleasure from watching & papping the crowd at such events as I do from seeing the bird so while my companions had a Yellowlegs overdose, I hung about outside, smoked some fags and papped some twats! I love it!

Can you spot the tripod? No, me neither!

'The Snapper' and I, looking unruly!

Our next destination was Greatham Creek, Cleveland, where our target was a Semipalmated Sandpiper that had been present for a few days. Although it had not been reported today, we were pretty confident that it would still be around. Within minutes of arriving on site, we had located it, and although distant, it was another nice addition to the day as were a couple of Short-eared Owls and some rather vocal seals.

En route home, we eventually located a place called Kirkleatham, Cleveland, where we duly bagged a couple of Bean Geese.

And so, that brings us to this weekend, 19th & 20th November. as I sit here in the lounge typing this, I'm currently witnessing (and hearing) a young brat outside on the street calling his mate a 'toilet wipe' - Nice! My regular birding companions are up in Northumberland again(!) having a look at a Orange bellied Charcoal faced Redstart, a bird I really couldn't muster the enthusiasm to go and see. Apparently we'll all be dead before we can add that bird to our lists, and yeh, I know it's a nice bird, but if I/we can't tick it, I may has well go to the zoo to see some nice birds!

Philistine, me? Never!

Tragic RTA in Norfolk....... (Rufous-tailed Accident) 15th Oct

I won't go into graphic detail about how we, along with about 100 birders and about 400 casuals arrived at dawn at Warham in North Norfolk and proceeded to not see a Rufous-tailed Robin. All I'll say/type is that despite the target being dead/fucking off during the night/still there but eluding everyone, the day didn't turn out to be a complete disaster. A whole host of transient bits were buzzing about overhead, geeses, thrushes, finches & buntings, and would have been a pleasure to behold had I been stood on that hill adjacent to King's Mill Res! Within the bits that bounced overhead, the highlight was a trio of Lapland Bunts that headed west'ish and some smart Starling murmurations! We kicked the shit out of some coastal habbo for little reward and with no Raddes or 'Throats or even YBW's wanting to be discovered we headed for them pastures where every fucker else had gone and pathetically and ashamedly joined the queues to see other folks' finds! Wells was pretty shite and the 4+ reported YBW's were represented by just one vocal individual. The highlight here however was a snazzy yet cheeky red dragonfly thing that took a shining to Mikipedia's clothes and then to myself and Archers shiny skulls!
Moving on, we dropped into Holme where the inevitable autumn Bluetail was brushed on to the day list along with some SEO's in-off. A monster Peregrine lounging on the beach was pretty drab until it decided to have some fun by pursuing the in-coming Owls. The ensuing dog-fight (Bird-Fight?) was without doubt the highlight of the day! There's a whole plethora of images below to peruse if you're bored or waiting for the kettle to boil.
Oh, and on Thursday 6th October I predicted on the ASBO Ornithological Debating Society FaceBook group that a 'rare robin/chat' would turn up on Thursday 13th...One day out aint bad hey?!

My prediction for next week

Old bird

Archer meets Osama!

Fascinator!

'The Crane' was present in Norfolk Saturday afternoon!

Classic ASBO pappage

The inevitable...It's an age thing apparently!