Staggered weekend(s).

Late last year some one said to me ''So, ya getting married eh? S'pose that means ya'll be having a Stag Night...''
Well over the weekend of 31st March/1st April myself and a motley crew of ugly birders from all over middle England descended on the sleazy east coast town of Bridlington for a night of drunken debauchery. En-route to Brid' we bagged a snazzy Red-necked Grebe at Ten Acre Lake on Hatfield Moors, missed a couple of Cranes & a Garganey up near Scarborough and stared at some Purps in Bridlington Harbour. Then we had a night out and the next day we somehow managed to wake up and hang around with the plebs at Flamborough & Bempton. We had a few bits like Ring Ouzel, Black Redstart, Wheatear and stuff but nothing too exciting. The weather was hot and my hangover got worse. In fact the weekend is a bit of a haze and the above is about as much has I can remember.



Hangover cure

 The annual 'four days off' at Easter was eagerly anticipated and on 'Good Friday' (6th April) myself & Mikipedia headed into Staffs to year-tick a Common Crane & Garganey. Nearby, Blithfield Res' gave us all three flavours of Hirundine and an handful of LRP's.

The next day I made the foolish decision to head to North Lincs. I didn't really desire to see the target bird (possible Thayer's Gull or something) but knowing the bird would not be there, I relished the chance to 'pap' some ugly disgruntled faces. The only birds of note were a 2w Iceland Gull which tanked it over the pig shite site and a Peregrine spanking it NE. Having had to drop one of the crew off home in Doncaster so that he could watch 22 blokes boot a bag of wind around, we decided to drop into Boston Park Lake at Hatfield Moors where a couple of Black-necked Grebes were the only highlight.

Fot some unknown reason we then headed back to Brigg where we still didn't see that brown seagull but did add to our shared fuel cost! Nice! Below are a few shots of some of the mugs I 'papped' during the day. As you can see, with these beasts on site, no wonder the bird didn't turn up!

The next couple of days (8th & 9th April) were spent doing very little other than eating well, partaking in a moderate amount of alcohol consumption and generally being a lazy cunt.

(As regular readers will obviously note (I hope), this blog post has been constructed with a liberal helping of  'Can't be arsed').

Maybe tomorrow...

Ok, so for the second weekend running I chose to spend my Saturday morning trudging around 'The Patch' - It happens every year, spring arrives and I get that uncontrollable urge to stomp around the sacred paths, paddocks, pasture and boggy stuff searching for recent arrivals for a few weeks until come mid-April, the little black beepy box starts giving it some beepage and I forget the hallowed turf of KMR in favour of additions to my BOU England, Scotland & Wales list.
Anyhow, this morning I arrived at the rather late time of 7.30am. Now this aint an admission that I overlay, no siree, I was up and ready to go at 6am but a glance out of the window and not being able to see my motor on the drive due to some fog enveloping everything it could touch, forced me to wap on the kettle a few times and await some clearage. By 7.10am, it still hadn't lifted, however with no one online on FaceBook to ridicule, I gingerly made my way to the car and carefully(!) drove to the res'.
Upon arrival, I had a mooch about the Sailing Club Marsh just incase the Jack Snipe was 'showing' - It wasn't. Mr/Mrs Water Rail had also left home early so I headed for the shoreline to look for the Black necked Grebe that had been relocated earlier in the week by Mikipedia. No sign of that either, although, as the following images depict, I wasn't exactly viewing in prime conditions...

Move along, nothing to see here.

One or two Chiffchaffs were singing and a couple of Blackcaps, so with hopes that perhaps maybe there might just be a grounded Wheatear or even Ring Ouzel knocking about, I headed for 'Thee Olde Wheatear Field'. Upon arrival at said field, it was obvious it was a waste of my precious time so I took a break and had a KitKat.

Knowing that he is a fiend for year ticks and to ease my boredom, I sent a text to Mikipedia informing him of the presence of at least three Blackcaps. He replied that he was on his way so I headed in the direction of the Sailing Club for our rendezvous. En Route I came across this ghostly grey gloved hand beckoning me into the marshes! Although it had been a shit morning, I refrained from being seduced into a watery dunk

After meeting up with Mike, we had another search of 'Thee Olde Wheatear Field' (to no avail) before making our way to the Viewing Platform. The sun had now decided to get its shit together and quickly burnt off the offending fog. The lifting of the cloud curtain revealed the jewel like pinnacle on the mucky waters of King's Mill Res' -

Abit of a 'vis-mig' session in 'The Weedy Field' prouced nothing more than a few Mipits so with the sun now BLAZING and NO Hirundines being seen, we departed to the cafe for a brew.

Mikipedia was far from impressed on the mornings offerings

The final tally of shit after 6hrs looked like this (I'm only giving you the interesting stuff) -
1 Black necked Grebe
8 Chiffchaffs
3 Blackcaps
9 Snipe
1 Willow Tit
1 Stoat
4+ decent female joggers with firm arses
1 cup of tea
and a KitKat...

The title of this post says it all.

Return to the patch (again & again)

Ok, so it was Saturday morning (17th March) and for some reason I made the decision to head down to my old stomping ground, King's Mill Res', and do some proper birding instead of that silly twitching nonsense. Upon arrival at KMR, I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of vehicles in the car park! That usually means no other birders have arrived before me but more importantly that there would be minimal numbers of dog walkers and bread throwers!
Due to the peaceful atmosphere my first area of coverage was the scruffy ditch adjacent to the car park where a Water Rail lives and luckily he (or she) was in! I attempted to 'pap' it but my Mobi-Scoping kit just wouldn't focus down close enough. I told him (or her) that I'd be back later to try again, said our goodbyes and went our seperate ways. I headed to 'Thee Olde Wheatear Field' (AKA The Lawson Mardon Paddock) and as I expected, there, on the short cropped turf and perching upon various stuff like posts, upturned baths and wheelbarrows, was NO Wheatears! Too early?

Prime Wheatear turf (minus Wheatear).

Prime Wheatear Posts (minus Wheatear).

Prime Wheatear wheelbarrow (minus Wheatear).

So not dejected in the slightest, I carried on with my ornithological hunting but with the volume being raised by joggers, dog walkers and bread chuckers, I headed towards the viewing platform in order to avoid being trampled. Nearing the platform, I had a quick scan over to the SE and noticed a small raptor circling to the left of Hamilton Hill. I then noticed a much larger bird being rattled by a corvid! The bigger bird was actually an even larger corvid - RAVEN! I locked my scope onto it and enjoyed a good 3 or 4 minutes of aerial acrobatics as the two birds seemingly playfully jostled until the Crow got bored and the Raven sauntered off south east.
I then met up with Rich Challands. We did the obligatory 'stand near the SW corner and look at Snipes & Teals' stuff and spoke eloquently about cats & their owners and then it was time for me to leave.
KMR is about 6.8 miles from my house and should take (according to google) 17 minutes by car. So it was only right for Rich to wait 'til I got home before he should text me with news of a Jack Snipe at the Sailing Club Marsh. Needless to say, I was back at KMR within 12 minutes but alas even with no traffic on the roads(!) I was too late. The Jack Snipe had been flushed. By a dog? A Jogger? Horse? Stray cat? Elephant? Nope! It had been flushed by a fucking FROG! Yep a FROG!
Luckily Rich had seen where it had ditched back down so there was no choice other than to slip on our wellingtons and get stuck into the marsh. It didn't take long for our ingenius plan of clapping, shouting, jumping and smashing cymbals together to work as the little snipe soon got fucked off with it and silently erupted from the boggy ground. It circled above our heads a few times, obviously wanting to ditch down again but due to our presence it bottled it and chose a smaller pond over the railway. Chuffed with that, we went to see if the Water Rail was still at home. It was.

Mr or Mrs Water Rail posed majestically before she had to nip to Asda

I left for home again but I'd only gone about two miles when I received a text from Wayne Collingham. I had to go back AGAIN! Spinning the motor round, I tanked it back, dumped the motor on the entrance track, met Rich and ran over the A617. Wayne was stood in the middle of 'Thee Olde Wheatear Field' looking at this -

Gorgeous Miss Wheatear trying to say ''I've been here all morning'' But I know she's lying!

On a serious note, in almost 18 years of watching KMR, the majority of my Wheatear sightings have been in this field and most have been discovered in the second, late morning, search. Is this because they continue migrating for a few hours after dawn before hitting the deck for the day? Does anyone know?
The excellent morning was topped off with KMRs first singing Chiffy of the spring. I then got in the motor, turned my phone off and went home. My late afternoon/evening was spent having a Cuba meeting with the Cuba Crew. We discussed little and drank lots. The latter being the cause of my failure to get out birding today.

I'll never learn.

''READ ALL ABOUT IT''

Ok, it's been a few weeks since I graced ya with my ramblings due to the fact that I don't like to blog after every 'event', it's too bigger infringement on my precious evenings which are better spent pretending to be a connoisseur of fine wines. It'd be rather hypocritical of me anyway as I don't condone the actions of those folk who blog about every silly fucking event that happens to them in their lives... Do these folk REALLY think that their ''readers'' actually give a flying fuck about what they had for breakfast, lunch, tea & supper as well has having their eyes poisoned by insidious shite mundane birding drivel.
Anyway, for anyone still reading, I'll now scrawl a brief write-up of the rest of the month........................

So, following the epic(?) Scarborough fail on the 11th, the 12th saw Rich 'The Giant' Challands, Mikipedia & I meetng our guide for the day, Dicky Collis, in the ghettos of Doncaster. The day was a triumphant success in comparison to the previous day with our guide giving us a stunning, eloquent and linguistically perfect running commentary on the history of South Yorkshire has we drove between sites. Highlights during the day were two Woodcocks & three LEO's at a sight of none specific interest. A female Ring-necked Duck gave awful views as it dreamt of warmer climes and just over the border in Lincs we looked at 11 'Tundra' Beans & 9 Bewicks. We concluded our day adding Little Owl to our year lists at Huggin Carr (after a pretty nifty tip off from one of Dickys 'contacts').

Above - Our esteemed guide can be seen gaining some crucial gen for his punters

The next event has already been over-blogged, so in order not to repeat the nonsense that's already been posted all over the galaxy, I'll just say that, along with many other fools, The Giant, Mikipedia, The Reverend Kinghorn, Archie Archer & myself made the pilgrimage to add a snazzy, sparklingly citrus coloured american warbler to our lists. This we did successfully, eventually! We also collected that Lesser Scaup and tame Whooper at Cosmeston but dipped the proper location of a Bonapartes Gull! My year list now stood at 150 and I couldn't give a fuck (I've added that bit now so that come December 31st and I end up with a proper shite total, I can delete this sentence and then direct you back to this post where you'll see that I wasn't that bothered to start with! Clever hey!)

Below is a small collection of faces & scenes from the Common Yellowthroat excursion.

The assembled troops actively search for their quarry....... dream on!

The Reverend, The NoseBag & The Godfather

Anxious faces eh!

Mikipedia celebrating with a mouthful of Fizzy Haribos - too fizzy!?

The Reverend was so exhausted he had to have emergency Ribena administered

On Tuesday 21st Feb, 15 minutes after arriving home from a laborious day of employment, I was stood at my open bedroom window, gazing over my kingdom, when I suddenly became aware of the local Rooks giving it some noise. A new addition to my 'Birds seen from my bedroom window' (and my UK year list) was being rattled by corvids as it made its way quickly NW - Short-eared Owl! Another addition to aforementioned list arrived in the shape of a 1st w. male Reed Bunting on the morning of the 23rd.

On the 26th, I finally filled a Bean Goose sized gap on my Notts list! Bean Goose. Me, The Giant & Lester Allcock were enroute for the three birds that had been found at Budby at 8am but they flew off east before we arrived. Fortuitously, a 'Road Closure' forced me to take a different route than planned and being east of Budby now, I casually pulled into a layby that offered abit of a panoramic view. T'was here I noticed some geese in the distance grubbing about under some cattle. Mainly Greylags and a scattering of Canadas but a closer inspection, revealed three Beans and a Pink foot! They were then flushed by a closer tresspassing birder but I managed to relocate them again futher east on Thoresby Lake! A case of pure jam if there ever was one! At Welbeck Raptor Watchpoint a pair of Goshawks showed off as they displayed over the woods &onto the year list and at Warsop the now resident escaped White Stork was given some undeserved attention as it poked about in a horse paddock.

Right, I think that's us about done for now. Thanks for coming. See ya in March. x

The most expensive Black Redstart EVER

Here's how to bag your self the most expensive Black Redstart EVER! Arrange for you and TWO mates to travel to North Yorkshire for the day on 11th Feb. Ensure one of the mates has the biggest, newest, most luxurious motor ever and the other one is a lazy c*nt who cannot get up on time. You and your 'awake' mate should now travel to Scarborough (via McDonalds) and nod appreciatively at the Black Redstart that is knocking about on Marine Drive. You should also come close to death in sub zero temperatures on Filey Brigg. Please ensure you do not see the recently departed(?) Desert Wheatear at Bempton. Then after a brief discussion on what to do next, you must head straight home. Split the fuel cost in half. After handing over £24, you have, ladies & gentleman, The most expensive Black Redstart EVER!

 

 

 

I did actually bag a total of nine year ticks including the obligatory Brigg Purps and despite the lack of quality birds, it was actually good to be out today. The North Yorkshire coast line was complete white-out with fresh fallen snow and the bitter cold was savage but that also meant a distict lack of general birding twats!

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