All work and no play makes Jonathan a dull boy

Egad, this working life is tough! I've been outside for about 0.2s seconds today and during that time I heard a Ring-necked Parakeet but didn't see it. OK, so I've actually been outside for a bit more than that as I had to do three school runs, but my point is that working and birding do not mix particularly well. Unless you're a bird guide of course, then the two would go together extremely well. Unfortunately I'm not a bird guide. I'm an office drone. Mind you at least I got to work from home. Most people don't even get that, and instead are cloistered in an air-conditioned cubicle for hours at a stretch.

Productivity at home today was quite remarkable. If you didn't think I had the will-power, think again! I very dutifully worked out some very boring things and told some people about them. The people then wrote back about them. One of them even called me, that was quite exciting. When I'd finished looking at this particular thing, I looked at another thing. Welcome to my new life.

A propos of nothing at all. I didn't even see one of these today.

Meanwhile, for I keep an eye on these things, the east coast got plastered with rarities. Red-flanked Bluetails everywhere with Great Grey Shrikes hunting them, Yellow-browed Warblers all over the shop, and even an Isabelline Wheatear roughly where the Woodchat Shrike was at the weekend. Had I not been otherwise engaged, I may have gone. Rats, as they say. I am not used to this, but no doubt the realisation will sink in with time.

Anyway, as you have probably gathered, I have nothing to say as I have done nothing. Whilst this does not usually hold me back, today I just can't spout forth. Blogger's block? No idea, it may be that my creative senses have been dulled by excel spreadsheets and the heady world of regulatory capital. Just a thought.

But fear not, for the weekend is close at hand. One more day of working to get through, and then two precious days are mine. All mine. Oh, apart from Saturday, when I'm busy with stuff. Children, that kind of thing. So Sunday then. Question is do I hit the patch, or do I go further afield? Only time will tell.

Goodbye Freedom

It's official, I have a job. The offer came through today. Of course it's subject to references and various checks to make sure I'm not a heinous criminal, fraudster or drug dealer, or just plain nuts (here's hoping they don't find this blog), but when all of those steps are complete I am once again going to be a financial contributor to the economic welfare of this great island nation. This means that daily, from 9am to about midday, I'm going to be working for you. For us. For all of us, together. I'd like to let you know that I never claimed a penny of support during my long absence from earning money, I didn't want anyone to suffer on my behalf. I just love you all, and I can't wait to start giving again. I particularly want my taxes to go to dole claimants who ticked Greater Yellowlegs in Cornwall this week, or alternatively to help with the Sky Sports subscriptions for those who cannot afford to watch Premiership Football at home and have to go to the pub to see the games. Here, let me get those lagers...

Missed part of the bird, but I still like it.

Have I missed work? Er, no. There are very few people in this world who do. Have I missed having an income stream? Er, yes. A lot. Whilst my time at home with the kiddos has been amazing, and I would not change it for the world, having a steady dribble of cash going the wrong way has been mildly traumatic for someone not used to that. Then again, not earning money has had the immeasurable benefit of teaching me that money isn't as important as maybe I thought it was. We very easily adapted to life without large piles of fifties lying around in every room, and ceasing bathing in Champagne did wonders for my skin. You can't buy happiness someone once said. Bollocks. Give me a couple of mil and I'd have a bloody good go.

I have, though, been very weak. Very. I have courageously and bravely got myself a job at the very same institution that dispensed with my services two and a half years ago. I like a challenge, new experiences, and as such will get my old ID number back, and my old email address too. And my job will be looking at the same kind of stuff I was looking at before, indeed, I am going to carry on with one of the same projects I was doing before. It will be like I never left. Like I had a long holiday. A sabbatical of sorts.

So I need to enjoy these last few days of freedom. I need to bird like I have never birded before. I need to take photographs, and lots of them. Tomorrow Pudding starts school. When I lost my job, she was in nappies, and now she's a proper little girl with smart shoes. It has gone quickly, and I have accomplished very little. But who cares? I've deliberately done next to nothing, A bit of writing, a teensy little bit of twitching, but mainly I have just cleaned the house. Dusted.

I have no idea why I started this blog. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Six weeks later and I was unemployed, though I am (fairly) sure the events are unrelated. In one sense it gave me something to do. A way to continue to be creative, to continue using words with more than one syllable. I have to say I've enjoyed it a lot. This is usually the point when bloggers sign off and say "So long, and thanks for all the fish" or something along those lines, but I reckon I'll keep it going. Domestic woes may get replaced with lists of new and wonderfully meaningful buzzwords I have encountered, or why the tube is just the best place to be on a Monday morning, but otherwise I envisage it remaining essentially the same.

A load of old rubbish.

Dealing with Fame

Today was my big day. The day I broke into television. I’m not counting the dead birds on Wanstead Flats, that was hardly the grand entrance I wanted. No, today is where it is all going to start. I don’t yet know what it is going to be called, but I believe the working title is Wansteadbirderwatch.

I arrived at the London Wetland Centre and was met at the entrance by no less than Sir Peter Scott. Carrying on past the statue, I ended up in a room at the top of the visitor centre where Simon King was waiting for me. He was of course absolutely thrilled to meet me, though true professional that he is, he managed to mostly conceal his utter delight and acted perfectly normally. Like it was something he did everyday. As if! I did my bit of course, putting him at ease by pretending to be totally amazed at meeting him, a bit of fawning and so on. I think it worked! Eventually they managed to drag him away from me, and so I was able to get on with my program-making. Honestly, the people I have to deal with…

Arriving on the set of Wansteadbirderwatch, the cameraman and sound guy were both ready and waiting. Unfortunately Air Traffic Control had been unable to agree to my request that all Heathrow-bound planes divert to Gatwick for the day, so the filming was interrupted about every forty-five seconds by the roar of jet engines. This is why my thirty second segment took fifty-five takes, rather than any other reason such as gross incompetence. Just wait until I get hold of Willie Walsh. Throw in every school child in west London and a few aimless plastic duck-strokers, and it took forever and we were unable to move onto the main segment of me expounding my thoughts on twitching and dog-ownership levels in the southeast. Nevermind, I’m sure that will be the next part to get made just as soon as I have a chance to get back there.

I ambled back to the visitor centre in the company of Sula, a local birder and blog acolyte, where it was no surprise that Simon was hanging around waiting for me. I put him out of his misery and sat down opposite him at a table, and proceeded to have a good old chat about many things. Mainly about travel and Shetland, which he wanted to know all about as I think he is planning a trip there soon. Hopefully I was able to pass on a few tips.

And that was it, I bade my farewells and headed back to my limo. It’s a long red one, I don’t believe in black. Although I had told my driver what time I was finishing, he must have misheard, because he was between twelve and fifteen minutes late.

I’m back home now, and I have to say that cooking dinner and dealing with squabbling children is a bit of a come-down after my day of televisual feast-making. Soon though I expect that to be a thing of the past, and my personal assistant(s) can fetch the children and bring them to the trailer if I’m on set....

PS Anyone who takes this post the slightest bit seriously needs to get out more. Out against a wall to be precise, where they should arrange for someone to then shoot them.

The Patch and a Problem.

The patch is hardly on fire, but I felt that I hadn't been so long it was worth a trip. Mainly to see if it was still there. Frankly they could have razed the Flats to the ground and I would have been none the wiser. It was. Still there I mean.

I have been known to moan about June before, but my walk around Wanstead Park and across Wanstead Flats was very pleasant. OK, so it was quiet on the bird front, but that was to be expected. So rather than discover a first-for-Britain mega-vagrant, I concentrated on photography. This is becoming a bit of a problem as far this blog is concerned. You may have noticed that the number of photographs on here has increased somewhat of late. Almost exponentially in fact. This was never my intention. It was supposed to be a light-hearted take on birding in Wanstead, complete with snippets from my oh-so-exciting life. I've been going for nearly eighteen months now, and naturally it is becoming harder to find stuff to write about. Traditionally this is the moment that bloggers say "I'm done, finished, thank you and good night!"

That would have been a surprise wouldn't it?! Well, I'm not there yet. Sorry. Worry about staying fresh, agonise about becoming a slave to my blog? Hah! Not a chance, I am more than happy to regurgitate, recycle, drone on ad infinitum. But the compulsion to post photo after photo is beginning to annoy even me, so lord knows how you feel about it.

I'm not sure what to do. Take this afternoon by way of example. I was out for about four hours. During that time I took 443 photos. For the mathmos amongst you, that's one every 32.5 seconds. After my first edit, I binned 369, leaving 74. My keeper rate is about 17%. After my second edit, I was left with just 13 that I reckon are good enough to put somewhere. Here, generally. So even with a final keeper rate of just 2.9%, I still have way more photos than I know what to do with. Usually I just bung them up here and hope for the best, but I can see that it must get a little repetitive. Especially as most of them are of ducks.

Where was I? Oh yes. The problem of having too many photos and being at a loss as to what to do with them. Much as I'd like to be a full-time photographer, I'm under no illusions as to my limitations, and quite how good you have to be to stand out, let alone make it pay. Whilst there is no substitute for practice, and god only knows I get quite a lot, there is a huge gulf between what I produce and what the professionals are consistently capable of. One of the projects I've had on the back burner for a while is for a gallery-style website where I can display them all, and thus spare the blog. But I've ranted before now about how everyone is a wildlife photographer these days, trying to flog second-rate photos, so it would seem rather hypocritical for me to do it too. That said, I've never let hypocrisy stand in my way, so I'll do it.

Good, glad that's all sorted. A weight off my mind I can tell you. I'll post a link in due course and I expect the orders for photos of Mallards and Canada Geese to come flooding in.

So, back to my walk around Wanstead. Obviously these days I can't go anywhere without finding a moth, and so it proved again this afternoon. The brambles in Reservoir Wood are currently supporting an immense population of Longhorn moths - specifically the catchily-named Nemophora degeerella. They have the most amazingly long antennae, up to five times their body length. It would be like me having ears twenty-five feet long. There were easily a hundred in one relatively small patch, dancing about in the sunlight together. You know what? Now would seem like the perfect opportunity to display a photo of the aforementioned moth....

After burning through a couple hundred shots of Mallards and so on (all hail the digital revolution!), a sustained shower forced to me to seek shelter under the overhanging roof of the Tea Hut of Happiness. I supped a mug of tea and watched the rain clatter down for few minutes. As I leant against the wall watching a group of House Martins feeding low over Heronry Pond, and eight partially grown Mute Swan Cygnets swimming in a line behind one of their parents, I reflected that June was OK really. But that it would soon be July.

Gratuitous and Unnecessary (Copies available at £4.99 + VAT)