Annoyed of Wanstead

Thank you for bearing with me over California and Florida. I had not been planning to write them up at all, but with everything subsequent to them cancelled or rapidly heading that way I needed a bit of a lift, and I have to say that going through all of those waders brought a smile to my face. I am itching to go back and do it all again. However.....

This weekend I should have been in Northumberland celebrating my parents' golden wedding anniversary. My sister and I had rented a house large enough to accommodate all 12 of us, and the long weekend was going to be spent in the great outdoors and then sprawled around a comfortable and rather grand sitting room. On Monday evening I was coming back to London with my Mum and one of my nieces, and on Tuesday together with them and my youngest daughter, was flying to Pittsburgh and from there driving to Ohio. There we would have met up with my aunt, uncle, cousin and [later] sister for a few days, and together we were to visit my Grandmother, now aged 94, in her care home. At 94 I cannot help but wonder how many more chances we will have. Meanwhile my eldest daughter was accompanying my Dad back to Scotland to help look after him and my sister's other two children, and Mrs L would be in London supervising the final burst of GCSE revision for my eldest.

Well now.

No anniversary celebrations. No family get-together in America. No visiting of ancient relatives. No cousins spending time together. No GSCEs and no end-of-an-era school leavers jollity. We've seen no-one and been nowhere. Meanwhile I read of Government advisors quietly skipping off to see families and lovers, I see reports of fun days out birding here there and everywhere, of long-distance twitching, and of photos of crowded beaches and clogged roads all over the country. 

You can imagine how that makes me feel. No doubt there are solid reasons for some of this activity, and I am sure that many people have found ways of justifying it to themselves, but quite a lot of it makes me seethe. Imagine what nurses and doctors seeing this first hand must think. The selfishness of so many people is quite extraordinary. My 'favourite' was a news report of some people who had driven an hour and a half to go to a beach and were without any sense of irony annoyed that lots of other people had done the same thing. I've also read stories of people who never got to see their aged parents again because they died before they could visit, and I'll be honest here - I cannot reconcile those two things. People who are irritated that other people also felt like a nice day out, and people who won't get to see a family member again ever.

Right, deep breath.

Here in Wanstead it has been feeling quite like June for quite a while already. Other than the majesty of local Swifts birding has been scant, and unfortunately I have now turned to insects. On Thursday night we put out the moth trap for the first time this year. Immediate success with Buff-tip, Small Elephant Hawk Moth and Angle Shades - three mega-cool species to find in my back garden. Seek and ye shall find.

We've also had regular visits from a Broad-bodied Chaser that likes to rest up on a particular Yucca leaf, returning to it time and again much like a Flycatcher, and there have been a variety of other interesting insects that I have discovered whilst gardening and on whose identity I am currently clueless. Help is at hand in the form of various established pan-listers, including local birder gall-afficionado James, who was able to tell me that the really smart little bug I photographed was the catchily-named Rhabdomiris striatellus. Given I am not going to be going very far for the rest of the summer and quite possibly the autumn as well, developing an interest and gaining some knowledge in things other than birds may be one of the best ways to get through this.

Stay safe. And don't be selfish.

Wanstead's most attractive Woodpigeon

Came across an unbelievably gorgeous Woodpigeon today. I fear its beauty hasn't much longer to shine though, there is something not quite right with its tail.... It's not every day that a Woodpigeon makes you involuntarily gag, but that's what happened when I was photographing Mistle Thrushes and it strayed into my viewfinder. I wonder what on earth has happened to it? It wasn't particularly alert, not that many are I suppose, but this one appeared to have significantly dulled reactions. Horrible, poor thing.

Do you think it looks better from the left....

....or from the right?

In other news, I saw a Nuthatch today in Reservoir Wood, and then again by Heronry. Nuthatch is an inexplicably rare bird in Wanstead given the lovely habitat that exists in the Park. There must be something I am missing, certainly I can't hope to understand what makes Nutchatches tick, but I've been to lots of places that appear at least superficially to be identical, and they are crawling with Nuthatches. I've seen four in Wanstead in eight years, not a very convincing total, so let's hope that they are on the way back. Not much else going on across the patch, fairly quiet in comparison with recent days. I guess this is the problem with excellence; it becomes difficult to maintain. A Little Egret flying west across the Flats was a patch tick though, seen plenty in the Park but none here before, so most pleasing. I kind of punched the air, but not really as I was standing next to Barry and he doesn't need to know what a saddo I am.

Directions to this crippling mega on the Wiki

Talking of saddos, I am getting drawn in to a handbagging match on the London bird sightings page. I would have done better to have stayed out of it, it's like Birdforum all over again, so a huge 'fail' on my part. In a nutshell a loud-mouthed American has turned up and loves the sound of his own typing. Me too, that's probably why it's all going wrong - but I have a blog for my creative output. He doesn't, so he just uses the blog, sorry I mean sightings page, to tell London birders where they might be so lucky as to see a Chiffchaff or other scarce bird, which branch of a tree it is in, and what the weather is like. I put it down to over-enthusiam, severe obstinance, and cultural differences. I must be overly-traditional, preferring a sightings page to concisely summarise what birds are to be found across the capital. My opinion means nothing though, and unfortunately he has become a cause celebre for seemingly masses of disenfranchised birders who need help with finding Chiffchaffs and other rare breeding birds, and so I now find myself somewhat marginalised and accused of pedantry. Such as shame, as I'm actually right, but that doesn't count. I suspect I'm going to get bored of an editing war long before this guy and his groupies do, and sarcasm has no effect either. Even a great joke about Garden Warblers being borin' went completely over their heads, an indication that there is no more I can do. So, completely powerless in the face of a mounting storm of verbal diahorrea that is swamping what used to be quite an easy to use resource, I'm giving up. Given my heritage it pains me to say that I hope his visa is only temporary. If he ever does see the light and start a blog though, I'm going to be the first follower, the style is, is, well, words fail me if the truth be told.

Oh, and yes, I did get assaulted by a dog on the patch today, just as I knew I would. Once again it was my fault (camera), and it improved my already great mood massively.

And breathe......

Where my liver went

If you were hoping that this might be about birds, hope again. I am afraid that once more I have virtually nothing to say. This has never stopped me before, and won't stop me in the future. If you want proper entertainment, I suggest you visit here, which is altogether a lot more fun. If you look very carefully at the very end, I actually feature, which was somewhat of a surprise, but there you go. If you put yourself out there to a certain extent, this is what can happen. Be warned kids. And grip, don't dip, obviously.

Er, where was I? Ah yes, no birding. So, in lieu of actually leaving the house, I did a spot of tidying. The object of my affections this time around was the big cupboard under the stairs, which over time has degenerated into a repository for stuff we no longer wish to see around the house. I pulled the whole lot out, recyled masses of it, went to the dump with a pile more, and shoved what was left back in. In doing so, I found these.

This is almost every single wine cork that I have pulled in the last, gosh I don't know, five years. Why have I kept them you might ask? Because I'm really really cool and well-adjusted. I don't actually have a good answer, or indeed any answer. I think I once harboured designs of doing something artistic with them, but that never happened and it's now getting to the stage where a Tern raft isn't totally out of the question. As a displacement activity, rummaging through a mountain of corks proved pretty good. Much better than cleaning at any rate. I didn't count them, out of deference to my doctor. And anyway, Mrs L is equally culpable. Or maybe a third culpable - that's the usual consumption ratio round here. Looking at this enormous pile, it's hard not to feel very very unhealthy indeed. No, I didn't go for a run today, it was raining.

Whilst poking through them it occured to me that this was very much June July material, especially the wettest and most bird-free July since 1682. By far the majority of the corks say "Mis en bouteille a la propriete", which is posh-speak for saying that the wine was bottled at the same place the grapes were grown, rather than shipped in a tanker to a massive factory in Antwerp and bottled alongside Pepsi, before hitting the shelves of Happy Shopper at £2.99 a bottle.

But digging a little deeper I unearthed a few that were recogniseable. A pleasing half-hour therefore passed, during which no tidying occured, and it turns out that there were quite a few more interesting* ones in there. I feel obliged to feature a small selection, clockwise from top left, and ending in the middle, as I have nothing else to say**.

1. Chateau Batailley, a Chateau L staple. Left bank claret, decently priced. I drink of a lot it. Not that you could tell.
2. Chateau de la Variere. In the Loire somewhere, we visited whilst on holiday. I would never be able to find it again, but I remember it being quite nice and doing dessert, which this is. Was.
3. Domaine Olivier Leflaive. White Burgundy - as popular as water round here, possibly drunk more frequently.
4. Wirra Wirra, an Aussie departure.
5. Bonneau du Martray. Oh yes.
6. Domaine Bruno Clair, Chambolle Musigny - Red Burgundy and Ribena substitute.
7. Cote de Nuits of some description. Likely delicious.
8. Domaine du Vieux Telegraph; wonderful Red Rhone that I can't afford any more because Kim Yong-Un has bought it all.
9. Indeterminate and forgotten celebration.

So where are they now? Recycled? At the dump? Errrr, almost. They're now in the loft. And guess what I found up there? Yup, the previous five years. I am nothing if not consistently sad.

* lies
** true

A sad, sad day

A victory for sensible, a triumph for rational, but nonetheless a sad, sad day. The good ship ECO 1 has departed for shores unknown (well, Surrey actually). Back in about 2006 I convinced myself I wanted a Landrover. Needed a Landrover. Not just any Landrover, it had to be a Defender, and it had to be a long wheelbase. I spent a fair old while looking for the perfect car, and finally took the plunge. Broadly speaking, it then sat outside my house for about six years. It became a local landmark, taxis and delivery men would know where to stop, tradesmen where to knock. In a street with its fair share of parking problems, it was an immovable object, a guardian of my bit of road.

In the six years that I had it, I did just over 16,000 miles. A few Scottish trips, a few times to Norfolk and Kent, over to France once, but mostly just pootling around London. The cost per mile was probably just under a pound all told. Not very good. This year the battery gave out in about March, and I'd not driven it since. With the MOT and tax coming up, I decided to bite the bullet and sell up. I'm very sad, but at twenty years old and approximately fifty percent rust, the time had come. The depreciation was very large indeed, eye-watering in fact, but faced with the choice of more servicing bills, more tax, more insurance and fuel economy that would make a Saturn rocket look efficient, I decided to take the hit. A truck came today at around lunchtime, winched it up, and that was that.

Here's the Landy in happier times, on Mull, with Mrs L cooking a nice healthy breakfast in the back.

There are happy memories of course. I slept overnight in it many a time whilst birding. At a Black Grouse lek in the Highlands, for a Thrush Nightingale in Suffolk. I stood on the roof of it in order to scope a Purple Heron at Crossness until security turned up. My favourite times were of it as a family car, the five of us squeezed into its narrow seats, bikes on the top, a ton of crap in the back, and some decent countryside ahead. It was never really a London car, even though that's where it spent most time, but it was still a lot of fun. Arm out the window, diesel roaring, other drivers deciding that yes, they would give way just this once. Aircon, you're kidding right? Anyhow, an interesting if wasteful period of my life has ended, and whilst not a broken man, I am hurting. I briefly thought about getting another one, a newer one, a few months ago, but saw sense and realised that, mostly, the same shortcomings of my 1992 model were present even in current cars. I've never been much of a car person, never had fast car urges, a desire to go and plonk down silly money for something really flash. My Landy was a proper vehicle, one that showed I didn't care about that kind of thing, that I didn't bow to peer pressure. And that I wasn't going to race you off the lights, and not just because I couldn't.

So what to get next? Something that is actually capable of moving for starters, novel though that sensation would be. I'm thinking small, and I'm thinking highly economical. Dull, basically. Boring. All it needs is a boot just large enough for a tripod, scope and camera, and that'll do me I reckon. Oh, and it has to be a Ford.....

My new old home

I'm back at Canarius Wharfus Maximus. The very words are depressing. Canary Wharf, a place of shiny buildings and expensive suits. A place with pointless shops and more coffee and smoothie places than are needed in the whole of the UK. Three quid for a tall, skinny, soya caramel latte? Sign me up! In truth, I did not miss it at all. Neither the commute, nor the place. Give me Wanstead Flats any day. But this is irrelevant. I am back.

Home Sweet Home

Nothing has really changed. It is still a concrete jungle with a few pockets of habitat. The stories you read about Blyth's Reed Warblers hopping around in roses at the foot of tower may or may not be true, but take it from me, you struggle to find even a Robin on the estate. Search back through this blog for long enough and you'll find joyous posts about finding some Great Tits (take that Google engines!) and a Wren. Beyond Crow and Pigeon, I've not seen a passerine yet. The place is a desert. My gloom was momentarily lifted today when a Peregrine happened to fly past the very window I was sat at, a smallish male by the looks of it, but on the whole the place is bird free.

Not that I have to go birding anyway, as I am working my little cotton socks off, trying to get my childcare-dulled brain to comprehend securities lending and repo financing. It is a world away from plasticine and colouring-in fairies. It pays better though, which is why I'm doing it. Today, before I'd even had lunch, I had to go to a meeting in a different building. On the way I passed what is officially known as "habitat". Look, here it is.

"Habitat"


It looks like someone has actually gone to Habitat, the shop, and bought some of those ridiculous bamboo stems of different heights in white china pots that were so fashionable several years ago, atatched them to a discarded doormat, and then chucked the whole lot over the side of the dock. I'm no ecologist, but what exactly is the point? Maybe they're in fact very very small Phragmites, and I'm as good at botany as I am ecology, and in six months time they'll be crawling with Sedgies. Time will tell. Today they held nothing, a few desultory Mallards avoiding them at the far edge. Highlights today on my walk were two Coots and a Moorhen.
Take that Shetland!

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.

They call me Mr Pitiful....

As the song goes, Baby, that's my name. Why, I hear you ask? Well it has to do with lists, need I go on? Probably not, but as you know, I am going to anyway. So, I have today plumbed new depths. I realise that I have said this very phrase on more than one occasion in my birding career, and no doubt will do so again, but let me just run you through the latest pathetic incident that has led me to claim the dredging title yet again.


It involves this:


Yes, very nice. Anyone who hasn't seen a Waxwing this year isn't really trying hard enough. But just seeing them isn't quite enough for a lister, it's about where you see them. I've already had some in Wanstead, over my garden in fact, the best possible location for a Waxwing. By default I must therefore have Waxwing on my London list, which leaves Rainham as the only Waxwing-less patch. This particular Waxwing was almost at Rainham. Very nearly at Rainham.  Not quite at Rainham. And therefore not quite on my list.

There are many ways of defining boundaries, and I find that patch boundaries are very often the most fluid. Now, I could hardly annex the A1306, but most if not all of the people that bird Rainham are quite happy to count birds on the other side of the river, if they themselves are on the reserve. This happened with the Hen Harrier just recently, it never came over the river, and thus is rather incongruously on my Rainham list but not on my Essex list - I have some standards. Could I therefore get to a spot where I could view the Waxwing from within the reserve? It took some doing, and is ever-so-slightly tenuous, but I feel satisfied that I have done enough for the record to stand. This next part is probably meaningless for those who have not visited the reserve, but it is accessed from New Tank Hill Road, which diverts off the A1306 and crosses the Eurostar tracks. The reserve boundary goes right up to the railway line. I was thus able to find a spot on the bridge which had the necessary height to allow me to view the Waxwing's tree of choice AND which abutted the reserve boundary. I scoped the tree and waited until the Waxwing popped into view, at which point I dangled my left arm off the bridge and into Rainham airspace.... I do believe that's a tick, how marvellous! And yes, I did take a photograph....

I recognise the absurdity, I am not proud. But I am also absolutely certain that any of you readers who are also patch-workers will have done something very similar, or considered what you might do if a bird appeared just outside the patch. I therefore feel that I acted entirely normally. Well, almost. Being a birder, in particular a birder who is fond of lists, generally redefines normal in one way or another. Generally in an "abnormal is the new normal" kind of way. Most everyplace I go.

Worse than I feared

The whole of Alexandra Lake has been cordoned off. I had wondered if this was an over-reaction, but having just bumped into one of the Epping Forest Keepers, the news is dire. It is a deliberate case of bird-poisoning, and the eight Crows I found were just the start. They have been falling out of the trees almost constantly since Tuesday. I don't have the exact figures yet, but so far the deaths include over 100 Crows, many Canada Geese, Coots, and particularly Moorhens, 2 Greylags, and some Pigeons. In all hundreds of birds have died, and indeed when I looked at the area from the car today, it seemed very empty. The Keeper I spoke to has been picking up Crows and putting them together whilst they die, the whole thing sounds horrible. And it does not stop there - a lady has lost her Alsatian as well. Whilst dog-walkers and their dogs are the bane of my [birding] life, I would not wish any of them harm. I can't believe that this has happened on my patch - it's disgusting that there are people out there who would do this. The Police Wildlife Unit and the Environment Agency are both investigating, but how you find whoever has done this without actually catching them in the act I have no idea.

So there is now something newsworthy in Wanstead, though whether the general populace will find it more interesting than Susan Boyle's cat's residential status is unknown at this stage.

How dare somebody poison my birds! The more I sit here typing about it, the more angry I am becoming. On the plus side, no Gulls have been affected. Nor any Wildfowl, though many of the wintering birds have gone. There are a pair of Little Grebe on there, as well as several Mute Swan and a load of Mallard, but they seem to have escaped unharmed at present.

Sorry this post is unhumourous, and contains no Gull faux pas. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

"I might be dead now"

Australia Australia Australia Australia We Love You. Amen.

All the birds in the UK are boring at the moment. Just dull Collared Flycatchers and plain old Pratincoles, which I spit at. Nothing doing in Wanstead either, despite a 5am start - oh the dedication - so instead I can get back to Australia, which is a fab country and has lots of brightly coloured birds like the one below that would get people of a twitching persuasion really rather excited should it turn up here. Having seen loads of White-cheeked Honeyeaters in Australia I wouldn't bother going for it of course.



I should perhaps start with the sombre bit, which is that we were there for a funeral. I know about four people in Australia, and it came as a huge blow that one of them should have been caught up in the Victorian Bushfires. For the first few days it was just a news item, something you take a passing interest in, shrug, and move on. Bad news every day, but remote. Happens all the time, but doesn't impact me. Very selfish, but that is just the way I think we all treat news. This time it did, and what was just the news suddenly became very real, despite not really believing it. James was missing. Gradually as the picture became clearer we all began to realise he wasn't going to be found, he wasn't coming back - even James, idiot though he undoubtedly was, would have made a phonecall by now. The police found what was thought to be his body after about a week, on a remote bush track. He and his girlfriend Julie had been trying to flee Marysville, and had not made it. DNA analysis took over a month, but it was him, and so passed a unique and amazing person. Here he is in France in about 1997, at a conveniently named village.

We were probably the first people to ever take a photo next to this sign

By the time the funeral came around, enough time had passed that the initial shock and sorrow had passed. The funeral was still tough, the burial harder, but people had begun to move on, to accept what had happened, and to instead remember all the great Jimmy stories, all the anecdotes and ridiculous situations, the mannerisms and the way he spoke. And so in fact the atmosphere was more one of celebration than of mourning. When the news had sunk in, I knew I had to go, so did Bob, and we were both glad that we did, despite the distance and short duration.

Byron Bay. Lots of surfers and shearwaters.

We flew to Brisbane via Singapore - see a previous post about 18 years ago - and hired a car for the drive down to Coffs. Bob is extremely relaxed about the car screeching to a halt and me tumbling out with bins to check out something I have seen by the roadside. Which is lucky as that happened quite a lot. Back in France where we met, we spent a huge amount of time exploring the wilderness behind Montpellier, so looking at scary insects, grand vistas and so on is second nature when we are together, and I just tacked a few birds on....

Here are some. And another scary spider.

We were only there for just over five days, and it rained for four of those. And not just crappy drizzley rain. Real rain. Rivers bursting their banks rain. Cars floating down the street rain. People being evacuated in boats rain. As everyone knows Australia is a land of immense contrasts, but there was a certain irony about being flooded out at at funeral for someone who died in a wildfire.

Sitting here, writing this, I am puffing. I always puff when I am having a hard time, am stressed, or something is not going right. Zoe recognises the exact type of puff. Writing this post, thinking of James, has got me all in a bother. I'm still writing, but I can't concentrate on what I am actually trying to say. I was going to go on a bit about the Aboriginal elder who led the burial service, and I was going to write a bit about the small amount of birding I managed to do during rain breaks, but I'm no longer in the mood. Maybe tomorrow. Lets call this Part 1.

January 23rd, one year ago - A day of Infamy

Jan 23rd 2008 started out ordinarily enough. I had no child duties, so I spent some time in Bush Wood early doors, and had some simply brilliant views of a male Sparrowhawk sat up in the morning sunshine. Happy, and with the glow only early morning birding can bring, I put my bins in my bag and went to work. The day was no doubt fun-filled and enthralling.

On the way home I walked back through Bush Wood without a care in the world, and with dinner in my bag for me & Mrs L. What happened next is a bit of a blur, but in the passage between the wood and Belgrave Road, a bloke ran up behind me, pinned my arms behind my back and then a second guy punched me in the face and I was wrestled to the ground. A further two, in conjunction with the second guy, continued to punch my head shouting "What you got, what you got, where's your phone you pussy, where's your phone?", or something along those lines, until I indicated which pocket my phone was in. Somewhat amazingly, that was the only pocket they went through, so they missed out on an ipod filled with 60's classics, a blackberry, and my wallet. Losers. However, as an afterthought whilst making off, one took my bag, which had my treasured bins in it. I tried to pull it back - who was I kidding - cue another totally unnecessary punch in the face - and another one then took a huge running kick at my upper thigh, and then they all ran off into the wood. So 90 seconds and I was down 1 phone, 1 pair of 8x42 Ultravids, and 2 steaks - having said that, my appetite had diminished slightly. Scum - 100 yards from my front door, and on MY PATCH. I am still outraged a year later. The police came very quickly, but there was nothing to be done. My description of the assailants matched 95% of East London's youth, so nothing ever came of it, and I never got anything back. On the plus side, Leica had just introduced the HDs, so with the insurance payout I was able to get a replacement pair of the non HDs at a large discount and chose the 7x instead, which are phenomenally good.

This unfortunate encounter has had a number of repercussions beyond the passing physical ones.

1) For a while I was very jumpy. About 3 weeks later a jogger frightened the living daylights out of me on my own street just by running past me. I am never quite at ease whilst out birding solo now.
2) I don't bird Bush Wood very much any more, preferring the security offered by the wide-open spaces of the Flats.
3) I feel compelled to use secondary bins for all my local birding, and I don't ever take my scope. The viewing pleasure is diminished, and I have missed some distant birds.
4) I had to pay the insurance excess and my premium went up, whilst the muggers probably sold my phone for a fiver and tossed my bins into a bush.

I am officially a victim of crime. HR at work even offered me counseling, said I should take as much time off as I needed, "Thanks, see you in June" I replied. I didn't really. I did allow myself one day though, and went to Rainham, so I could look through lots of different peoples' bins.

Anyway a year has now passed, and I have never had a problem since. However if any potential muggers are reading this, they should be aware that my replacement phone is also obsolete rubbish, and that my bins have a large scratch on the left objective. And that I shoot to kill.

Here it is, the snicket where the evil deed was done.