So today I am out on the Flats photographing a bird when a guy bowls up, climbs the tree the bird is in, and starts playing music and taking selfies. This could only happen in Wanstead of course, which rarely if ever ceases to amaze me with unlikely scenarios for fucking me over, but this is a proper outlier. And so was the guy I have to say, and I beat a swift retreat. A new way to ruin to my birding experience that frankly I had never considered up until this point, but if you're in need of a Firecrest for your yearlist it makes finding one a lot easier. Just head over to Long Wood and listen for strains of "Buffalo Solider".....
A shame as it was going very well, with the bird pretty keen on my high-pitched pishing, but there you go. One day I will go live somewhere in complete solitude, it will just be me and the birds. And all the joggers, lunatics, incontinent dogs, aggressive dog owners, model plane fliers, the Wednesday evening crowd and everyone else, including now drugged-up arboreal hipsters, who delight in spoiling my all-too-brief periods of relaxation will be nowhere to be seen. And finally I will get five minutes of peace. Fair enough, it's London and London's busy, but even so I reckon I'm massively unlucky.
That said, there are also moments of immense good fortune. For several weeks now I've been trying to find Woodcock on the patch. Wintering birds are now back, and having missed them several times earlier on in the year, it's a much-needed patch year tick and also the bird that will see me finally overtake Gaucho Bob for 2015. I had planned to stake out the Golf Course this evening, but as I was watching the Firecrest a bird flew directly past me, barreling through Long Wood, jinking spectacularly through the branches and off to the east. Exhilarated doesn't come close to how I felt - how jammy am I?! Or should that be jammin'?
I use the word funny in the loosest possible sense of the word. It's not really funny at all, but I have spent most of the day thinking about it so it's only fair that you too should share in the wonder. It is not about birds at all, if any of you nerdy types want to quit while you're marginally ahead. This is a good thing of course. I am well aware that for a supposedly birdy blog, I stray very frequently, and very often, but were it to be only about birds, it would be very short, very turgid, and often very blank. I have an extremely active mind, especially now that I am back at work and daydreaming is firmly back on the agenda, and so you should expect more of these tangential musings.
So, this all started yesterday. No, I'm wrong, it was Tuesday, though that makes no difference at all to the story. I was sitting at my desk in Canary Wharf thinking about smartphones. I have been resisting smart phones for an extremely long time. I don't need a smartphone, and am perfectly happy with my normal phone, whose capabilities are far beyond anything I could comprehend. I use it for speaking to people, for sending bird-related text messages to people, and for splurging nonsense on Twitter to 250 poor misguided souls. I have also loaded up the songs and calls of all European species of bird, and those of you that actually know me will know that when it rings it is a Corncrake, which has led, in certain situations, to mild panic from birders that don't know me. Having all these on the phone is extremely useful in the field, for reminding oneself of unfamiliar calls, a la Crossbill over my garden the other day, or for those "ooooh, was that a......?" moments that we all have from time to time, and of course for attempting to persuade recalcitrant birds to reveal themselves from time to time, which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. I am too primitive to even have voicemail. But I digress. I don't need a smartphone, but the guy who sits opposite me just got himself a shiny new iPhone 4S, the latest model. This got me thinking about smartphones, and before I knew it I was on the line to Vodafone inquiring when my contract was up for renewal.
Three weeks.
Bored yet? I'm not. I decided that were I to get a smartphone in three weeks, then it would be rather useful to have email on it. I seem to have collected quite a few email addresses over the years, one for this, one for that, but apart from the home one, none of them are actually my name though. Though I know nothing about smartphones, I felt that their email functionality might work best with a web-based gmail account. So rather than wansteadbirder, wansteadbirding etc, yesterday I decided that my actual name at gmail.com was the way to go, so I tried to set it up. I filled in all the boxes, and then it told me that the address I wanted was taken. Eh? I tried it again. No, sorry, taken. Oh. Had I perhaps created it some time ago and then forgotten about it? So I tried to log into it. I tried every password I have ever used, all the silly little variations, and nothing worked. OK, not to worry, this happens very frequently. With every website ever wanting a username and password, there is no possible way for any normal human being to be able to remember them all, so the "forgotten your password?" link that appears on most websites is very often my only recourse. I clicked on it, and it had two secure retrieval options. One was to send the password to an alternative email address, the other was to send it via text message. To help you with that they provided clues, revealing a small portion of the address and number. Hey presto, the last two digits of the phone number were mine! Account retrieval seconds away, I eagerly tapped my number in and hit send. Not recognised. I tried it with +44. I tried it without the zero. I tried it with brackets around the zero. I tried it with more zeros. Then it froze, saying I had tried too many times. Surely this is my email account? I mean, with the last two digits of my phone number, it has to be my account? Am I the victim of identity fraud here? The probability of there being another Jonathan Lethbridge somewhere with a ten digit phone number with the final two digits the same as mine - infinitessimally small.
But remember that post a few days ago where I noted that there were now seven billion people on the planet? I wonder.... I banged off a quick email. It read thus: "Is this my email, or is there another J Lethbridge?" Then I went to bed, which is critical to the story.
In the morning there was a reply. Remember, I was asleep, so it wasn't from me. Like I said, critical. I have to say it is rather strange having an email in my inbox that is from me but isn't from me. Turns out that Jonathan Lethbridge, who has my email address - well, his email address, lives in Montreal in Canada, though was born here in the UK. He pointed me in the direction of some kind of geneaology website, whereby I learned that there are Lethbridges everywhere. This isn't a huge surprise. In fact, when I was on Scilly for some reason or other a couple of weeks ago I noticed that Carreg Dhu Gardens, of tame Song Thrush fame, is maintained by a Mary Lethbridge. This website seemed to indicate that the hub of Lethbridgedom is the south-west, particularly south Devon. I know virtually nothing about my ancestry, but I do know that my Grandfather was from Devon, and drove a train from Exeter to London (regularly, not just once). That's about all I can tell you, though I have been to Devon. Mainly I drive through it to get to Cornwall (and beyond....), but a King Eider at Appledore once provided a spurious reason for a family weekend break, and I did twitch an American Robin at Exminster as recently as last year. Anyway, ancestry is for old people; not surprisingly my Dad told me at Christmas he was thinking of researching the family tree and creating some kind of archive. Good for him - I'll revive it in thirty years time. Er where was I? Oh yes, Canadian Jonathan Lethbridge. By return of email I quizzed him about his phone number. It does indeed end in the same two digits as mine. Sweet Baby Moses, it is just too bizarre to even contemplate.
This, you will be relieved to hear, is where this particular story ends. But there is a postscript. For the purposes of blog accuracy I asked a mathmo geek I know to compute the answer for me. I was expecting it to be about a zillion zillion to one, or something with about forty-five decimal places. This mathmo geek was in the pub with five other mathmo geeks, so I had immense brain power at my disposal for this colossal sum. Their answer? 100/1. No, really. Talk about pissing on a parade. Get this - probablility of there being a person in Canada with my exact name? Very close to one, ie a dead cert. Canada being a developed nation, the probablity of that person owning a mobile phone in the year 2011 AD - again, almost certain. So the probability of that ten digit number having the final two numbers the same as mine? One in a hundred. This proves beyond any doubt that mathematicians only exist in order to suck all joy out of the world. And that's the real point of this story.
I am somewhat behind in blogging terms, so today will see a mammoth effort designed to get me back on track. It will also be somewhat photo heavy, but I will attempt to blather on as much as possible so that it looks wordier than it otherwise might be.
So first off, Wanstead. I was pretty shattered at the weekend and Mrs L was away - unfortunate, but booked well before me heading off to the States became a priority. As such, we didn't do much. I got reacquainted with the kids, had lots of cuddles, and did a lot of unpacking, cooking and tidying. All well and good. On the bird front, I persuaded them that walking to the Tea Hut of Happiness on Sunday afternoon would be worth their while, and that cake awaited them. Three bits of cake were £1.30 - you just can't beat the Tea Hut of Happiness. Didn't see too many birds, but a check under the covered banks of Shoulder of Mutton pond revealed two drake and three female Teal, which were new for the year for my Wanstead list. Ace. I later learned that Tim had seen a three drake and two female, so I am surmising that, barring dramatic and quick surgery, there were six birds in total, which is an excellent count for a single location in these parts.
Mallard x Black-headed Gull hybrid
It is probably highly disrespectful to post this photo, and this guy is probably a seventh dan arch-druid and my house will now collapse into a pit of fire, but I was sufficiently interested to wonder what on earth was going on, and it beats dog walkers gesticulating at me. Any ideas?
So, that's Wanstead up to date. Next post will attempt to get America done, and then a highly original post on..... Waxwings!
Strange visions last night....Wanstead was all iced up in the morning, and as usual I was checking the various ponds for rare waterfowl. I checked the Basin, which mirroring reality had nothing much on it. Heronry was a little better though, with a couple of female Pintail. Awesome, and a patch tick. I wandered out onto the little peninsula at the end of Perch Pond, and found a load of women playing football on the water. Yes, on the water, I have no idea how. They were just normal women, dressed normally, nothing kinky going on. The ball came over my way, so I kicked it back to them. The next time I looked they had all metamorphosised into ducks. I found a way to cross a part of the pond that is normally water - dreams are great aren't they - saving five minutes walking back around the pond, and starting scanning through them. The football had finished and the pond was now covered in birds, really densely packed. In no time at all I picked up a male Pintail in the melee, and also a couple of Wigeon (year tick). Then I found a Golden Plover, another patch tick. It was just swimming around, y'know, like they do, but the ID was beyond doubt. Then over the far side I managed to pick out a redhead Smew, another patch tick. By this time I was seeing stuff very clearly. Three other birders then turned up with scopes, clearly realising that something good was happening. I don't know who they are, and they don't match any of the local birders, but I have a feeling I have seen them before, but this could just be that weird sense of deja-vu that sometimes occurs in dreamland, or maybe when you wake up and remember the dream you get a bit confused. Anyway, I tried to get them on the Smew, but had trouble relocating it, but that didn't matter for I then found a cracking summer-plumaged Red-throated Diver! Another patch tick, and a London tick. Even in my dreams I know what type of tick a neurally created vision of a bird is - do I need professional help? At this point I took a break to be able to broadcast the news, and I remember being totally flumoxed as to what I should do first. I had seen so much that a text would take ages to type out, it was really cold don't forget, and I would have had to take my gloves off, plus I remember thinking that predictive text would have really struggled with Smew. So I decided to call them but just at that moment Hawky called me, so I told him what a superb morning I had had and that my Wanstead year list was now 102 from 97 in the space of about 20 minutes. Before I could work out what my new Wanstead and London list totals were I woke up. Probably a good thing, God knows what I would have found next.All of this is true, I have written it as I remembered it this morning after I woke up. So where does it come from? I've never really thought one of my dreams through before, but there's blogging for you. It's pretty interesting actually how you can link specific elements of a dream to events in real life. Things I can work out.- It is really cold and icy here, so that seems pretty obvious.- I have been checking all the ponds for rare ducks, though not with as stunning results.- I have really been hoping to find a Wigeon or Smew, and Golden Plover is another hoped for, though as a flyover. - There is currently a day-glo yellow football lodged in some submerged branches at the end of Perch pond. I had a close look at it the other day with a view to seeing if it was worth retrieving, but a strip of leather has come off so I didn't bother.- Yesterday on the bus I made a "group" on my phone of all the local birders so I can more easily disseminate news. Up until now I was adding each one on every text I sent.- I was out with Hawky last night.Things that I can't work out.- The football match. I have no interest in football. - A load of women turning into ducks. There is perhaps something Freudian occuring here but I think it is best not to delve any further.- Their ability, and mine, to walk on water. - Pintail and Red-throated Diver. Not even on my list of potentials, totally left field.- The three other birders. I could describe each one, but I cannot place any of them in reality. Yet in the dream they were familiar to me, not by name, but I had seen them looking at the Perch pond before. So there you have it, the inner workings of my subconscious laid bare. Just in case the Birding Gods might have been trying to tell me something, as per my Shoveler experience a few weeks ago, on the way back from school I checked the Basin, Heronry and Perch ponds to see if there was anything truly fantastical going on. There wasn't. A perhaps simpler explanation for the wacky goings-on is that I was out at the pub last night with a load of birders and drank a lot of beer.
