Walking

I can't cycle,and I can't run. I can just about still walk though so that is what I am going to do remain vaguely active. Four to five miles a day is the plan, which should hopefully prevent me from becoming hugely lardy during these dark winter months. More hugely lardy I mean. I don't have one of these fitness band things - they make you look like you're on day release - instead I can just use a little gizmo on my phone that somehow tracks the steps I have taken. I've measured the length of my average step, and so now this thing can tell me exactly how far I have toddled under my own steam. And of course part of the fun is that you can set targets, and everyone likes a goal. Think of it as a type of list....

Now ideally I wanted to set a daily target so that I could always feel progress, so I thought about a nice round number of 10,000 steps, which for me is the equivalent of about 4.6 miles. The trouble is that there are days where I simply won't be able to do that. The sun doesn't rise until 8am at the moment which is the time I need to be going to work, so birding in the morning is a non-starter. This leaves the commute and then Canary Wharf at lunch time, but I can say with near certainty that the nice block of time I have reserved in my calendar every day will instead be taken up by a very dull but no doubt highly critical meeting that I simply have to be in or the world will end. I have to be doing something whilst walking (like birding), I am not going to walk around in the dark at the end of the day for the sake of it, so instead I am setting a weekly target whereby I can make up any shortfall on other days. 4.6 miles a day adds up to 32.2 miles. That's a silly number, so I've increased it to 35 miles a week, or about 76,000 steps. This adds up over a year to 1,750 miles, which is another nice round number. I mean, wow, that's a seriously long way isn't it? London to Lanzarote. 67 marathons! Like all good intentions, I started on the first of January. A Sunday, so my walking week is Sunday to Sunday - leaving me Saturday to catch up if I've been rubbish during the week. 

Here's a synopsis of the first week:

24,636 - Jan 1st year-listing on the patch, 57 species seen.
11,252 - Jan 2nd year-listing on the patch, 1 new species (a Linnet - there you go, birding content right there) added!!
9,609 - Jan 3rd - not too bad all things considered, going to Greenwich helped.
7,917 - Jan 4th - first day back at work, managed a lunchtime stroll and saw eight birds.
10,399 - Jan 5th - second day back at work, this is easy!
3,255 - Jan 6th - worked from home. This is almost entirely going up and down the stairs for cups of tea.
6,014 - Jan 7th, today so far (7pm)
73,082

All of this with a severed something-or-other ligament too, and four nearly-severed other ones, I am surprised my foot is still attached. Yes, I am a hero. Anyway, despite all the charging around Wanstead that first weekend I was still looking at a shortfall of around 9,000 steps that I needed to make up today. Luckily I am on the move - travelling again - so I expect I'll manage it. 3,000 to go as I type this and I still need to go and find a highly calorific dinner. Easy. But imagine if I had had two poor days like Jan 6th? I would really be struggling, probably needing to walk up and down a plane aisle about a hundred times. On holiday I walk loads, so I am expecting that I will start this new week very positively. Can I keep it going though, like I sustained my cycling to work regime hem hem?

Of course the real disappointment is that walking burns off practically no calories, only marginally more than breathing, or at least that is what I am led to understand. My average distance uses up around 500 calories. I can eat that many in about half a minute if I try really hard. One normal size double-decker (460 kcal) and half a biscuit. On a birding day out I reckon I must get through several thousand calories made up entirely from junk. But it is better than nothing, and it gets me moving and outside.

Rereading this I think I sound like an octagenerian.... Also I have never been able to run so my first sentence should be read with a pinch of salt. 

Camping

There was some element of surprise in Chateau L a few weeks ago when I signed up for the annual school class camping trip. Mrs L, having asked me a lot of easy questions to lull me into a false sense of security, then slipped it in right at the end. “Would you like to come camping with us?” Sure, I replied. “OK, well you'll have a nice quiet evening at home then, there's lots of jobs you could.......hang on, did you just say 'Yes'?” Yes. Smelling salts were procured, cushions arranged, and gradually wife and mother revived. “You weren't joking? You mean you'll actually come?” Yes. The children set off fireworks, celebrations carried on late into the night.

The day finally came around a couple of weekends ago, following about three days of preparation. Camping materials materialised from all corners of the house and a huge pile took shape in the hall. Sadly we were a roll mat short. Ie I wasn't getting one. Despite my protestations of innocence, it continues to be widely assumed that I threw it away in one of my purges. Anyway, the car was packed to the gills for this one night stay, and we drove the massive distance to the campsite at Loughton. For those of you not familiar with east London, this is all of about ten miles away and takes under twenty minutes. If you already own a house in London (With beds. And mattresses.) frankly it's the ideal place to spend the night, and has the bonus of costing money too.

We soon found the large group of parents and the familiar faces of our youngest's classmates. With two very small 2-3 man tents, we realised very quickly we were seriously outclassed in the camping gear department. Huge tents with individual rooms inside, ante-chambers, conservatories. And it didn't stop there – gas barbeques on tables were being fired up, fridges plugged in, and worst of all enormous air beds were being inflated. I looked wistfully at the bare area where my roll mat should have been. But wait, what's this that Mrs L is handing me? It's only a bloody camp bed! I wasn't aware we had even got a camp bed, then again the last time I had been camping was about in 2002 when I was a lot hardier and had no need of ridiculous home comforts. Where had that been lurking? She didn't know either. The kids went off to play in the woods, she got busy on the tents, and I started work on the camp bed.

Shaking out the bag there were a few poles, some rudimentary legs, and a cloth contraption that was supposed to stretch between the poles. It was clearly older than I was. So, three poles together to form one side, and slip that into the sewn sides of the unforgiving cloth bit. Easy. Or so you would think. Would it fit? I tried it every which way, but I simply couldn't do it. Exasperating. Meanwhile Mrs L had finished putting up the second tent, unwrapped her self-inflating sleeping mattress and popped it inside, and came to over to show her useless husband how it was done, no doubt looking forward to being able to tell the other parents that she had erected our entire pitch whilst I joined two pieces of tube together and struggled with a third.

It was obviously an ancient piece of crap. No doubt the height of camping luxury in about 1965, it had no place in the twenty-first century. After both struggling with it for half an hour we admitted sweaty defeat, threw the whole lot in the campsite wheely bin and opened a bottle of wine instead. Screw cap, one twist and I was pouring. True innovation. We rejoined the main group and got out our Tesco disposable barbeques.... Happily one other of our group also had this lowly method of cooking, and together we formed a huge rectangle of grilling happiness that I would like to think had the gas brigade rather envious.

Cooking commenced – sausages, lamb skewers, chicken wings, burgers. Not all ours I hasten to add, this was barbequing en masse. Happy adults, booze flowing, chat and laughter. And then we noticed most of the children were missing.... Clear instructions had been given to stay in groups and to return by a certain time. It was clearly possible that the first edict had been adhered to, but we were half an hour past the second. And this wasn't an enclosed site, it was a series of fields in Epping Forest. Roaming was limited only by the M25..... Cooking was partly abandoned and we all set off in different directions to hunt them down. With no success. With darkness looming one by one we returned without children. The men of course tried to put a brave face on it. So yes, we were down most of our offspring, but on the plus side it was a lot quieter and the burgers were nearly ready. The women on the other hand began to up the ante. Burgerless I set off west into the woods again.

Naturally during my second foray, where I felt I nearly reached the Severn Estuary, the kids returned of their own accord and ate all the burgers. Turned out they had lost track of the time and where they were (go figure) and had asked a couple of teenagers which way the campsite was. Teenagers being the little shites that they are had sent them in the opposite direction FOR A LAUGH, and only when they had found some adults and borrowed a phone to call one of us had things started to recover. Nonetheless it had been rather a shock, there had been tears from many of them and perhaps some important lessons learned, which can only be a good thing. Including never trust teenagers. Once nerves had been calmed (adults mostly, with the aid of wine) things then returned to normal pretty quickly, and after a game of football in car headlights the children drifted off to their various tents leaving the parents to tend the fire and reflect on a near miss. And drink more prosecco.

So, off to bed. I was not looking forward to this at all. I had managed to lay out some blankets that I found in the car to try and provide some kind of cushioning against the hard ground, but it was pretty hopeless. Mrs L slept soundly on her posh mat and I endured a fitful night. On the plus side it didn't rain – our tent has seen better days, and whilst it was once completely impervious to the elements even the slightest moisture now comes straight in. So passed the night, I don't think I slept much and the groans the next morning were pretty impressive. I am not made for sleeping on the ground, and I ached in all sorts of places that I was not aware of being able to ache in. But the point is I camped and I survived. Let's just hope it's another fifteen years before the next outing.

Coronation Chicken

I am blaming the Coronation Chicken for all of my recent hardship. It is said that mass-catered events and airline food are the number one sources of dodgy tummies. I do enough of the second one to know that this isn't true, but I did go to wedding on Thursday and this is when my troubles began. Registry Office gallop at four, at the feeding trough by half past, Coronation Chicken down the hatch by five, some odd gurgling by eight.

Or maybe it was the A3? This poor excuse for a road had me driving round Sussex and Surrey country lanes at 1am with nary a diversion sign to be seen, and contributed to basically having no sleep that night and thus my body getting out of kilter. I am a very regular person, but not anymore..... Dammit I hate being sick, and having stomach issues is my least favourite type of illness. Give me a cough or a cold any day of the week. Friday morning was kind of OK, bar exhaustion, but by Friday evening I was having the kind of cramps that I hitherto only associated with Polonium 210. By Friday night I felt like I was having a baby, and most of Saturday was spent groaning. Sunday and I am at least up and about and able to twitch rare ducks, but it's now Monday morning and it has all gone pear-shaped again. How on earth one (well, maybe two) sandwiches can completely destroy my digestive system is anyone's guess, but everything has all ground to a depressing halt.

It would be unkind of me to share with you my exact symptoms, however when I arrive in Glasgow I will be shopping for prunes, kiwi fruit, and pro-biotic yogurts. Plus pot pourri and a sari. Jesus. Somehow I have to get through a day of meetings that have been especially organised for a functioning me. Not that type of functioning... I simply mean that an in pain, groaning and dashing to the loo me is somewhat sub-optimal in terms of what lies ahead. Perhaps the answer is to hold off on the prunes until the afternoon, but I am in urgent need of relief and I cannot wait that long. I am already wondering what can be cancelled and what time the hotel check-in opens so that the extravaganza can start.

Being ill is the absolute pits, luckily I am stoic enough to suffer in silence.

On pacing myself

So in response to my last post where I mentioned I was a little tired of all the running around I do, a number of correspondents got in touch to say that this was all entirely my fault. I accept this a hundred percent, I am mostly busy because I make myself busy, and there are some conscious decisions that I could make (if I were brave enough) that would slow me down. The major one of course, and the route taken by at least one of these people, would be to turn my back on the stress of the rat race and go do something entirely different. Work, for better or worse, is mostly the root cause of all the running around. Not only because of the time it takes up during the day, but also because of all the opportunities it subsequently gives me to fill up my time with. Natch.

I had the opportunity before or course, and whilst I didn’t spurn it, perhaps I didn’t make the most of it. I had a lovely time though and will always remember quite how nice it was living a simpler existence, albeit still in London. Long summer days, still quiet mornings, a sense of calm despite small children.

Fundamentally I like to be busy, but I think the point I was trying to make was that it would be nice if sometimes, just sometimes, that wasn’t the default state. Bob made an interesting point on life continuing to speed by, but that people slow down, and I suspect his many years of experience ;-) are hitting the nail on the head here. I am getting older and there is no denying it. I am still trying to run around as if I were 21, but that the inescapable truth of it is that I’m a few years past that now and basically more tired. To be clear, I am not past it, whatever ‘it’ is, far from it, but perhaps I need to recognise that I have limits, and that those limits are coming in a bit. And that rather than increase the amount of things I do, I need to drop a few of them. That is the difficult part as I have a great many interests, none of which I really want to give up but some of which I may need to change.

So really this is another post about ageing, adapting to it, and how it annoys me that I even have to. But I have started in a small way, and I’m feeling sort of positive about it. This is because I was forced to buy a new camera bag, which is always a happy event. Camera bags are a topic for endless discussion because there is no such thing as a perfect camera bag. There are however many imperfect camera bags, another one of which is now in my cupboard! This one has wheels…..

Yes wheels. This is what I mean about ageing and it annoying me. I mean what camera bag has wheels? To be clear there is no hint of tartan, I have not yet reached that stage, but it certainly isn’t as manly and youthful as the backpack that it replaces. The sad truth is that neither am I, and after my recent trip to Arizona I realised I could not cope with the weight of my bag for an extended period of time. It contained a fair amount of stuff it has to be said, due to my pig-headed inability to choose between pure birding and pure bird photography and insisting on doing both. Hence a large lens, a large scope, two cameras, a few other lenses, a tripod for the scope, a monopod for the lens, chargers – you get the picture. The weight? 23kgs and there was barely a thing in it that I didn't use. There is no compromise possible in my mind on trips like this where I have multiple aims, but after lugging it around for a week I realised I can’t do it again, or rather I would prefer not to.  Hence the new old man’s bag. I have high hopes for it, and it doesn’t actually hold as much stuff so not only does it roll gloriously across airports and along pavements, but it will be lighter too. This is a bag for easy trips, worry ye not though as for hardcore bird photography trips I have a smaller bag that my poor wizened frame can still bear.

Ready to roll

Whilst on the topic of ageing, last night Mrs L and I met up with our university buddies at our traditional meeting spot, which is an old-school public house in London. A classic old boozer actually, utterly timeless, whilst those who frequent it gradually become more decrepit. Last night the starting topic of conversation was gout, which is entirely appropriate for our demographic. In a way this is entirely fitting, we have been going to this pub for years and gout is thus the natural conclusion. Not my gout I hasten to add, you would have definitely heard about it by now! We recalled how we had been sat perhaps at the very same table talking about buying houses and mortgage rates. Over the years the subjects have varied, through engagements and marriages, jobs, toddlers, children, school places, catchment areas. And now in a depressing yet totally expected progression we’re onto our ailments. Actually a couple of us are still talking about engagements and marriages, but they’ve held out long enough that they might get to do the ‘in sickness and in health’ part simultaneously! And I suppose if we all remain in London for the foreseeable future, it’s probably the place we’ll end up in talking about death too. Nobody said that last night but I wonder if we were thinking it? Or maybe it was just me, bags with wheels prompting morbid thoughts well before their time.

Behold, it is February and I am falling to bits

1/12th of the year gone already, and still no Fieldfare. I have been trying, honest, and I know that there are at least two birds on the patch but they never find me. I've been out once this month so far, when a scattering of snow promised something good. That something was a Lapwing, but only an hour after I had left for work. When you were a lad, I remember seeing 376 of them in one hit, so the missing of this single bird is not the big disaster you might thing it is. 

In other news my eyeball is disintegrating. As I approach the big 4-0, I have noticed that an annoying wiggle now runs straight down my right eyeball. An s-shaped squiggle with a little head on it that traverses the page as I read. Left right, left right. Pisses me right off I can tell you. Detailed research has concluded that "Floaters" , as they are scientifically named by the NHS, are small pieces of debris that float in the eye's vitreous humour. My particular one is so humorous that it looks like a sperm under a microscope. No joke. Supposedly once they've been there a while the brain learns to ignore them, but my brain is so far too stupid to have managed this. It's most obvious against white computer screens. Like blogger. Oh. Here's my best drawing of what it looks like, little bugger won't stay still. Looking for an egg probably.

Apparently all part of the aging process, and I am only destined to get more and more of them, which is a bit of a downer to be honest. My eyes get used a lot, for work, writing crap like this, and behind a camera. Sometimes they even look through binoculars. Now if my floater were Lapwing-shaped.....

Red-billed Tropicbird at Pendeen

So what really happened at Pendeen on Sunday? Unlike most people commenting on the events, I was actually there. Don't read the predictable Birdforum thread and think you know the score. The histrionics on there are absurd, as you would expect, and so far roughly 20 posts out of 160-odd are from people who were actually there.

It was slow in the early morning. Sitting up at the watchpoint, with my back to the lighthouse wall, I decided that I'd rather be at the bottom of the slope with my camera photographing Gannets, just as two photographers I could see were doing. Quite frequently I could see Gannets and Fulmars passing very close inshore, so at 8.40ish I left Matt M, Mark P, Dan P and the guys I had travelled with and picked my way down the grass. Midway down the rocks I stopped to photograph a Wheatear, I mean how could I not? My exif on these three images says 8.46am. I noticed a guy with a lens sat up a bit higher than I was at this point, still on the grass. The lens looked quite short, he looked quite some distance from the sea, I felt I could get nearer. I think I recall him getting up from his position, but thought nothing of it. If he subsequently waved or shouted, I didn't notice a thing, and I gingerly picked my way down the slippery rocks to join the two aforementioned photographers. There I remained for a good half hour, indeed a bit longer, as my last image suggests 9.21am. During this time I was fully engaged on photography, with somewhat underwhelming results. Hey-ho, all good practice.

Lovely, but costly?

At some point William came down the slope and shouted. I didn't hear, but the other two did and alerted me. What's up? "A Red-billed Tropicbird has flown past and everybody has left!" William shouted. I stopped in my tracks. Did he really just say that? Surely that's not possible? Is it? I clambered back up the slope in a state of disbelief and shock, to find that at least 70% of those present had indeed left. People asked if I had seen it? Had I photographed it? Eh? No, of course I hadn't. Bits of the story came out. The photographer I had seen slightly higher than me - and not visible from the main seating area underneath the lighthouse - had been the one to see it. It had passed between the coast and the rocks, and had lingered, allowing some photographs. Per the internet, i.e. make your own mind up, it had been on view for over five minutes. The guy in question had come back up the slope some time after the sighting, perhaps as long as 25 minutes, shown a photo of the Tropicbird to a couple of people on the most northern wall of the lighthouse, and then all hell had broken loose. He had then left the site, and so when I returned up the slope with my camera, there was an assumption he was me.

I wish.

All of the following is also second hand. The select few to whom this guy had shown the photo had run around the corner, alerted others, who had in turn dashed around the corner. The photographer refused to show them the photos, and left the site. This, I surmise, resulted in another delay, as people were unsure whether to act. Eventually a lot of people decided it was gen and scattered, some to Sennen Cove, some to Cape Cornwall, some elsewhere. We did the same, stopping first at Sennen Cove where I learned that per the most recent information on the internet, I was actually the finder, and subsequently to Cape Cornwall, where we enjoyed a couple of pale morph Arctic Skuas and a huge pod of Common Dophins, but no Tropicbirds.

To summarise, the greatest prize in UK seawatching had just flown, unobserved, past between 40 and 76 observers, and had been seen by just one person.

The web is alive with opinion. Fair play to the guy involved, a stunning find. Right place, right time. Everyone else had been scanning too far out. Their bad, me included, and we will in time have a place in the Pantheon of the damned. We might already be there. But what do I think? I came so close, yet remain so far. Being down on the rocks at that point, I have a dubious claim to fame as being one of the closest dippers of a UK Tropicbird. Shit happens.

I can completely understand sour grapes, but put yourselves in the shoes of those there. Forget the usual crap about suppression and people who only twitch birds and give nothing back. 40 people (76 if you're feeling generous) were there. Many had travelled far, many had committed a lot in the hope of a decent sea-watch, in the hope, dare I say it, of a dream bird like a Fea's. They were there, they were working it. How would you feel if somebody came up the slope once all hope of seeing the bird had gone and told them about it. I wasn't there up at the lighthouse, but per what I have heard, it was a relatively casual "I assume you all saw the Tropicbird?" Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad assumption. 40 people scanning out to sea, some of them seasoned observers. You would expect that one of them would see a bird that was on view for a prolonged period of time. Except in this instance you would be wrong. I'm going to stick my neck out here, and say that no matter what an observer expects, when it concerns a Red-billed Tropicbird that is lingering close inshore to a manned sea-watch point, all bets are off. All bets are off, and what you expect becomes irrelevant. First and foremost you document the record, after all you know what the British birding scene is like. And when you have quickly done that, you jump up, and you run as fast as your little legs can carry you to the nearest people you can see (that would be me, as it happens), and you shout your head off, you wave your arms, you scream, you go completely and utterly mental. You exhaust yourself, you peg it up the slope, down the slope, you do not rest until you are sure that other people are on the bird, because sea-watching is the most collegiate of all birding activities. And then you soak up the adulation and the glory and the praise. That's what I would have done. That's what most people I know would have done.

Call me jaded, call it sour grapes, but to wait perhaps 20-25 minutes before coming up to the main crowd, when all hope of picking up the bird from the watchpoint has passed, that is unforgivable. Unforgivable. Clearly I am biased, but that is ridiculous. There are claims that he shouted, perhaps even towards me and the two photographers I was with. Maybe he did? But if this elicited no reaction, then what? Shrug the shoulders and sit back down? That appears to be what happened. No other person there, of which there were many, was any the wiser for what is in sea-watching terms an age. And that is the source of the sour grapes and dejection. Forget about whether the observer wants some kind of magazine scoop and associated piss-ant payment (even though that is scarcely believable). If the timings are correct every single person at Pendeen on Sunday ought to have been able to get on that bird. And not one did.

You can talk all you like about finding your own birds, about nobody having a right to see a rare bird, about dickhead twitchers. Maybe I am being naive, but surely birding is bigger than this. The finder by all accounts knew exactly what it is was he was watching. But he seems does not know much about birding etiquette, or at least not what I understand birding to be about. Am I being unkind? Maybe, maybe not. Again, anyone who wasn't there feel free to have a go in the time-honoured fashion, call me an idiot, a tosser, say what you want. Say I should have picked it up, say look properly next time, say I'm just bitter etc. Maybe I should have and yes I am, but get real. A monster, a complete once-in-a-lifetime bird was on show for an age in sea-watching terms and based on what I know the finder could have done so much more. So much more. Assumptions out the window, it's a Tropicbird, and so you go fucking nuts, end of. You don't shout a bit, and then sit back down. You just don't. That's not right, it's not to my mind what sea-watching is about. You're in it together. Again, I sound like a pre-pubescent teenager probably, an idealist, someone wet behind the ears who hasn't the faintest clue about real life. I like to think I'm normal. What kind of person doesn't do their utmost to alert other observers they know to be present? People on the net are talking about giving the finder credit where credit is due. I agree with that, but only to a point. I know that my greatest pleasure would be to get other people onto the bird, as I know how much it means. I can hardly claim to be a huge rarity finder, but when a number of other people got onto my Stone-curlew on Wanstead Flats earlier this year, I was utterly delighted. And I was gutted that some did not. I was on the phone ten seconds after seeing that bird for the first time, I had phoned two people I knew to be close within a minute or two, and was getting the news out as fast as I could even before I had confirmed the record. I ran. Once I knew what I had I sacrificed getting better views in order to give other people a chance of connecting, and that was just a good bird in a local context. A Red-billed Tropicbird is in a completely different league altogether.

This is of course my reaction, and people are different. I don't know the person in question, what drives him, what makes him tick. I react based on my reaction. The guy was not obliged to alert people, each to his own. I'm just saying I would have reacted differently, and so would many other people. So to be on the receiving end of what I perceive to be a striking lack of generosity, well that is very galling indeed. But that's birding for you, and I'll live. And as you saw yesterday (if you were alert!) I can laugh about it too, and that's also birding. And if you didn't think sea-watching was exciting, think again!

Ageing

I am very very young, especially in birding terms. Most birders are ancient and decrepit, and use their now defunct draw-telescopes as crutches. By contrast I am a ball of energy, dynamic, fun, youthful and.....er, decrepit. Oh dear. Yes dear readers, it is true, I am falling to bits. When I got home from Shetland I discovered a pain in my left side, a kind of dull ache. I assumed irreparable liver damage from the preceding week, and thought nothing of it. Three weeks later - Thursday - I decided it was annoying enough to go and see the doctor at work. I got asked a load of questions, mainly about whether everything 'down there' worked, and was asked to hop onto the examining table. However before I could be prodded and poked, the doctor discovered I wasn't a permanent member of staff and the consultation ended abruptly with something latin and horrible-sounding scribbled down on a piece of paper. I've thrown the bit of paper away, but it ended in 'itis'.

So on Friday I went to see a doctor where I live. We had the same chat as I'd had the previous day, and once again I hopped (in a very sprightly manner becoming of my extreme youthfulness) onto the examining table, whereupon I was prodded mercilessly. Does this hurt? "Aaargh!". How about here? "Ooof!". Here? "Gaaaaaaah!". The nerves in my left side and right side responded equally to forceful poking, with the doctor sensing that the left side was indeed marginally more agonising for me. Then came the truly fun bit. Could I take my pants off and stand up? Why yes, I'd love to. FFS. I'll spare you the grisly detail, and it's not like I was planning on having any more kids anyway, but I'm pleased to say everything in that particular department is just fine. An interesting experience, and one I'm not keen to repeat overly soon, but I suppose I can thank my lucky stars that a prostate examination was deemed unnecessary. This time.

So, with dangly bits confirmed in good order, the diagnosis firmed up a little. It wasn't 'itis' after all, rather it was likely that I had a hernia, but that I was too fat the doctor was too concerned about prodding me too hard to be able to feel it properly, and that the best thing to do would be to have an ultrasound scan of the area, and that if indeed, as seemed likely, a hernia was confirmed, the next step would be to have a friendly chat to a man with a sharp knife. Well whoopee, that is just what I needed. A hernia? I'm 37! My father gets hernias! Pah! What does this mean? That I have to bird the Scillies instead of Shetland from now on?

In other less graphic news, it's been rather a good weekend on Wanstead Flats, with spectacular vis-migging from the watchpoint. Fieldfares, Woodpigeons, and unseasonal Lapwings were the standout birds in terms of quantity, but I also got my very own Brambling and more Linnet than I can ever remember in one day. My hernia, if that is what it is, doesn't yet prevent me carrying a camera, so I can still pap slow-moving and dim-witted birds, like this lovely Fieldfare, one of over 600 that flew over my head in just a few hours this morning. Very few actually landed, but I was able to sneak up on a small party that lingered for a few minutes.

The only other interesting bird-related thing that happened this weekend occured over lunch today. As I sat contemplating a large plate of roast chicken, surrounded by adoring family members concerned for my health, a noticed a large white bird disappearing with big slow flaps over the treeline to my north-west. Ignoring the pain in my side I leapt to my feet, grabbed the nearest pair of bins and scrambled out onto the terrace. Too late! Whatever it was, it was gone and I wasn't going to see it again. It reminded me of a Heron......a large white Heron......I texted the Professor as he was kind of on the flight path, but whatever it was never reached him. However if a Great White Egret (or a Pelican!) is found in the Lea Valley in the next day or two I'm having it!