Snow, snow, snow

A few more Lapwings today didn't really repay the effort I put into the patch this weekend. I jacked it in at lunchtime and came home to play with the kids. The Lego-fest I had had in mind never materialised, as Muffin has now caught whatever Pudding had, and thus felt more like throwing up all over the place than playing. Poor kid, he had to watch his sisters playing in the snow whilst he felt rotten indoors - as a nine year old that's pretty much the last thing you want to have happen. Pudding's troubles lasted three days, so this is just the beginning, and we still have a kid to go. Touch wood neither Mrs L nor I have yet to go down with it, but I have this horrible suspicion that it is only a matter of time, and that is about the last thing I need. Though of course fairly good news from a weight-loss point of view. Anyhow, it's been a while since the kiddos made it to these pages, so here are a few from the snowman-making in the garden this afternoon. He's called Nathan, and I forgot to take a photo of him - perhaps tomorrow if I'm stuck at home talking down the big white telephone...

 

 

 

Never let him out of your sight

I have just one piece of advice for anyone thinking of birding in Wanstead, and it is this: Never let Nick out of your sight. Not for a second, for even if you've spent the whole day with him he will go and find something good the moment you part company. Today he pretended he was off to Hyde Park to twitch the Bearded Tits, but instead went and found Goosander on the patch. I had thought I was pretty safe, and with a prior engagement in town, had headed for home not five minutes earlier. Bosh, another grip off.

In fact today was pretty grippy most of the way through. Bob initially thought he had managed to add himself to one of my favourite lists, namely the "People who have seen Woodlark on the patch who are not me" list, but on reflection cannot be sure, and then contrived to see both a Golden Plover and two Linnet over by Jubilee Pond. To make certain I saw neither of them he sent me off to the Alex to look for them and blamed it on old age - a likely story. Meanwhile Dan scooped a flock of Lapwing over by Alex that I didn't see either... it was all looking fairly bleak. Linnet is regular in autumn, not too worried about them, but Goosander I've seen just twice, and Golden Plover just once - these could be tricky birds to get back. Luckily the day wasn't a complete grip-off as the Lapwing story ended happily when I picked up another flock just a short while later - probably around 40 birds - and then a singleton over the Park. Little Egret on the Roding was another patch year-tick, so I am now sitting pretty on 66. The overall patch list is 76 though, so somehow I am 10 down within three weeks - frankly this is a tad worrying. I guess I shall just have to reconcile myself to seeing the least of anyone. Sniff.

Played for and got. And boring.

I've almost certainly used the first part of this blog post title before, and the content of whatever that post was is probably almost identical to what this post will be. But that's patch birding for you. And blogging... To cut a long story short, I went out on the patch to find a specific bird, and duly found it. Wow. Trudging back home through the snow, it occured to me that patch year-listing is basically about finding all the same birds as you did last year, but in a very slightly different order. What fun!

The bird I was after was Woodcock, and so I walked around the area that I felt was most promising for one - namely Motorcycle Wood - and sure enough one flew out. Amazing. Whilst there, I also saw my first Fieldfare for the year - fairly pitiful on the 18th of January, but they have been thin on the ground, and I've not been out much. I've seen Fieldfare on the 1st of January in every single year that I have records for, and so this has injected some spice into my yearlist, with Fieldfare at #63, whereas both last year and the year before it was at #15. This kind of variety is what patch birders live for! As I got even closer to home, I felt some stats brewing......

Because I tend to follow the same route on every New Year's Day, the birds are often seen in a very similar order - Common Gull #10 the last couple of years for example, and Gadwall is always in the mid-40s, which is generally what I'm on when I reach Alexandra Lake. Little Grebe is the low to mid-50s, indicating I've arrived in Wanstead Park..... Slightly depressingly you can actually continue well beyond the 1st of January - for the entire year in fact. The months tend to come in the same order, and so too do the migrants - everyone's (my) favourite, the Wheatear clocking in at #81 in both 2011 and 2012, Whinchat at #95, and Sedge Warbler #106. The big surprise this year was of course Great Crested Grebe on day one - unprecedented, and a real shock result. Two extremely selfish waterbirds have destroyed the careful equilibrium built up over many years, bastards.

In both 2011 and 2012, my patch list was 113 species. Convenient for statistical analysis, and amazing foresight on my part. But here's the rub. Of those 113 species, 104 - 92%, were the same. 2012 saw Osprey, Oystercatcher, Stone Curlew, LRP, Green Sand, Wood Sand, Caspian Gull, Treecreeper and Yellowhammer replaced by Mandarin, Goldeneye, Smew, Goosander, Golden Plover, Jack Snipe, Short-Eared Owl, Wryneck and Nuthatch. Don't get me wrong, these 8% really get the juices going, it's what patch-working is all about and I love it. The trouble is the other 92%.......

Quite

 

So what will be left? Peanuts.

I don't know where you live, but Leytonstone high street is now wall-to-wall shops selling fruit and vegetables from small plastic bowls, interspersed with chicken-based fast food outlets and places selling phonecards. On the same street, where Woolies once was is now an Argos, and in Wanstead it's now a Tesco Metro. Last week Jessops went under, and this week - so far - HMV and Blockbuster have collapsed. Where is it all going to end? Who is next, and what will our high streets eventually look like? Are all high streets going to look like Leytonstone, where once a variety of small businesses and national chains thrived, but is now a monoculture of fried chicken and grapefruits?

It's all rather depressing. Not that I've bought anything at Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster for many years, and if my shopping habits are repeated across the land then you can easily see what the problem is, but the point is I once shopped there, and thus have an affection for them, even if crucially that affection didn't extend to actually going there and spending money. Jessops I've talked about, but HMV is the same - it was the place to buy music when I was a kid (although of course it's history goes back way further than that). Not that I was a muso particularly, but when, ten years behind everyone else I discovered U2 and whoever, that was where I went. I also bought all my TDK tapes from HMV, they had great huge bins of them - when did you last see a tape? Is that when the decline started? Similarly, when videos were new technology, and when our family finally got one, we joined Blockbusters. I loved going there, with it's crummy blue carpets and yellow shelves, I had a membership card and everything - it was like a library, but fun! And when I went to my Grandma's, she would rent videos to keep us occupied, and they were from Blockbuster too. I've not been there for years, decades in fact, but I'm still sad they're gone. I was amazed that they were still around actually, surely that business model died ages ago? Anyhow, very sad. Lovefilm is pretty good though, I went for the DVD and streaming package.

In other news, the 2012 Peanut Challenge was concluded at a public house on Monday night. Pubs are also disappearing left right and centre across the country, and here at least I am able to contribute to their ongoing survival. Never let it be said that I am a selfish consumer. The pub of choice was The Grapes in Limehouse, and very nice it was too. And to my knowledge, it has yet to kill anyone, which makes it better than some pubs I could mention. I had an emergency packet of peanuts in my pocket, but in the event they were not needed as The Grapes had three extremely large jars of peanuts behind the bar. I ordered one (bowl) of each - standard, roasted, and (I think) sweet chilli. James A is not a huge fan of peanuts, which meant I ended up eating 95% of them, and for which I paid the next day. No matter. Excellent discussions were had about quite how rubbish our work patches were, and we both agreed that although the 2012 competition had been a draw at 42 species each, it was highly likely that Canary Wharf was actually even worse than Tower Bridge. Which means I win, but seeing as I had already purchased the peanuts, this was somewhat of a moot point. I drank far too much beer for a Monday night - or any night - and woke up at 3am with the most incredible thirst, no doubt brought on by excess peanut consuption. It's the last time I do that in a hurry. In fact, we agreed that we might skip the work patch-listing for 2013, mainly on the grounds that suicide might be a likely outcome for one or both of us.

So I'll be sticking to Wanstead, which this year has seen my worst ever start - it is mid month and I have only just reached my Jan 1st total from last year. Teal fell today. I can barely contain my excitement.

Bearded Tits, Hyde Park

Fabulous views of the Bearded Tits in Hyde Park this morning, and nice to see a few familiar faces enjoying them too. An amazing record when you think about it, especially as the "reedbed" they are in is about the size of bus stop, though perhaps not as deep.... Both birds are BTO ringed, so I spent a bit of time aiming at the legs instead of going for the artistic shots. I've manged to piece together one of the codes, and it seems another observer has managed five out of the six digits, so hopes are high that it can be worked out where these two little beauties came from. I took Muffin along too, he is getting quite keen on taking photos, and he also needed Bearded Tit. They showed magnificently, mere feet away - this is the way to see birds for the first time, and he'll always remember it, rather than some blob miles away. There are some more photos here.

In fact we made a bit of a day of it, and once our parking ticket ran out at Hyde Park, by which time we were both frozen anyhow, we carried on across London and out to the west for a long-staying Great White Egret in Herts, and only a couple of miles outside the M25. We found the right place very easily, my instincts telling me that the river was likely at the bottom of the valley and not at the top of the hill, and hadn't even stopped the car when I was forced to raise my bins at lightning speed to confirm that the white bird in the reeds did indeed have a yellow bill. Tick #2 for Muffin. Naturally we got out and went and had a proper look at it, during which time it didn't do much other than just stalk around. Some Little Egrets were good to compare it with - here's one of the Great White flying around trying to scare one of the Littles....

Not done yet, we decided that two Buff-bellied Pipits for our London lists far exceeded one Buff-bellied Pipit, so trundled back round the M25 towards Horton and Wraysbury. The birds seem to be spending more time away from the reservoir, good news for the £2 nestling in my pocket. We found the spot pretty much straight away, and there they were, feeding together around some large puddles. Roy W was also there (in fairly heavy winter plumage, it seems he moved through Movember into Mocember without a backwards glance, and is currently headed for Mofebruary and beyond!) having a pop at them, so we stealthily joined him. Easier than the last time, but the results aren't quite there sadly as this time the bird(s) were much further away. Flushed with this success we carried on to somewhere in Berks where we ticked Bradders and Crofty, but dipped the Pallas's Warbler and got very cold. Still, you can't win 'em all, and we had a very good day and made it back in time to see Africa and a baby Elephant dying on TV. Top family entertainment - my daughter had to leave the room and fetch a cuddly toy.

 

A Sad Day

Another High Street casualty, and whilst I wasn't too sad to see the back of Clinton Cards and Game, news of Jessops' demise is very sad. When I moved to London in the early nineties, I was a fairly regular visitor to the huge store on New Oxford Street, which had a very well stocked second-hand section. I splashed out for my first real lens from there, the Canon 300mm f4 - this was in the days before image stabilisation had been invented. I also bought one of my two now worthless EOS 1Ns from them - I still have both and they still work perfectly, though my stocks of Velvia ran out years ago.

From what I remember, Jessops was very often staffed by real enthusiasts, and it's these people who are now all out of work, and that's very sad news. There isn't a lot of money in photography, or that at least is my impression, so they may struggle to find work in the same sector, or indeed work anywhere - it's still miserable out there. Too much competition? Online dominance? Probably both, though I think that the day they stopped selling second-hand gear is what started the rot. That's why I went there in my impoverished student days - that 300mm lens came out of my student loan, not quite what it was intended for. It was slightly dented, slightly battered, slightly scraped, but lovely nonetheless. I mean it was white, and that counted for everything! Not that I knew what I was doing with it back then of course, but I used it for years before falling out of love with photography for a period. When I came back to it, that was what I picked up again. I stuck it on a cheap digital body, and it worked just like before, and so away I went on the journey I am still very much on today. I only sold it a few years ago.

On the internet.

Stress

I hate having things weighing on my mind. I hate to-do lists of things that I know I am not going to enjoy. Like any normal person, I put them off for as long as possible. Lists of things I have put off recently include writing a section of the London Bird Report (I had the information for months and started marginally after the deadline), writing to some car hire places in Morocco (in french), sorting out Christmas Thank You letters (only three to write, but there are always other things to do....anything.....). Tonight the last of the great evils was to fall - I was going to do my tax return - yes, before the deadline (but only because I didn't want to be fined). Alcohol in my right hand, National Insurance card in my left, I sat down in front of the computer and didn't start typing.

God what a process. Last week I had to phone up for a number, and today it duly arrived - I thought I was good to go. But no. NI number entered, new registration number entered, I eagerly copied down the third number that popped up on screen with its ominous warning that HMRC would never send me this crucial number again. Right, I'm in! Oh no I'm not! No, apparently in seven working days HMRC will send me, by post, a fourth number that I can use to activate my online self assessment. What kind of bloody moron developed an online system where you have to phone up for one number that they can't tell you over the phone and have to post to you, write down a second number on a piece of paper because they won't tell it to you again by any means, ever, and then wait a week for yet a third number to be posted to you? Have they not heard of email? Do they want my money? By the time this final (I am not hopeful) number arrives about two weeks before the deadline the entire system will probably have crashed and I'll be in the clink for tax evasion. Meanwhile a 71 year old gamekeeper who poisoned two Buzzards (and probably loads more birds during his illustrious career) is fined a fraction of my likely tax bill at the end of a trial which cost the taxpayer many times my tax bill. Is it any wonder the country is going down the pan?

So it is still hanging over me, which is very irritating as I envisaged myself sat here typing with the gay abandon of one who has nothing pressing whatsoever to do for the forseeable future. Here, this is a photo of a sculpture near my office. It is entitled "Man logs onto HMRC Website, in Bronze". I lugged my camera to work today to take photos of a Black-headed Gull that was sat invitingly on the railings when I walked past it without my camera on Monday. Guess what?