25 October 2011

The internal timeline of the clueless mind

The first 15 things that crossed my mind on finding a Pied Wheatear:
  1. Oooh look! A wheatear [lower case], this will probably be bird of the day.
  2. Er,... why isn't that a female Pied?
  3. Why do I keep my Coolpix at the bottom of my bastard-to-open rucksack and not in my pocket?
  4. Pale, grey-toned and cold-looking overall, fringing to the lower scaps (f. difficult to see on crown, mantle, etc.), chat-like jizz, quite long-winged.
  5. Why won't this bird show me it's tail pattern?
  6. Oooh,... there's the tail.
  7. Can I remember how to exclude Eastern Black-eared? Can I bog-roll.
  8. The usual pangs of self-doubt admixed with the fear that some bastard will appear and re-identify it as melanoleuca and then I'll have to live with the searing mental anguish until, one bleak winter's morning, I'm found face down in an icy ditch, a brisk northerly snatching the last few sodden pages of Magnus Ullman's seminal 1994 Dutch Birding paper from my rigid grasp.
  9. Better 'phone a friend'. [having attempted to phone at least half a dozen 'friends', none of whom picked up...]
  10. Is my phone on the blink? [remembering my crack IT training I turn it off and on again].
  11. When is my new phone arriving?
  12. Input garnered from Messers Seth, Gates, Bull and Townend (not neccesarily in that order [can't remember order, many thanks all]).
  13. Better put it out as a Pied then.
  14. Always trust your first impressions, unless they're wrong, in which case, don't.
  15. OMG! One of the locals seems to have his phone switched off, another is in Norfolk and I think another just thought I said Pied Flycatcher,... *is* my phone on the blink? Am I on the blink? Is everyone else on the blink?
... and so it went on, indeed, goes on.

Up on the roof.

1 comment:

Nicky and Larry said...

Love the write up Darryl and thanks for the wonderful bird. I bet the vast majority of us, me included, would be in the can I bog-roll camp with respect to EBW, so don't worry about that!

ATB.

Larry Wheatland