17 January 2009

The wrong American duck

That 'Weekend Birder' has struck again. Off I head for a day out in Berkshire/Surrey when, whilst watching the Yankee Wigeon at Lower Farm GPs, the phone rings - Green-winged Teal, Goldcliff, county first. All chipperness garnered from having found the americana bobbing before me evaporated (not that I'd usually draw chip from following someone else's directions to a long-staying duck but it was not the standard piece-of-pissery I thought it might be, due to woeful planning and an equally woeful lack of navigation aids the previous 30 mins had witnessed the birth of a new sport 'orientbirding'). Luckily, I then remembered I couldn't give a tinker's cuss about my Gwent list and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to think of an Olympic sport beginning with 'n' (not including netball), a type of soup beginning with 'e', a car model beginning with 'o' (but not Orion, Omega or Octavia [was there a Audi Orifice?]) and a singer beginning with 'x'.

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