An Afternoon With A 'Master' .....

  OK. This is a post about Bird Ringing / Nest Finding. If ye've just blown in here from Google, looking for some 'W/we' shit? Boy, are you in the wrong fucking place!

  So; Chris' is the nearest qualified Instructor to me. He agreed to entertain me as a prospective Trainee. Then he drove for Two Fucking Hours, just to get here!

 I'd also been told that he's one of the Best damn nest finders in Eire. He'd shown another Ringer some shit that had blown his balls off. 

 I simply couldn't accept that this guy was even gonna come near me. Shit of this calibre doesn't happen to me. It'd fuck up. Chickens counted before eggs hatched. I knew it.

 And then, after a week or two of false starts, there's this fucking motor coming down my track. Just ten minutes past the ETA! This guy had even found me! :o

  Turns out we're, roughly, 'Of An Age'. We shook hands and started the sort of secretly tentative conversations one starts with a complete stranger who ye looking at getting to know for some time. Trying to guage what's acceptable.

 Within what seemed like a few sentences, Chris is telling me how he was doing some work for some bloke.

" Guy's got a fucking Kalashnikov leaning in the corner! I've asked him; 'Is that thing For Real, or just some repro'? "

" And he's told me; ' No. It's real alright. God help any cunt who comes fucking with me! '.

 Now; What the fuck Is that yellow Dog ye have there ....? "

 And off we went! :D Yakkety yak. Mist Net up. Cup of tea and House Sparrow, male. 

 * A 'Mist Net', in case ye don't know ~ and why should ye? Is a very fine net. As in light. Made of like threads of sewing cotton. Stand ten feet from one and squint? Ye can't really be sure it's there. Birds fly into it and get tangled.

 Chris removed it from the net ~ a job Not for the novice, or ham fisted. It took even him some countable seconds. The head, feet and wings seem to each get stuck in a separate 'hole'. Got to be calm as fuck and gentle as a lovers breath.

  He showed me how the bird is held. How its little leg is presented. Ring placed into the special pliers. Slipped into the tiny, delicate little leg. Crimped closed.

  Then, because he's a Fully Qualified / Licensed, The Complete Shit, Ringer; He measured the wing. Pointed out some all but invisible, to me, differences in some tiny feathers, on the wing. Told me how this esoteric shit said this bird was born last year.

 Then, he popped and wrapped the little fucker in a plastic cone. Weighed him. Wrote all this shit down in a full sized, A4 Ledger. Then let him go.

 Faaaarkk!!! I'd just stood there and watched a real, live Ringer do his shit! Fuck! Unbelievable! And this was right there in my compound! Not some Bill Oddie shit on TV! I Was There!

 Bit of chat. Cup of tea. Great Tit in the net. Chris hands it to me! Now, thankfully, I've 'had to do with' handling wild birds, in a dim and distant, misty part of my past. I wasn't flapping. Nor was the bird.

   I put the ring on. Chris did the scientific stuff. Then we went hunting nests .....

  First stop was the Blackbirds nest I had. Four chicks. Fat as moles. Right on the limit of being young enough to still ring. 

  And the nest was empty. Some fucking cat, or crow had helped themselves at the optimum age / size! I wanted to grab a gun and go blow something ....!

  Chris gently pointed out to me how he'd once done a survey of Blackbirds. Found forty odd nests in a given area. End of the season? Every single fucking one of them had been taken by predators!

 Yet, next season? Another forty odd Blackbirds nests appeared in the same area. Dunno. Maybe we should just accept Blackbirds chicks are a major 'Fast Food' in the food chain, out there?

Maybe cat owners, who let their ' Free Spirits ' and ' Natural Hunters ' go wandering about, off their properties and out of their control? They'd better realise there's 'Natural Hunters', of Cats, out here too.

There's a hierarchy, out there amongst  the fields and ditches. Cats aren't the top of that chain. No matter what they think. 

  Not while I'm around.