One of Those 'Eureeka!' Moments .....

 I knew, as of some days ago, that Chris, my Ringing Trainer, was due up here today. It would have been that anticipation that led to me waking up yesterday, realising that I'd just been Dreaming about mist netting and ringing birds!

 That's par for the course though. Chris reckons he dreams the same thing, even when he's wide awake.

 And today, we were doing it, again. Though it turned out to be the dullest day we've ever had here, by far. Two Coal Tits. One Great Tit and a Gold Crest. 

 There, literally, just wasn't a bird to be seen. I suspect The Idiot's feeding them seed and has drawn the flocks. Bastard!

  And that's probably what got me day dreaming ~ as I made the umpteenth round of tea ~ about catching shit like Rooks and Jackdaws. What savage craic that would be!

 But, then, I thought about it. I'd need a fucking great 'Cage'. Walk in size. And to make a " Ladder " type top for it. All that 2 x 2 and chicken wire. Cost a bloody fortune!

 That's when I started breathing faster. Eureeka!!!  We will catch 'Black Crows'!

 What have I got out there? Fucking Eight by Four foot aviary! All powder coated. Bolted together from pre formed panels. Standing empty, since I used it to drive the Magpies away from here.

 I told Chris we'd be in business. Tonight, I checked my files. Yeppers! There's a dead easy form of 'Chimney' entrance I can knock up out of a length of roof baton and a bit of scrounged chicken wire! Jackdaw, Rook and Crow.

 I can knock that up. Whip a roof panel off my aviary. Chris and I can easily lug the aviary itself down to the corner of the field, by the big trees.

I'll feed the buggers the best I can find. Watch their confidence and numbers build up. I'm dreaming about black clouds here. Enough to make Hitchcock smile and snuggle down, warmer in his grave!

Get the buggers flocking here daily, for their cheap but plentiful bait ~ Rolled Oats? 35 Kilo's for under a tenner! Let them build up till they're as numerous as the sparrows on my nuts. Just wait till Chris is due back.

 That day, I close the door!

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.


 

I'm Gonna Be A Ringer ....!

  No! Din'! They're called " Campanologists ". Fucking rope hangers. See me yanking a rope to make some fucking great bell go 'Clang!'. Deaf enough as it is!

 No.  Ringing Birds. And I don't mean, " Hullo? Do ye offer a 'Full Service', home visit? " either. FFS!

 For anyone who's lived in a cave all their lives; This is about putting little rings on the legs of wild birds. Basically, we ring them in the nest or we catch them and ring them as adults.

  Ring has a # and that leads back to a load of information about that particular, individual bird. So, if I ring my Starlings, in my nest box right now? Their rings will be their little ID Cards.

  If one of them is then found dead, or caught by a Ringer, in Russia, three years down the line? He'll be able to trace that bird back to my cow shed wall. Hatched, May, 2011. I'll also be able to find out that one of my birds turned up in Russia.

 The scientists at the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) will be number crunching Thousands of such records, of course. And that's how we come to have books and Papers, explaining how birds migrate and shit. 

 That sort of information isn't just snatched out of the ether. It's scientifically proven by quiet people, around the world, steadily finding nests and catching birds. Putting little rings on their legs. Recording it all. And adding that shit to the Big Data Base.

  This is something I've pipe dreamed of being involved with All My Life! But, I'd simply assumed the only way in was to be from a Grammar School ~ at least ~ education. Lick the arse of the local Nature Reserve Warden, day in, day out,  for years.

As well as being a non smoker. Not swearing, having a sense of humour, or ever taking ye head out of ye own arse. Except to lick the arse of that local Nature Reserve Warden ....!

 I dunno. Maybe, forty years ago, that was about right? Today? Forget it!

 Take the BTO. I'm involved with their Nest Record Scheme. I ~ like thousands of others across Britain and Eire ~ search for birds nests and record their progress. 

  It's headed by a Doctor. Obviously. Right there; Bet he went to Grammar  School. Doesn't drink. 'Retirement' age. Wears 'nice' jumpers, like Giles Brandreth, the whole shebang. Eh?

What? " Dave " ?! Ye fucking kidding me?! Listen; Dave and Carl are the two main men at the NRS. I'll never forget ~ and wish I could find! ~ a photo they published.

It was one of them posing a demonstration of how to search, with a stick, for warblers nests.
Caption read: " And here, Carl demonstrates poking around aimlessly, with a stick, amongst some bushes. "

 I laughed till I cried, when I saw that! Made all the better by the fact that this 'crusty, austere old wet blanket' was, in fact, patently young enough to be my son.

  And was having the piss taken out of him, by his colleague, who, himself looks like a Mad Hippy, in an official publication! :D Mad as a box of frogs, the pair of them! But, completely human and approachable for it.

Chris? The guy who's agreed to train me as a Ringer ~ an 'apprenticeship' which can take a couple of years! They don't just make ye do a days course and set ye lose to fuck about with wild birds, ye know?!

Chris' is also one of the best Nest Finders in Eire. He was here on Friday. Spent the afternoon with me. Muvva Fukka!!!

  I'll tell ye all about that, in a new Post. Otherwise, ye eyes would be bleeding, trying to read so much shit. But, there it is. I've been accepted as a Trainee Ringer.

  Shit. I've probably wasted most of my fucking life now. Because I always thought he had to smoke a pipe and wear a Fair Isle jumper to even be looked at.

Wrong!!!