Meeting my maker

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A flower for tomorrow – Ciska Faulkner

Today was a good day.

I journeyed down to Bristol to call upon the Natural History Unit literally to show my face. As I don’t live in Bristol (aka The Green Hollywood) I have to make a concerted effort to keep my profile up with the television folk there.
An incredible thing happened today though. Whilst in a meeting with one of the top honchos in the unit, I met my maker – my fairy godmother. Let me explain. Several years ago, this executive was at home with her gran who was suffering with Alzeheimer’s. To keep her gran entertained, she noticed  a Readers Digest VHS by the TV about bird watching in Britain. She stuck it in the video and settled back to watch it with her gran.
Shortly, she came across a black guy with blond hair chatting about the virtues of urban birding in Wormwood Scrubs and Brent Reservoir  (a few miles up the road). That guy was me back in 1997. I was working as the Head of Membership at the British Trust for Ornithology at the time and was approached by a production company  to film this segment.
Anyway, the next day my discoverer took the VHS to work to show the Talent people. Eventually, they contacted me in 2006 to appear in Springwatch and the rest is history. To meet the woman who set me on my path was truly an amazing moment.
At lunchtime, I met with editorial team at BBC Wildlife Magazine and we all went off to a nearby cafe for lunch. By the end of lunch I was invited to write for this award winning magazine. It will initially be a couple of pieces this year with the probability of a monthly piece from the January 2010 issue. 
I was delighted. I think that this may be my year. 
Well I hope so.

Radio silence

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I must apologise for my lack of communication over the last few days. It was largely due to not having internet access whilst I was being buffeted by the wind and rain in Paris.
I travelled down by Eurostar at the ungodly hour of 5.25am on Monday morning, totally knackered from the night before. I arrived in Paris 3 hours later, traveled via the Metro to meet up with Parisian birder, Maxime Zucca who answered my last minute plea for guidance through the Paris metropolis.

I found this male Blackbird with an incredibly deep yellow-orange bill.
Max certainly knew his stuff and after inviting me into his apartment to meet his girlfriend (who was also a birder) and to feed, water and make plans for me, we hit the streets in search of birds.
I’ve written a full account of my adventure for a future issue of Bird Watching magazine, but to cut a long story short, despite the lashing wind and rain, I still managed to see Short-toed Treecreepers, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Hawfinch, Yellow-legged Gull and most surprisingly, a Kingfisher flying over the Seine in the shadow of Notre Dame.

Max and I
Max and I split in the afternoon for me to scurry off to find a hotel to stay in. I was wet and most worryingly, my rucksack containing my laptop was seriously wet. I found a dump near the centre for 50 Euros that looked bedbug ridden. The guy on the door wrote down the password for the hotel’s WiFi on the back of an A4 piece of paper, but in my room I discovered that the net was non-existent. Furthermore, when I turned over the piece of paper that he gave me, I was surprised to see that it was a photocopy of adverts for the local brothels. What kind of hotel was I staying in?
The next day I was out and about on my own and in the wind and rain I managed to see some Tree Sparrows in Bois de Vincennes, Serins in Parc des Beamont and rarest of all, a pair of Marsh Tits in the Pere Lachaise Cimiterie.
In short, Paris is well worth a second look.

Thanks to all my blogging mates that helped me with this trip.

Debate

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Rock Pipit – Andy Cook

This morning I lay in bed debating. 

Should I stay or should I go now? 
No, I wasn’t in a strange woman’s bed – I was weighing up the pros and cons of checking out my local patch. The call of nature won the day and soon I found myself parking outside The Scrubs.

It was a good decision. I quickly had 17 Skylarks in a flooded field with a further 5 elsewhere. That was 22 birds. A club record! The previous maximum count was 9 overhead several years ago. I also had at least 80 Fieldfare (all on the deck) with at least 45 accompanying Redwings. All these species were obviously roving to avoid the harsh weather conditions further north and west. As well as an overflying Jackdaw (scarce here) and a Great Black-back amongst the general gull movement overhead, the prize bird was a Rock Pipit that called as it flew over. It was my first here since the early 90’s.
I returned home delighted that I made such an inspired decision. After watching Manchester United beat West Ham on the box, I set about the task of readying myself for my journey to Paris, first thing in the morning. The weather prospects look dreadful. Rain – and loads of it.
I received an email from a Parisian urban birder who had agreed to take me out tomorrow morning around a few sites. The birder that fellow blogger Nathalie put me onto was very helpful but unfortunately couldn’t meet up with me. My plan is to board the Eurostar at 5.25am in the morning and start writing the article. I haven’t found any accommodation yet so I’ll ask around once I’m in Paris. Then at around 5pm I’m meeting with the sales manager at Le Meurice (a really posh hotel in the Dorchester group) for a cup of tea. I met this woman in London at The Dorchester. That is a whole new story that maybe I will tell you about one day.
So I’m going to bed down now, as I have to be up at 3.30am. 
Oh boy!

The sun is coming

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The past couple of days have been particularly busy for me and it all started once I had pressed the ‘send’ button on my section of The London Bird Report. As you could probably tell, it wasn’t the most exciting thing that I achieved this week.

I had a lovely email from Audrey Parry, fundraiser at the Conwy RSPB Reserve. They had successfully raised a load of money to help fix up their reserve. She loved the piece that I wrote for them about a walk around Wormwood Scrubs. She was bowled over. That was nice. I also had phone calls from the Polish and Portuguese tourist boards regarding my proposed trips to Krakow and Lisbon respectively. Both trips are for research to write urban birding articles. The Poles are offering me a couple of nights accommodation but I have to fly myself out there. The Portuguese on the other hand are flying me out, offering four nights accommodation and a guided tour of several sites including the ornithologically famous Tagus Estuary as well as the Sado and Castro Verde Estuaries. I’ll be heading out to all those places plus Budapest during May and June. 
I also had my trip to Exeter in Devon confirmed for the first weekend in April. I’m hoping to see the Cirl Buntings that reside near Exeter Hospital – if they are still there that is, as the last time I saw them was when I was with the BTO back in ’97.
Earlier today, I also had a phone call from the Sunday Express asking if I would be willing to go on record as a The One Show presenter and dish the dirt on the Carol Thatcher ‘Gollywog – gate’. I politely replied that I was not there and therefore couldn’t comment. Those kind of interviews are potential minefields that possess the strong possibility of blowing up in peoples faces and ruining careers in the process. Of course, if they wanted me to generally talk about racism then that would have been different. But this wasn’t really about racism and more about the daughter of Britain’s first female prime minster.
This evening, I spent several hours in an editing suite in Brick Lane, deepest East London, cutting together a 3 minute aural piece on a Dawn Chorus walk that I recorded at The Scrubs last May. Hopefully, we will have it finished for future broadcast within the next couple of weeks.
Finally, I played football in the morning. We lost 4-3 against a team who’s average age was 20-something compared to our average which was closer to 120! It wasn’t as bad as it seemed though because none of the goals were my fault (defensive errors) and we were 4-0 down for most of the game.

Money and Woodcocks

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A Mourning Dove – no relevance to anything at all really!

The rain came and washed the snow away today. We returned to the normal grey and dismal hues that you would normally associate with London at this time of year. Any thoughts of hitting The Scrubs this morning was put paid by the drizzle.

Instead, I did some work at home (that dreaded section of the London Bird Report) and then went off to a meeting at The Ecology Centre in picturesque Holland Park to meet with the ecology people from Kensington & Chelsea City Council. We talked about ideas for a project that they were trying to get off the ground that involved getting underprivileged kids involved with birding and nature. They had a fine collection of stuffed birds including a Woodcock that recently breathed its last breath under a tree in the park.
We’ll see if they are still interested in working with me once I tell them how much I’m gonna charge for my time!

Tundra

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I woke up to a nippy morning. The lure of my bed although strong, was broken by the thought of seeing some overflying wild swans or finding a bewildered Jack Snipe in the grassland at The Scrubs. On arrival, I did see a couple of odd geese flying fairly high heading east, but my instinct told me that they were probably Egyptian Geese – especially when I noticed a group of c25 obviously larger Canada Geese flying at rooftop level below them.

The walk around ‘my garden’ with fellow Scrubber, Roy Nuttall, resulted in a pair of Goldcrests (infrequent here) and…..er………little else!
Oh, whilst I remember I have got to do a few ‘shout outs’ for a couple of my fellow bloggers. Thank you Nathalie for your helpful tips on locating Parisian birders, the wonderful Wild Freckle for the French lesson and to Clare for getting me into this blogging lark in the first place.
Today was fairly uneventful so I won’t even start to bore you with the details. Even more boring was the task that I had to attend to this evening; writing up my section (Penduline Tit to Sparrows) in the 2006 London Bird Report. No room for creative writing here. Oh no, just interpreting figures into ultra dry comments like ‘two on July 5th and 6 on Aug 30th’.
How dull!

Nada

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The snow in Croydon today – Kim Dixon

Thankfully, the forecasted snowfall didn’t occur last night. What a relief. I’m not mad on snow unless it’s proper snow in places where it’s supposed to snow like the Alps, the Arctic or on Aviemore.

I did my usual plotting and planning today. You know, replying to emails, chasing money, dreaming…. Did I mention birding? Well there was none of that today, though I did muster a puffed up male Blackbird on a fence today.
Going back to the Bill Oddie Springwatch thing, I’ve now heard that the mention of Alan Titchmarsh et al is purely paper talk. Thank goodness for that. I hope that they opt for an expert who knows their onions. 
Anyway, that’s it for today. Tune in for less tomorrow!

Happy Christmas – again!

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The view from my front window

London and the south east received some of the heaviest snowfall since 1991. I remember that occasion very well, as I had to abandon my car on Tottenham Court Road and trudge home to Ladbroke Grove through the Westend underdressed (I had a suit on), trying to stay on my feet whilst avoiding random snowball missiles. I just can’t get used to seeing London under snow when in reality, cold winters and all it entails should really be par for the course. Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by global warming – getting too used to mild winters and thinking that a few puffs of snowdust for around 10 minutes on a winter’s day is a veritable blizzard!

This time around I found myself squelching through the largely deserted streets of Soho dressed in full Lapland regalia. Well, walking boots, thermal jacket and Davy Crockett hat. Perhaps I was a tad over dressed. This was especially apparent when I saw the ever present Hare Krishna guys walking down Regents Street en masse in their shawls and trainers (no Jesus boots) uttering their familiar chant, only this time it definitely sounded like ‘Hare Krishmas’!
Back at snow bound base I received an email from the editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine inviting me down to Bristol next week to meet with them to discuss the possibility of writing for them in some capacity. I’m really excited because it really is a prestigious magazine and one that I have always wanted to get involved with.
Meanwhile, I will be in Paris next Monday and Tuesday researching for my Bird Watching Magazine article. I still haven’t got anywhere to stay, so I will be trawling The Fatbirder website to see if I can track anyone down. 
Tonight, I finally emailed the article that I wrote for the Conwy RSPB reserve on Wormwood Scrubs as I stared forlornly at my to do list. I have to write a section for the 2006 London Bird Report, write the January 2009 Scrubs report, plan my assault on the BBC Bristol Natural History Unit when I’m down there to see BBC Wildlife and start researching for a documentary that I want to write and make about the vultures in India.
Here goes……

Spring Oddity

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As per usual on a Saturday, I donned my ‘The Cat’ goalkeeping shirt and stood between the sticks to save many of the shower of shots that were fired at me. We won.

Yesterday, the news broke that Bill Oddie was leaving Springwatch. I actually knew on Monday but was sworn to secrecy. It will be very interesting to see who (if anyone) they get to replace him. I’ve heard the names Alan Titchmarsh, comedian Rory McGrath and Ben Fogle bandied around. 
What do you guys think?

Posts yesterday – Poles today

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I can’t believe it!!

For two mornings in a row, I’ve dragged my carcass out of bed and drove myself down to The Scrubs for a quick hour’s birding. It was a cold, crisp and sunny day. Perhaps that was the only thing of note to comment about this morning. Well, actually there were around 30 Meadow Pipits in the grassland and a majestic group of 4 Mute Swans headed serenely over.
After moaning for several days, I had an apologetic phone message later from the Council promising to next week move the pipit sign I was complaining about in yesterday’s blog to the proper place that it should be at. I truly fear for the future of our precarious population as I can’t see their breeding area recovering before they start setting up territory. What’s more, it sadly seems likely that the grassland will not be made into part of the Local Nature Reserve that the wooded bits of The Scrubs enjoys.
Today was the day that I finished the Conwy RSPB article on my favourite walk, which is naturally The Scrubs. I will ship that over to them once I’ve given it the over night test. I called the editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine to see whether she had received the ideas that I emailed over for some articles that I’d like to write for them. She was up for meeting me, so I will be heading over to Bristol the week after next for lunch with her and her colleagues. 
Meanwhile, the editor of Bird Watching Magazine managed to secure a trip to Poland for me to write a piece on Urban Birding. Fantastic! Also, next weekend I’ll be heading over to Paris to explore some of its urban sites for the magazine. I always get excited visiting new cities for birding purposes. Of course, I’m not a complete glutton for punishment, thus I will be squeezing in some time out of town to get a birding fix.
My thoughts and prayers go out to my friend Ciska Faulkner, a producer who whilst filminga commercial last week in Helsinki, Finland came down with meningitis and had to be flown back to London. She is currently in hospital. I wish her a speedy recovery.

Hitting the post

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Mute Swan – Petria Whelan

At last I made it out to a rather waterlogged Wormwood Scrubs for my first bit of birding for a couple of weeks. I originally got a text from Fiona Barclay of Birdguides, who lives in nearby Acton, alerting me to a Egyptian Goose flying towards The Scrubs. I jumped out of bed as if I’d just wet it!

Although I have been moaning about it, my lack of binocular action is actually par for the course for me at this time of the year. I tend to be in hibernation until mid-March when the promise of migrants galvanises me into overdrive ie, daily visits and looking at everything that moves.

This morning a high flying Mute Swan made a couple of circuits and c20 Meadow Pipits revealed themselves in the grassland. It was the largest flock for a couple of months. This is normal for this time of year and no doubt, some of the males will be in song flight before long. Unfortunately, their favoured breeding area has a desire path cut right through it due to the excessive short cutting by dog walkers. After much badgering, I managed to get the Council to put signs up requesting that the paths are not used to help regenerate the area for the pipits. Instead of putting a sign post up at either end, they put the sign at one end and the other in a completely irrelevant place, far from the contested path.
Nothing’s ever easy.
I also had around 400 Carrion Crows and at least 100 gulls (mostly Herring & Lesser Black-backs) all up in the air together, as if they had been spooked by some unseen assailant. My guess was that it was a high flying Peregrine.
It was good to get back into the saddle again.

Jet!

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Planning migrations..

After Monday night’s mega jabbering I took a day of from communicating yesterday to get over it all. But the feedback was good and anyone out there reading this blog can feel confident and book Wembley Arena because we would fill it twice over!

On a serious note, the old gentleman that had the heart attack is on the mend and is recovering well. We can rest assured that it wasn’t one of our jokes that set his heart off. Mind you, we did talk about girls a lot and in particular, we talked about the importance of women in the adolescent years of heterosexual boys. Maybe he got excited harking back to his younger days?
Today was a good day in The Urban Birder office. I got offered a 4 day trip to Lisbon, Portugal in May by the Portuguese Tourist Board so that I can research for an urban birding article for Bird Watching Magazine, Kensington & Chelsea Council called me (I met the woman at the recent London Biodiversity Forum that I chaired) and have offered me a role in a project to do with exposing wildlife to kids in the area. I’m meeting with those guys next week. I also was asked by Southwark Council to lead a bird walk next month and finally, I was invited to be a ‘name’ at the Spring Birdwatching Fair in Tamworth, Staffordshire.
Keep it coming folks!

Orator? Move over Barack!

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Mike Dilger & I in our Clacton dressing room

The day has come. The day that Mike Dilger (The Dilge) and I were to descend upon the good people of Clacton in Essex to deliver our long awaited talk on our birding lives.

I woke up at 8am – late for me, as I had hoped to head out to The Scrubs for some meditation time before starting my day. So much for that. I put the finishing touches to my RSPB article on the Brighton Starlings and sent it off to the editor, then set about tickling my Conwy piece. 
My ex-agent left me a voicemail to wish me a good talk tonight (as he had arranged it) and also mentioned that I may be getting a call from the producer at the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 to get me to come in to chat about feeding garden birds at 1pm. No more than 20 minutes later I received the call from the producer. He asked me to come in and chat live on air for 1.20pm. On an ordinary day that would have been cool, but today was the day that me and The Dilge had ear tagged to do the final rehearsals, view our video clips and put together our powerpoint presentation. Despite that, I agreed to do it, so a car was organised to pick me up.
Meanwhile, I had an email back from the editor of RSPB’s Birds saying that he loved my Brighton piece. Nice.
When The Dilge arrived at my house, he wasn’t best pleased to learn that I would be breaking off our crucial rehearsal time to do something else. I thought about what he was saying and agreed with him. So I pulled out of it and they got Stephen Moss from the Natural History Unit to step in.
The Dilge and I cracked on. Boy am I glad that we took that extra time as we sure needed it.
We eventually arrived at the theatre at 5.40pm after a traffic-filled 2.5 hour drive across central London and into darkest Essex. For those with poor geography (myself included) Clacton is situated on the coast, lapped by the freezing waters of the cold North Sea.
We were shown to our dressing room where we set about rehearsing our talk again. At 7.30pm we strode onto the stage to face an audience of around 800 mostly elderly members of the local arts and literary society. The talk started smoothly. We got a few laughs and were holding the audience’s attention. I was in the middle of a story about when as a kid I watched an animated film called ‘The Last Of The Curlews’ and how it shaped my future birding life. Meanwhile, Mike had just received a message from the organiser that we had to stop the talk because someone in the crowd was having a heart attack and needed to be carted of to hospital – pronto!
Of course, despite trying to loudly whisper at me to finish, I was in full flow with arms waving and with the crowd listening intently. Once I’d finished, he stepped up and addressed the audience telling them the news. We retired to our dressing room whilst the poor fella (who by now had blue lips and a decidedly grey face) was shipped off to hospital.
After a 25 minute delay we returned to the stage and delivered the remainder of the talk. It was a hit. They loved it. At the end, Mike signed a few copies of his book and I signed a few autographs. Jeez, I feel like a celebrity!
There were plenty of smiles on the drive back as Mike and I planned our world tour!

The Bird Loving Cat

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Football on Saturday morning was a bit of a triumph as we won by the ridiculous scoreline of 12-6 and the game included stint where I played in central defence for around 20 minutes. Which seriously curtailed any surreptitious birding that I do when I’m in my normal position as goalkeeper. Having said that, I only saw a Magpie today. 

They call me The Bird Loving Cat due to my apparent ability to pounce across the face of the goal like some scrambling cat leaping after a ball that has invariably already hit the back of the net.

No, I’m not that bad. I rather like my football moniker.
On Saturday evening, I was supposed to be live on BBC Radio 5 Live chatting about the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. But annoyingly, they never bothered to call me. I got the call today from an apologetic producer and in the end I was on tonight. The female presenter announced the piece by exclaiming, ‘Calling all twitchers!’. My first thought was; you can’t rely on twitchers to count the birds in the garden because they’d be out hunting for rare birds. I kept that thought to myself.
Despite the miserable weather, I had an excellent day in the office and made great headway on my to do list. Well, apart from the fact that I have not even looked at my talk that I’m doing tomorrow night, let alone rehearsed it!

Pornithology?

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Haviside’s Dolphins – their relevance to this blog will become apparent (Sacha Barbato & Nathalie Gilbert)
I woke up expecting to feel lower than a dolphin’s droppings, but instead I felt great – and this was despite the grey, wet weather outside of my bedroom window.
It was also despite the fact that I had promised a friend of mine that I would help him move from his flat in Shoreditch into his newly found girlfriend’s basement flat in Stoke Newington. So I drove across to east London a largely alien territory to me, a certified west London boy. We humped various unnecessarily heavy boxes including a ginormous TV that was surely the weight of three small dead baby elephants.
He then handed me a much lighter box and asked me to look after it as he didn’t want his girlfriend to discover it. Curious, I cried ‘what’s in the box’, a bit like Brad Pitt in the last desert scene in ‘Seven’. Matter-of -factly he answered ‘it’s my porn’. I’m now the trustee of ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ and other similar works. The things you do for your mates!
Back at home, I got cracking on getting pictures together for my talk on Monday. I really do need to rehearse it. Radio 5 Live called me and asked me if I would be interested in being interviewed tomorrow night about this weekend’s RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch as it is the 30th anniversary. Naturally I agreed, so I will be on at around 9pm for a few minutes on Saturday night.
It also reminded me that I have not indulged in any ornithology for sometime. That has to be remedied. The only birds I noticed today were a group of six aerially chasing Common Gulls that were screaming at the top of their lungs over Stoke Newington. I paused from struggling with a massive box that was about to split to admire those gorgeous gulls. 

Blackbird. Black night.

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Rain, rain, rain. 

It was that kind of day; dull, dingy and the sort of day that you’d normally want to spend under the duvet with a servant bringing you grub as and when you needed it. But being a bachelor means that you are forced to go out foraging for food, no matter the weather. So after doing a stint behind the computer screen, I braved the rain to get some lunch.
Whilst strolling back down the mews to my abode, I noticed a male Blackbird sitting on a television aerial behind my house. The significance? For the past few afternoons I was certain that I was catching the dying strains of a Mistle Thrush over the ambient sounds of sirens, helicopters, dogs barking, kids shouting (I live next to a school) and nearby office workers benignly talking on their i-phones whilst on their fag breaks. 
But yesterday, Mike Dilger was right. It was a Blackbird – albeit, in weird sub-song. My excuse is that the din of urbanity has dulled my song identification skills (not that I had any in the first place!!).
Tonight, I had a London Natural History Society Ornithological Section meeting (what a mouthful!). I’m chairman and as chairman I managed to get to the site of our meeting in the Camley Street Nature Reserve visitor centre (by Kings Cross Station) 15 minutes late. I left my house too late after getting into an article that I was finishing on the Starlings of Brighton and subsequently got bogged down in traffic on the Euston Road. Of course everyone had got there on time and were duly staring at me when I walked into the room. Embarrassed, I desperately tried to gag my way out of it. No dice.
This was the meeting where I needed the majority of the room of 10 people to vote in favour of changing the section’s name to The London Bird Club. After a somewhat heated debate, I got the majority vote I needed. But at a cost. The one person that was vehemently against it was the one person that I really liked. He was visibly upset, shaking with anger as people rounded on him accusing of being behind the times. To my mind, his arguments were not as strong as everyone else’s and although I could see his point, I felt that his views were a tad nostalgic. I tried to be more conciliatory in my tone but I had to be honest and say that I disagreed with him. 
He threatened to leave the Committee if the name change occurred. He would be sorely missed if he carried out his threat because he is totally invaluable. He’s one of those fellas who works tirelessly for the cause. At events, he’s the first there and the last to leave. And he’s always there. You know the type.
At the end of the meeting he wouldn’t really converse with me when I offered my apologies. 
I walked of into the night with a heavy heart. 

The Dilge & I

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So much for getting up early today.

Well I did, but I slunk back into bed to dream of finding a wintering flock of Lapland Buntings in the grassland on The Scrubs. My dream was cruelly cut short by a phone call at 9am. Yes, I have lie ins on weird days.
At 12.30pm Mike Dilger showed up at my house and after tucking into some brunch down the road, we settled down to 6 hard hours of graft on our joint talk at my place. This session was punctuated by raucous laughter and the odd outbreak of ‘shape cutting’ by Dilger whenever a Prince tune was played on the music system. Our talk’s looking in great shape. We just have to rehearse it now.
As he was leaving a Mistle Thrush briefly piped up from outside the back windows. It was so brief that Mike thought that it was a Blackbird. Perhaps he was right.

President Obama and House Sparrows

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A chirpy male House Sparrow (actually photographed in Los Angeles!)

As like most of the planet, I watched President Obama’s inauguration and came away from it feeling enthused, positive and hopeful for the future. For me, he reinforced the notion that if you have a vision, work hard and believe, then anything is possible. I hope that he will be good for the world, Lord knows he’s got a tough job ahead of him. 

Aside from the war on terror issues, my main hope is that he makes move to vastly improve America’s environmental record. The world needs to wake up to the fact that we are steadily killing the planet and ourselves. We have to turn things around.
My day was filled with soya hot chocolate, backyard football and a bit of work. Got a call from BBC Radio 4 this afternoon. They want to interview me for a programme that they are producing on the demise of the House Sparrow. So I will be recording that in early February either in Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens or somewhere in the depths of east London within the sound of the Bow Bells.
I also learnt from The One Show that I will be in Gateshead, near Newcastle in March for a few days to shoot a piece on the Red Kite reintroduction scheme that’s going on up there. That will be great fun!
Meanwhile, I am sitting here listening to Snoop Doggy Dogg, contemplating getting up early in the morning and dragging myself to The Scrubs…….

Urban ramblings

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Pec Sand in Buenos Aires (James Lowen)

To be honest, I’ve been pretty boring recently working away on my various projects. The most pressing is the impending talk to nearly 900 people coming up on Monday week in Clacton, Essex with the venerable Mike Dilger. It’s getting late in the day now and we are still fretting over what The One Show video clips to dig up.

By the way, if anyone from Conwy RSPB Reserve is reading this blog, I’m tickling my piece on Wormwood Scrubs as I type this. It will be with you soon………honest!

I also spend a load of time editing new material for my website. It’s really great that it’s picking up momentum with birders from around the world. I will be uploading articles on Buenos Aires, Common Nighthawks in New York, a cemetery in Boston, USA, the December sightings at Wormwood Scrubs and a profile on a English ex-pat birder, James Lowen, who now resides in Argentina and does regular trips to the Antarctic. 
I love his picture of the Pectoral Sandpiper. You can’t get much more urban than that!

They smelt of pubs…..

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I didn’t have an appropriate photo.
Last night I had my first official red carpet invite to the screening of Will Smith’s new film ‘Seven Pounds’ and rub shoulders with other red carpet devotees such as Tom Cruise et al. Of course, I turned it down. I had much more important things to do, such as attending the London Natural History Society’s Council meeting. My mission was to get them to agree to changing the London Natural History Society Ornithological Section’s long winded name to the London Bird Club – which is much more user friendly.
It wasn’t an easy ride, though I got support from the quarters I didn’t expect it from. Surprisingly, the Council agreed to it in principle, so long as I could get the majority of Ornithological Section committee to agree. That meeting will be next Thursday night. The reason why I want a more friendly name is to try and attract younger birders to join the LNHS and besides, the LBC would look better on a tee shirt!
Today, I chaired the London Biodiversity Partnership Forum (yes, I didn’t know what that title meant either). The funniest moment was when I introduced a speaker from the Peabody Housing Trust. This guy was dressed in a suit and had the same hairstyle as Paul Weller. He looked pretty cool actually. When he finished his presentation I thanked him and told the audience that he was a busy man and we were lucky the have him there because he had to take time out from his world tour with The Jam!
Some of the audience laughed whilst most collectively took a sharp intake of breath. The fella concerned retorted that I was the first person to ever say that to him. For a beat I thought that I offended him, until I saw him smiling. I thought it was a good gag – if I may say so myself!