Down the Headland early morning and bumped into a cluster of Twitchers near the gun at the lighthouse…… said ‘morning‘ to the as you do and Ratboy glared…. But they just scowl at you.
Ah well, off on our walk back to the car and drive down the front past the Pot House turn right to find a flock of them blocking the road photographing some feathered Flossie up a tree. We’ll I waited for them to move, but no response so I waited a bit longer and thought should I blow my horn, but that might scare the dicky bird off, then a devil descended onto my shoulder and said ….”Fuck em, just blow the horn”….So I did.
They looked at me has though I’d walked into their houses on Xmas Day and stole the kids presents…..
Thing is, they travel up from all over the country to film a spuggie up a tree.
Now I’ve noticed birds never stay anywhere long, so if you get the call to travel from say Northampton because of a sighting of the ‘Lesser Spotted Pasty Nibbler’ in the Croft Gardens, who’s to say it’ll be there when you arrive unless the original spotters put superglue on the branch. A mystery…. Like Pools.

Think we had a white throated robin or something a few years ago and hundreds turned up.
After a few days the bird had gone and the finger was pointed by some at the local sparrowhawk!

Sure it wasn't the local shitehawk?

Remember that, But think it was the Gobshitehawk.

Wait for it.

or the female of the species of the greater spotted curtain twitcher that move at any movement they see.

Could of been a Treecreeper.
Been a pair of Kestrels in Chester road cemy for a few years now. Also spotted a Jay from the crow family.
Marvelous.

A couple of years back we had a sparrow hawk in the back garden with a pigeon it had killed and enjoying it’s meal…. The wife wasn’t happy and wanted to let ratboy out, but that would meant even more feathers flying so me and Ratboy sat and watch him till he flew off after his meal.
Oddly there were plenty of feathers, but not a single sign of anything else, not a morsel of pigeon anywhere,
Fascinating to watch and bigger than expected.

it sounds as if ratboy was on the side of the hawk like my pair are. we see a kestral regularly in the morning on the moors but never seems bothered about the dogs unlike the rabbits and grouse are.

Ratboy aka Spud aka Puppy aka Milo aka Marleybone hates pigeons, especially wood pigeons, must be from his training on the farm and like seagulls.
He was probably cheering the sparrow hawk on.

Twitch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIDJYMUL0mc

I think the only thing they leave is the beak.

Oh I dunno, if you parboil it then serve it with a rich sauce and a cheeky wine. It would be absolutely shite.

I opened the bedroom curtains one morning to exactly the same scene apart from the one in my garden was a Peregrine falcon with a seagull, yes we get them thus far inland.
The falcon ate every scrap except the beak. I had to use a rake to clear the feathers.
Fascinating as you say.

We could do with a family of Peregrine falcons to nest on top of the Grand Hotel to control the pigeon population around the town.
In fact before its ever redeveloped a condition should be the construction of a nesting site on the roof.

with another defeat last night the owls of sheffield must be the only birds of prey that require food bringing to them on a silver platter.

See that lunatic bloke who pushes his shopping trolley around full of corn to feed the rats with wings……

The Eagles are my favourite Premier league team.

Let me guess, Dickie Bird is your favourite Cricket Umpire as well…..?

Had a surprise this morning down Seaton prom near the bus station, a rat emerged from the drain exits up from the beach……. MASSIVE mistake.

How did you know that

Give us the details............

He did what he was trained to do on the farm, it’s what they do.

Me and the Mrs were over there about 3 weeks ago and there was about 7 spotters there, I asked them what they had spotted...complete silence..
I asked again, I'm not easily put off, much shuffling, and the reply oh nothing.

Dickhead was what I was thinking, even if he said a whistling short eared big tit,
We would have been none the wiser, however we could have told him ,you could find them on a Friday and Saturday down church street with early December to about the 1 of January being a peak time.

I just think they’re miserable buggers, they give you filthy looks if you go anywhere near them…

A month ago four of them covered in their drab olive outfits like an ambush scene, were next to the Sebastopol gun, as I got near, one held his hand up, …”Does your dog bark?”…….. to which I admittedly sarcastically commented….”Sometimes, he’s a dog after all, they’re famous for it.” We parted on uneasy terms.

[quote="Snowy"]I just think they’re miserable buggers, they give you filthy looks if you go anywhere near them…

if they were a bit less miserable and arrogant others might meet em half way. we used to get em a few times a year on the coast in norforlk where i existed for 7 years. we had a regular tea time walk when i wasn,t working and it passed where they were watching. was told by one to clear off with the dogs as they were watching rare birds. he got both barrels from me and saying i live hear 365 days of a year unlike you lot who turn up a few days and try to run the show. if i was asked politely i,d have gone somewhere else and not raised my blood pressure or frightened the dick dicks off.

I suspect 99% of them are stoic obsessives….. anyone desperate enough to travel hundreds of miles to photograph a bird that might have flown off 10 seconds after the call has a want in them… they arrive and form a phalanx of camouflaged shufflers carrying multiple bags and backpacks and cameras the size of a portable anti tank missile and attract miserable weather.
Wonder if they have boards like this…. Where they ‘debate the merits of assorted bird watching topics….

well her in the kitchen thinks they insist on there other halves wearing a bird costume when they are in the sack at night just to turn em on.

Aye, that’ll set the feathers flying..

Bit like you Mr. Accy I lived near the coast in Norfolk a few years back and liked bird watching until the missus caught me!

Whereabouts in Norfolk, same for you Mr Accy, me and the wife’s favourite holiday destination but never venture south of Cromer down the coast….well we do if necessary, but it’s odd….ending up in the hell of Caistor.

I lived close to Norwich where my eldest son was born in 1980 - the same day as the Queen Mum's 80th birthday where any part of the Norfolk coast, through the back roads, I could reach within 30 mins, from Heacham to Yarmouth.

Like you love Cromer and I could sit on the pier all day just watching the world go by and normally spend some time each year there and along by Yarmouth and the other way along the north Norfolk coast to Hunstanton.

I like Sheringham, Wells and Hunstanton, always chuckle when I go through Stiffkey and the Vicar’s work with ‘ladies of the Night’….
Oddly enough, been doing my family tree and my Great Grandfather was a ship’s captain who moved his family to West Hartlepool from Great Yarmouth.

existed overlooking the sea on top of the cliis between winterton and hemsby about 7 miles north of yarmouth. was great for dog walking out of season or if you got up early but that was it. if you have a car then hemsby itself is great for a caravan or chalet holiday but living there is another matter. as long as you do not eat out its still a cheap and cheerful place as long as you avoid the locals. took refereeing really seriously there as there was sod all else to do or watch if norwich were not your thing.

[quote="Snowy"] always chuckle when I go through Stiffkey and the Vicar’s work with ‘ladies of the Night’….
i chuckle too when i hear that name. they had a football team there in the north norfolk league and had a free week and was asked to ref there. they played another local village and lets say we didn,t get on with each other. after numerous yellow cards for both teams i was called a geordie bastard and he walked as no one calls me a geordie and gets away with it. to make matters worse i didn,t recieve a team sheet from the home club so had to put down the name of the home side that i overheard as your Stiffkey and not SKIFFkey as it is. mind you it did get a laugh from the county fa as i found out later.

That reminds me when I was a sales rep and I called at Woolworths in the High Street Sheringham, I had to park a distance away (in summer months) and walk along the promenade before turning back to the high street. There was me in suit, tie on a summer's day walking along close to the beach looking slightly overdressed.

Had the Woolworths in Cromer, Hunstanton & Yarmouth as well, they were the good old days.

I like Cromer, Sheringham and Holt. Kelling heath is a good touring park, Isn't Norwich were the six fingered banjo players come from.

As I said earlier my eldest son was born in Norwich but he only has 4 fingers and a thumb on each hand!

Earlier talking about Woolworths their store in Norwich was in Rampant Horse Street, so I could imagine banjo players being along there.

Holt isn't that where the Queen Consort likes to shop when they are at Sandringham?

Holt or Burnham Market…. that’s dear too?

It seems a bit like all hobbies now in that you have to have all the equipment costing a fortune, develop a sense of self importance and generally being a prick.
Gone are the days where you just grab your old rod & reel out of the garage or dust down your dads old Rommel binoculars and go to the coast.
Some of the birders i have met were ok and i had decent conversations others were simply up their own arses.

I mentioned on here last year how a bloke in his hairdressers 4x4 pulled up and opened up the boot where he then got dressed in autumn shades camouflage from top to toe then put a pack on his back and picked up a camera with a lens the size of a bin lid….. suitably attired to merge into an autumn woodland setting, he walked off down the pilot pier surrounded by concrete…

[quote="Bluestreak"]It seems a bit like all hobbies now in that you have to have all the equipment costing a fortune, develop a sense of self importance and generally being a prick.
Gone are the days where you just grab your old rod & reel out of the garage or dust down your dads old Rommel binoculars and go to the coast.
they are like kids that never grew up. always have to dress the part like they might have done having a kick around with their mates in full premier league team kit. joggers, cyclists, gym users all the same like some keep fit fashion show.

It’s the ‘cyclists’ who get me…. I rode a bike for years, going to work on it and cycling with the kids…. There was a car there, but biking was ok.
But as soon as it got caught in the Media’s embrace it had to change. Ridiculously expensive bikes to emulate their status, dressing like Lycra clad Marvel comic super heroes and encouraging gullible middle aged tubsters to squeeze with difficulty into Lycra designed for 10 stone skeletal obsessives as they come out to break their personal pain barriers. Aggressive road entitlement syndrome infects them and they become insufferable, and their ‘Hamsters wheel fever’ emerges and they just pedal and pedal and pedal…you get the picture.
Remember driving over from Staindrop to Middleton in Teesdale going to see Pools play at Morecambe, to be stuck behind a swarm of lycra louts who took over the entire road…only rescued when a tractor behind me overtook me because she had had enough blew her horn and they parted like the Red Sea and me and several others followed to filthy looks ….. their own worst enemy.

its a case of giving em an extra inch and they,ll take a mile. pedestrians also seem worse since some idiots changed the highway code. just wander around in a daze playing with their tippy tappy just because they feel more important now. going through towns now is a nightmare where no matter how hard you concentrate you are inches or seconds away from having the book thrown at you being a driver. 999 times out of a 1,000 the pedestrians and cyclists will be made in the right and the bleeders know it.

Noticed a rise in the Lycra squad riding two abreast and taking up the entire road width with a nice tailback behind them which curiously they like to glance back at intermittently, but ignore.
I was always taught to ride in echelon when there was two cyclists together…. Looks now like the triumph of arrogance over common sense.

with all the hills around my area seems always to me the macca for the weekend cycling clubs that are still fine. its just the odds and sods not in them who have got worse where you get the feeling once they arrive back home the main discussion will be about how much traffic they have held up and who they pissed off today. not a lover of narrow country roads when i,m driving prefering to do my speeding on motorways and duel carriageways and always pull over to let those who enjoy these roads better than i do if i,m followed. get up my bumper though and their chances then are below zero and somehow the car goes a little slower.

The most dangerous ones are the individuals that are trying to break their "person best" or PB for a certain route and will do anything to shave a few seconds of it so they can brag to their mates in the pub over a pint of real ale whilst eating a bag of low calorie organic crisps.
I am a keen cyclist but have nowt to do with this lot with me sticking to tracks and empty pavements.
I work on the principle that all car drivers are either on their mobiles or pissed.Most likely both!

I’ve still got five bikes in storage but doubt I’ll use them now, but I always stayed on the road, it’s pathetic to see Lycra’s on the promenade at Seaton and the Headland going like the clappers like they’re on some personal time trial like the c#&t who rode over Ratboy’s tail in 2020 as he tore through a group of people like a demented child.
I’ll bet you a pound to a penny these clowns never went near a bike till it was gentrified, sexed up, dressed up and made to look cool.

then there are the canal towpaths. loads of money thrown at them to get rid of the potholes and mud. they certainly were not done up for dog walkers who never minded the mud and water but for our lycra mob who took over big style. you walk on them at your peril and so does the dog. what do they expect a dog to do when the race up behind you quietly and frightens a dog. expect a bloody paw from it. the only plus they get from me is they act responsible if their kids are riding with em.

Prior to getting ‘assaulted’ by a bike on a public walkway Ratboy took no notice of them, since then, if one gets near to him on the pavement the cyclist has a problem as he thinks they are going to attack him and reacts as dogs do.